Have you ever noticed that people are always warning about the *prospect* of a monopoly, rather than the reality?
There *are* real monopolies. Electric companies, local telcos, cable companies. And they're all granted their monoplies by virtue of legislative action. And these monoploies, which were established under the pretext of maintaining market order, are the most durable of all.
Thanks for your concern, but no thanks for your help. We the market can cut these folks down to size without your help.
The problem with *all* sales taxes is that they make the government a party to every transaction that takes place. If they decide you might be cheating, they have the right to audit every transaction, who bought what, how much they paid, and how it was shipped. Even if the sale was exempt, you have to prove it was exempt. If you thought porno filters in libraries were an intrusion, you ain't seen nothin' yet.
Well, first of all, it's incredibly tacky to be talking about raising taxes in the midst of a surplus. But to use an excuse like protecting Wal-Mart? Washington is really scraping the bottom of the barrel for justifications. CompUSA set up a separate company, CoZone, so they could compete on the 'net without the sales tax disadvantage. Guess what? It didn't help, and they're closing it.
When I started reading down the list of the Cluetrain web site, my initial reaction was something like yes!... yes!... yes!... huh? It started out by hitting the nail on the head (about markets being conversations), but quickly devolved into a little too much mumbo-jumbo.
Another recent book covers much of the same ground from a different perspective. The Monk and the Riddle is written by an apparently successful Silicon Valley business type, and, while it's unfortunately written mostly in the first person, it avoids straying into self-indulgence. But he does a really good job of explaining why the by-the-numbers approach just doesn't cut it. Most fascinating thing was that I guess he was at Apple when the issue of licensing the OS came up, and he tells how the numbers folks prevailed over the vision folks. Just a short mention of the incident, but it seemed to really hit the mark.
What I find most amazing about this whole thing is that it was started to protect Netscape, as lame a software company as ever came down the pike.
Here was a company that took a free browser, made it proprietary, cleaned it up a little, and grabbed 85% market share, not because it was any good, but because they had a head start. On the basis of what was basically an HTML file viewer, they announced their intention to topple Microsoft. Investors believed them, and the money started pouring in. They used it to go on an acquisition spree, hoping they could buy and popularize enough stuff fast enough to maintain their lead; relatively little original code ever came out of Mountain View. And when this silly plan didn't work, they were lame enough to blame Microsoft instead of their own hollow business plan.
Netscape's stated plan was to leverage their browser share, and they immediately started doing all the things that we get ticked off at Microsoft for: adding proprietary tags, encouraging sites to write to their specifications instead of to the open specs. In the early days, this was pretty effective, since Netscape jumped the gun with such things as table tags and font tags, which were pretty radical tools for early web designers. But such a strategy was doomed to failure, since each new feature became increasingly less useful than the previous one. When people started to notice that very few copies of Netscape were ever purchased (it was free for students, government, and non-profits), they said that their plan was to make money by selling servers, and that they were going to use their browser share to drive the server business!
Eventually, the investors lost their shirts and nearly everything else, but not before Netscape management became wealthy. But of course, it would have been suicidal to admit that their business plan had been as bad as it was; to do so would have invited a massive shareholder's suit. Instead, we've been treated to the spectacle of whining billionaires, one of the worst inventions ever to come out of Silicon Valley.
The most ironic thing is to hear these losers tell us the secret to Microsoft's success. Well, if they're so damned smart, how come so many people lost so much money on their company?
Please don't construe any of this as a defense of MS; I'm just sick of hearing guys with zillions of other people's dollars complaining that they didn't end get more. Yeah, maybe MS did end up with a monopoly in browsers, but if Netscape had concentrated on making a decent product instead of trying to topple Microsoft by churning out crap quickly, they might still be a player instead of a little component in AOL 6.
Calling it 'Netscape 6'....
on
Netscape 6
·
· Score: 2
Maybe it's some sort of newfangled reverse-branding strategy.
From the article: The law requires "a written instrument signed by the owner of the rights licensed." Hmm, too bad they didn't shrink-wrap it, then they'd be covered under DMCA.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.geocities.com/zonegray/mach 5.html
Let's see how sharp-eyed y'all are./p
Have you ever noticed that people are always warning about the *prospect* of a monopoly, rather than the reality?
