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All Aboard The Technological Revolution

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the ding-ding-went-the-trolley dept.

fm6 writes "Our old friends at nytimes.com (click here to tell them how much traffic their silly registration system costs them) have a short but thought-provoking interview with economic historian John Gordon Steele. He compares the economic effect of the Internet to various other technological revolutions, especially the introduction of steam power in the early 19th century."

1 of 211 comments (clear)

  1. History says otherwise. by Rimbo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Monopolies run forever because they eliminate competition."

    No, they all end, because acquiring a monopoly in a market is a sign of market commoditization. In other words, monopoly power is doomed to fail because their monopolies become irrelevant. The marketplace is always changing, and if you stop chasing the moving target, it doesn't matter if you're the master of your domain -- you'll be left behind.

    The only monopolies that last are those that are enforced as monopolies, such as the power company.

    I've been looking more closely at Microsoft as a business lately. They are in big trouble. Every major source of income they have has become commoditized -- there are several free alternatives to their OS and "Office" software packages. What's more, this software is as good, if not better, than anything Microsoft makes. Lastly, interoperable standards -- such as HTML, XML, Java, and TCP/IP -- have made what OS you use largely irrelevant for the most popular computing tasks. (And before you quote some random special-purpose app that doesn't work on BeOS or something, re-read that sentence, especially the word "popular.")

    What's more, the steps they've recently taken to defend that monopoly either alienate consumers (restrictive licensing) or haven't a prayer of becoming profitable (X-box). Losing market share + lack of profitability = bad news. The whole goal of the X-box is to sell the product at a loss to get it in people's homes, and then use it as a source of other income. Good idea, except that (a) gamers are fickle, and are always looking to the new best thing, and (b) game consoles are used for games. PC's and Macs are used for surfing.

    No, he's RIGHT. The antitrust case should continue, but Microsoft is in real trouble right now, and their current moves are only making things look worse.

    The internet has made the OS you use irrelevant. Microsoft is pulling out all of the stops to keep this from happening. What they SHOULD be doing is pulling out the stops to find new relevance.