I wrote 'Nuke Redmond'

From: Richard Erlacher <edick_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Sun May 7 00:18:49 2000

----- Original Message -----
From: Mike Ford <mikeford_at_socal.rr.com>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 06, 2000 8:44 PM
Subject: Re: I wrote 'Nuke Redmond'


> >There's only one reason that MS has the market share they do, and it's
quite
> >simple: IBM. It works like this; 1)IBM comes up with the PC. 2)Asks MS to
>
> MS has the market share it has by targeting competition and ruthless use
of
> its monopoly powers, seconded only by a long string of defective products
> requiring expensive software updates that fueled a marketing warchest
> unprecidented in human history. Paul Allen said it himself, "nobody ever
> guessed the obscene profits possible from upgrades."
>
Would you care to elaborate on the practices of "targeting competition and
ruthless use ..." I've hear about this, but I'd like to know what this
actually means. It seems OK when DEC or IBM or someone else did the same
thing, often much more with the intention of screwing anybody and everybody
foolish enough to buy their products, and I'd also like to know why the
historical account of the history of MS has to change every time someone
needs it to in order to support their position.

What I mean, of course, is that on one hand we have this company that's not
yet 25 years old, and that had a substantial quiver of products out there
back in the late '70's, essentially a monopoly on the market for
commercially viable BASIC interpreters/compilers, not to mention other
languages. They weren't considered an evil monopoly back then, when one
might, indeed, have perceived them to be one.

Upgrades do cost money, and there's no crime in exploiting the fact that
people want the "latest and greatest" of whatever they use. I personally
use the old (Windows 3.1) version of Office on a couple of my boxes, simply
because it's easy and I already have it. This one here has the Office '97,
and there won't be an upgrade until I get one in the mail, for free of
course.
>
> This is the sickest aspect of the whole computer industry, ALL of the
> companies that made fairly good reliable products went under from the
flood
> of dollars the BAD heavily marketed software generated via updates.
>
Well, I wish a few more of them would go. I can't imagine what companies,
now defunct, produced this set of "fairly good reliable products " have gone
down the toilet because they were outspent or outmarketed by MS. An example
or two would be nice.
>
> Its a bleeping cynics playground.
>
>
Received on Sun May 07 2000 - 00:18:49 BST