There *are* real monopolies. Electric companies, local telcos, cable companies. And they're all granted their monoplies by virtue of legislative action. And these monoploies, which were established under the pretext of maintaining market order, are the most durable of all.
Thanks for your concern, but no thanks for your help. We the market can cut these folks down to size without your help.
The problem with *all* sales taxes is that they make the government a party to every transaction that takes place. If they decide you might be cheating, they have the right to audit every transaction, who bought what, how much they paid, and how it was shipped. Even if the sale was exempt, you have to prove it was exempt. If you thought porno filters in libraries were an intrusion, you ain't seen nothin' yet.
Well, first of all, it's incredibly tacky to be talking about raising taxes in the midst of a surplus. But to use an excuse like protecting Wal-Mart? Washington is really scraping the bottom of the barrel for justifications. CompUSA set up a separate company, CoZone, so they could compete on the 'net without the sales tax disadvantage. Guess what? It didn't help, and they're closing it.
When I started reading down the list of the Cluetrain web site, my initial reaction was something like yes!... yes!... yes!... huh? It started out by hitting the nail on the head (about markets being conversations), but quickly devolved into a little too much mumbo-jumbo.
Another recent book covers much of the same ground from a different perspective. The Monk and the Riddle is written by an apparently successful Silicon Valley business type, and, while it's unfortunately written mostly in the first person, it avoids straying into self-indulgence. But he does a really good job of explaining why the by-the-numbers approach just doesn't cut it. Most fascinating thing was that I guess he was at Apple when the issue of licensing the OS came up, and he tells how the numbers folks prevailed over the vision folks. Just a short mention of the incident, but it seemed to really hit the mark.
What I find most amazing about this whole thing is that it was started to protect Netscape, as lame a software company as ever came down the pike.
Here was a company that took a free browser, made it proprietary, cleaned it up a little, and grabbed 85% market share, not because it was any good, but because they had a head start. On the basis of what was basically an HTML file viewer, they announced their intention to topple Microsoft. Investors believed them, and the money started pouring in. They used it to go on an acquisition spree, hoping they could buy and popularize enough stuff fast enough to maintain their lead; relatively little original code ever came out of Mountain View. And when this silly plan didn't work, they were lame enough to blame Microsoft instead of their own hollow business plan.
Netscape's stated plan was to leverage their browser share, and they immediately started doing all the things that we get ticked off at Microsoft for: adding proprietary tags, encouraging sites to write to their specifications instead of to the open specs. In the early days, this was pretty effective, since Netscape jumped the gun with such things as table tags and font tags, which were pretty radical tools for early web designers. But such a strategy was doomed to failure, since each new feature became increasingly less useful than the previous one. When people started to notice that very few copies of Netscape were ever purchased (it was free for students, government, and non-profits), they said that their plan was to make money by selling servers, and that they were going to use their browser share to drive the server business!
Eventually, the investors lost their shirts and nearly everything else, but not before Netscape management became wealthy. But of course, it would have been suicidal to admit that their business plan had been as bad as it was; to do so would have invited a massive shareholder's suit. Instead, we've been treated to the spectacle of whining billionaires, one of the worst inventions ever to come out of Silicon Valley.
The most ironic thing is to hear these losers tell us the secret to Microsoft's success. Well, if they're so damned smart, how come so many people lost so much money on their company?
Please don't construe any of this as a defense of MS; I'm just sick of hearing guys with zillions of other people's dollars complaining that they didn't end get more. Yeah, maybe MS did end up with a monopoly in browsers, but if Netscape had concentrated on making a decent product instead of trying to topple Microsoft by churning out crap quickly, they might still be a player instead of a little component in AOL 6.
Maybe it's some sort of newfangled reverse-branding strategy.
How much can they make from your site?
How will they recoup their investment?
How much will it cost them to run the site after it's purchased?
Will they be able to increase revenues?
How much money do they have, and what's their long-term strategy?
Is there another potential buyer?
Is there another site that this buyer could purchase instead of yours?
What are they interested in... your URL, your readers, your talent?
Do you dominate some particular niche? How difficult would it be for somebody to build a bigger site than yours that serves the same market?
Think hard, talk to people who have made money in this market. And good luck.
oops.
From the article: The law requires "a written instrument signed by the owner of the rights licensed." Hmm, too bad they didn't shrink-wrap it, then they'd be covered under DMCA.
The problem with that tactic is that it might actually prove helpful.