🚀 go-pugleaf

In <407ugd$k...@gozer.inri.com>, jshi...@inri.com (Jason Shiffler) writes:
>there are a couple points of your letter i don't quite understand
>
>1. you say no one can compete with msn
>    what about aol compuserve, genie, delphi, etc...
>    if you want those services all you have to do is
>    watch their commericials or read their ads and
>    ask for a free trial. computer stores even carry demo
>    disks. so how does msn have no competition.

The estimates go from 20 to 30 million Win95 upgrades, if I understand that
correctly.  MS-net is included into Win95 with a free trial.  Win95 has
supportive APIs for MS-Net implemented as far as I understand it.  So,
technologically MS-Net is part of Win95. No competitor could come up with such a
solution.

Secondly, if 50 % of the users try MS-net and stay there (because it seems
cheap, one gets bug-fixes for Win95 and MS-applications, one gets MS Money for
free via it, etc.), MS is the market leader with a jump start.  

Utilizing a marketing path not available to any other, established on-line
company.  Or put into other words:  MS leverages the fact, that it has a
monopolistic stand on operating systems (and in the meantime it looks on
application suites too), any Win95 user is being *directly* marketed at.  The
potential customers sit personally in front of Win95 and get the direct offer
from Win95 of getting on to MS-Net with a mere click of a button.  All
competitors who *built* that market are left out, they are locked out and have
no chance to compete with MS on the same technical field play, as furthermore
Microsoft included MS-Net APIs *into* Win95.

>2. no one forces you to buy anything. If you don't like
>    Ms office you can buy wpoffice lotus smart suite 
>    or borland office. don't like windows? buy os/2
>     don't like microsoft networking products? buy
>     novell. don't like dos ? buy pc dos or novells dos.

Well, if that was the case, then fine.  Try to get a PC offered which is *not*
loaded with MS-DOS and MS-Windows.  If you get a PC preloaded with MS-DOS and
MS-Windows, *because* it is the cheapest, try to redeem MS-DOS and MS-Windows,
if you do not intend to use it.  The same has started with MS-Office as a
preload, phasing out WordPerfect Office and Lotus Smartsuite from the market ...

(BTW the effect of integrating full blown applications into suites, has been
causing a continuous dryout in the market of ISV which used to concentrate on
one segment of the application market, like word processors, spreadsheets,
presentation software, etc.)

>what i'm trying to say is that microsoft has been successful
>because 1. they have good products

Well, depends.  I like MS-Excel for instance, but to this day prefer AmiPro as a
word processor (seeing the features of its successor "WordPro", it just leaves
WinWord bite the dust ...).  Also, PowerPoint is IMHO not the best presentation
software available. 

But, you as a customer, in reality don't have a choice of intermixing
applications of different vendors anymore, due to the suites.  If you need two
apps, buying a suite, which contains apps you originally were not looking for,
is cheaper, then intermixing apps from different vendors.  Should you sometime
need an additional app, you don't look any further, if it is contained in the
suite you bought, so no real market exists there anymore.  (One of the original
story lines of Windows marketing was that Windows would allow seemless
data-integration of applications from different vendors.  It is interesting to
see that Microsoft now pushes MS-Office as the "integration" platform for 
corporations.)

>        2. they are affordable

Well, depends.  They usually *are* affordable, as long as the market has to get
conquered.  Once it is being felt - it seems - that MS owns the market, they
raise the prices, due to no competition left.  Just witness how Microsoft 
effectively *doubled* the price for MS-office for corporations.

>        3. they are able to meet committments to
>           to computer manufacturers and they have
>            earned their trust

Yes.  Microsoft was the only well for MS-DOS in the beginning.  They did -
doubtlessly - an excellent job for getting OEMs to preload DOS.  (This was the
original deal between IBM and Microsoft:  IBM would use PC-DOS on their PCs
only, and Microsoft's task was to supply the competitors of IBM with DOS.) 

But the present market condition is entirely different.  Microsoft started to
leverage its stakes in the OEM market by forcing OEMs to preload Windows 3.x on
their PCs *without* asking its customers.  So the customer was not even *asked*
from then on, whether he wanted Windows or not (just remember the inflation of
Windows licenses, caused by the fact, that you would get a copy in any case if
you bought a mouse (!), a harddisk, etc.).

No competitor of Microsoft could have done the same (remember that MS forced
license deals on their OEMs which caused them to get OS'es from MS only - and
those treaties lasted for *years*, effectively banning any other OS competitor).

So what happened in the "free" market?  Novell's DOS, regarded as technical
superior to MS-DOS, was removed from the market, because it simply was *not*
possible to sell it to bounded OEMs.  Of course, you heard those (true) stories,
that versions of Windows would *not* run under Novell's DOS without problems,
that Windows code had *explicit* code to detect whether it was running on
Novell's DOS, etc.

>
>microsoft is certainly an aggressive company, but if you

Definitely.  And they have smart people too, leveraging the power of market
shares of its operating systems and application systems on to market segments,
no one dreamt of, because it simply was not possible in the pre-communication
age.  Using pre-conditions and means *not* available to competitors to fight
them, hence perverting the notion of "free market".  The result:  the market
dries out of competitors, and customers who will have to play even more by MS
flute, including paying Microsoft whatever they ask you for.

>don't have good products people will eventually turn away
>and select the alternatives.
>   

What alternatives ? There are almost none left on the market !

Those OEMs which signed the Win95 treaty with Microsoft, gave away their
self-developed technology by granting Microsoft for not suing, if the OEM's
technology was misused by others (MS and its customers). 

Imagine, in a free market, i.e.  in a market with many choices, no corporation
would be willing to give away its hardly (and costly) developed technology.  Why
would they agree today ?  And BTW, as far as I understand that passage,
Microsoft is free to sue (and ask money from) its customers, which dare to use
MS technology illegally.

It is IMHO an illusion to think of the PC-SW-market as a free, competitive
market, with "a lot of alternatives" available to customers.  More than ever, it
would be important to *reestablish* a free market again, thereby spurring
competitors, so customers can profit by getting a lot of alternatives of good
quality software at fair prices.  If not, the market will be totally dead within
years.

As all ISVs and OEMs will be customers of MS their developed technology never
ever will be able to be used to construct compelling alternatives to MS
technology anymore, as MS can grab their competitor's technology at their will
(after the competitors invested *their* own money to develop technology).

Unless, I misunderstood something. :)

---rony