Microsoft never had a monopoly
Jerry
> Someday, something will destroy or eat Microsoft,
> but this won't change the fact that they
> operated a successful monopoly for
> at least 30 years.
Not true. What Microsoft had was not a monopoly but market domination.
Monopoly does not mean merely absence of competition but no
possibility of competition.
It is legal to compete against Micorsoft. You don't go to jail for
competing against Microsoft.
Even if the market domination was 100%, it would not be a monopoly.
The difference between 100% market domination and monopoly is big. It
is the difference between freedom and tyranny. It is also the
difference between high customer satisfaction (better than any would-
be competitors) and to hell with the customers (competitors go to
jail).
dipsy
Why don't I use Netcape 6.0 browser? Oh yeah, they tried to sue
Microsoft for anti-trust because they included Explorer in with
Windows, not very nice huh?
How would you like it if Ford or GM made the glass, mirrors and tires
on their cars? Why don't they?
SolomonW
> Monopoly does not mean merely absence of competition but no
> possibility of competition.
Since I have a good imagination, monopolies cannot exist.
Jerry
Monopolies can exist by force of law, no matter what you can imagine.
Jerry
> On Thu, 31 Dec 2009 14:59:37 -0800 (PST), Jerry
> <story.je...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >Monopoly does not mean merely absence of competition but no
> >possibility of competition.
>
> >It is legal to compete against Micorsoft. You don't go to jail for
> >competing against Microsoft.
>
> >Even if the market domination was 100%, it would not be a monopoly.
>
> >The difference between 100% market domination and monopoly is big. It
> >is the difference between freedom and tyranny. It is also the
> >difference between high customer satisfaction (better than any would-
> >be competitors) and to hell with the customers (competitors go to
> >jail).
>
> Why don't I use Netcape 6.0 browser?
Market domination, as I said. Not monopoly. Competition against
Microsoft is legal; otherwise Linux would be against the law.
I use Firefox and Opera and Epiphany. I never use IE. Competition
against IE is legal; otherwise these other browsers would be illegal.
When Microsoft killed Netscape, that wasn't the end of the story.
Netscape went open source and reincarnated. Firefox is derived from
Netscape. Epiphany is a fork of Firefox.
When it comes to browsers, Microsoft doesn't have even much market
domination, let alone monopoly.
Altho I have Windows Vista on my computer, I almost never use it. I
use Ubuntu.
Whatever Vista can do, Ubuntu probably can do as well or better.
Ubuntu (Linux) can read and write on a Windows format; Vista can't
read and write on a Linux format. I use my 500 gig Vista drive mostly
for storage.
Contrary to common assumption, Linux is not limited to command line.
Linux has the same graphical stuff that Windows has. It's amazing how
many people don't know that. And whatever programs Windows has, Linux
usually has the equivalent, with the possible exception of games. But
Linux has plenty of games.
Linux is (for practical purposes) immune to viruses. You don't need
virus protection on Linux.
In addition to having tens of thousands of software packages of its
own, Linux also has wine, which runs Windows programs without Windows.
I often play Age of Empires on Ubuntu, using wine. Apart from the
sound not working and some of the font colors being black, wine runs
AOE very well. Perhaps something is not set up right. On Windows, AOE
used to sometimes quit by itself; that has yet to happen on wine; so
in that way AOE runs better on wine than on Windows.
Installing or upgrading stuff on Ubuntu is usually extremely easy.
Every now and then an icon appears that indicated upgrades of stuff I
have. Click on it and the upgrade manager appears. Another click and a
password and everything upgrades correctly. There are also the "add/
remove applications" program and the "Synaptic Package Manager". About
99.9% of all the software is zero price.
I also find Ubuntu more intuitive and more user friendly than Vista.
But even if Windows had 100% market domination, that would not be a
monopoly, as I explained.
Zerkon
> Not true. What Microsoft had was not a monopoly but market domination.
>
> Monopoly does not mean merely absence of competition but no possibility
> of competition.
>
> It is legal to compete against Micorsoft. You don't go to jail for
> competing against Microsoft.
>
> Even if the market domination was 100%, it would not be a monopoly.
This is a legal monopoly. A monopoly can exist irrelevant to government
as part of an organic economic structure.
Fred Weiss
> Why don't I use Netcape 6.0 browser?
I dunno, maybe it's because you use Mozilla.
>Oh yeah, they tried to sue Microsoft for anti-trust because they included Explorer in with
> Windows, not very nice huh?
Included it for free. Sounds nice to me.
Obviously Netscape couldn't compete with that - anymore than the other
steamship owners could compete with Vanderbilt on the Hudson River who
did the same thing (he made it up by selling food on his ships). Or
Rockefeller who drove his competitors out of business by constantly
dropping the price of oil. Or Ford who slashed the price of
automobiles. (Boy, how customers suffered).
During the period of Microsoft's dominance the use of computers
worldwide skyrocketed and its offshoots, esp. the Internet,
transformed our culture.
Boy, how we suffered.
Btw, it also spawned other completely new market giants, such as
Google and eBay and Amazon.com.
Boy, how they've made us suffer.
Gee, what we would do without the anti-trust laws to alleviate our
suffering?
Fred Weiss
Jerry
How does Microsoft have a monopoly as part of an organic economic
structure?