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Microsoft Blames Anti-trust Legal Fees for Price Increases
jm.one writes "BBC news has an article about the Californian anti-trust case and points out that Microsoft tells users would suffer from this: 'Somebody ends up paying for this,' said Microsoft attorney Robert Rosenfeld. 'These large fee awards get passed on to consumers.'
Do they really understand why there are laws?"
Lord knows they can't afford to take the legal fees out of a measly 500% profit margin or the big stockpile of cash they are sitting on.
"Mr Crew has billed Microsoft just over $3,000 an hour for his own work, as well as more than $2,000 an hour for other lawyers on his team. " What lawyer is worth even $200/hr (more on par on normal) much less several thousand dollars per hour. Cause I'm sure no one else could have done Mr. Crew's job just as well for less. definately something wrong if that was approved for lawyer fees after Microsoft lost. (but hey who didn't know that there was something wrong with the legal system in the States)
If the cost keeps going up, no matter the reason, so will piracy of the product. Wed like to think more people would try linux, but they wont. My brother pirates windows; ive hadned him linux demos and despite only listening to mp3s and surfing the web hed rather pirate the windows he knows; then get a free operating system he DOESNT know; that may or may not work with all his hardware.
In fact, he reccomended to my mother the other day she try linux, she won't and its not because of the price. She "doesnt want to learn anything new"
Shed rather live with constant viruses with Windows and Outlook and problems with Internet Explorer than even try Thunderbird or Firefox and "learn something new" despite ALL the buttons are pretty clearly labeled, and you have to be just plain lazy to use that as an excuse. I even offered to switch all her contacts and bookmarks over, and get her junk mail filtereing started (something Outlook doesnt have) so she could email in peace...still no.
As much as Id love to see linux mature and be better for everyday everybody use; I think its going to take that and then some to get people to actually use it once its ready.
Personally, I think it sucks. Id prefer linux myself, except Im a gamer...and tuxracer isnt what Im looking for.
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
I'm amused at the outraged postings of people shocked by the fact that Microsoft passes along settlement costs to the consumer through price increases rather than cutting into their profits. Look, they'll raise their prices first, and if demand drops off or they're afraid that their market share is shrinking, then they may lower their prices again.
Litigation resulting in cash penalities are the easiest for corporations like MS to handle. I believe that state and foreign governments sue not for whats "right" or "fair" but because its a backdoor method of taxing the public.
IMHO, the best solution to deal with MS was the original penalty of splitting the OS and Apps segments of MS into two separate entities. You can't pass that along to consumers. No wonder MS fought so hard to get that reversed.
BTW - Here's another little fact. Corporations don't pay taxes (technically) either. So before getting all huffy that MS is getting away with it again, take a good hard look at the runaway litigation in the world and ask yourself where all of the money is going!
This is an example of how fucked up our laws are requarding businesses. This isn't a Microsoft is evil example this is a basic corporate fact and is an example why corporations exist. Corporations are by design intended to protect individuals(the owners ) because the only thing you can do to a corporation is take it's money and as it job is to make money it will simply treat such an event as a loss of profit and it will react as such. If other operating costs go up then that would effect the price too. The only way you are going to change corporate behavior is by holding those in charge responsible for it's acts not the corporation. Except for a corporate charter many actions could be tried under conspiracy or even racketeering laws but that corporate charter insulates the owners from that. Change incorporation laws and this would stop.
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The issue is that if they weren't a monopoly it would be impossible to "pass such costs on to customers". It's basic econimics. Assuming no change in per-unit production costs, there is a single fixed product price that will maximize profits. A company would already be charging that price. Any increase in product price would then result in a decrease in profits.
If that weren't true then the company could have imagined they already had some sort of cost to passed on and charged that higher price in the first place, then simply pocket that imaginary "passed-on cost" as more profits and been making more profits in the first place. QED.
So either (A) he's blowing smoke out his ass with bogus threats of "passing on costs to customers", or (B) he's actually threatening to abuse their monopoly position to extort monopoly rents out of the public.
So either Microsoft was LYING to the court in an effort to dodge court ordered damages, or Microsoft was threatening to abuse their monopoly to extort monopoly rents.
Neither option reflects particularly well on Microsoft. Not that either sort of bad reflection could possibly tarnish their image any further.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
The lesson, if you're not blinded to it, is that you don't need 100% control of something to be an effective monopoly.
Microsoft controlled the OS. If they didn't like you your application would accidently break every time they upgraded the OS. If they decided to compete with you, same thing.
It's like buying every bridge in town (matters more in some towns than others) and claiming that you don't represent a monopoly because you've only got 1/7000th of the road surface in town. Bridges are a bottleneck of driving. Like an OS. Nobody buys a computer for the OS, they buy it to do things, the OS is just like the mechanics of the car - something that makes the car do what you bought it to do.
With Microsoft's control over a large segment of the industry (90%?) they could bully other companies into not writing software for other OSes, or selling computers with other OSes.
In other words, they started to be able to extert non-market pressures. An ideal market has perfect knowledge and perfect availability. Microsoft is trying to remove these as much as possible. They don't want people to know about alternatives, nor be able to use them if they hear about them. If you do buy a competing office suite, which you can't get pre-installed, it'll break when MS "upgrades" something.
A capitalist would embrace the market. They would strive to offer a better service, or a better price, and draw customers voluntarily. Microsoft instead is paying people to mislead you and restrict your choice of competitors. Like bribing the city to rezone your property, or accidently shutting off your electricity, if you dare to compete with them. Or sabotaging their own product (car for instance) when you install a third-party product (stereo) in order to scare everyone away from non-Microsoft add-ons.