it wasn't because IE was free that it won, or because it was bundled with Windows
....
It's the same deal today with Firefox. IE is resting on its laurels, so Firefox is gaining marketshare. It's the way the market works; it's just that Netscape hoped the Justice Department would do its work for them.
Uhm, please note that first you argue that IE killed Netscape because it was bundled.
Then you argue that Netscape lost because it wasn't actively developed, etc.
BTW - your example has nothing to do with entrance costs.
You want a paper for grading?:-) Fill in the argument yourself.
But once prices rise to a profitable level, competitors will enter, forcing another price drop.
Well, you create some other monopolies and tie them all together (think it is called "strategy tax" in Redmond?). Then you can keep the prices up AND keep the entrance cost really high.
In short, there are reasons that the laws regulating monopolies exists.
True, but helping consumers is not one of them.
In this case it's easy to argue bad effects for consumers -- the end of development for our productivity applications (Office, web browsers, numerous big security holes).
[a free web browser] isn't as important today but in 1997 (before Firefox, Mozilla, Safari), this was huge.
There were free web browsers '97. Mosaic, etc.
Consumers usually didn't pay for Netscape in practice (I think it was free for academic institutions). If my memory serves, corporations paid to get support.
Hence, I seriously doubt this was "huge" enough to ignore criminal monopolists killing competition.
(OK, duh, monopolies only undercut competition when they need to do it to kill 'em off.)
MS competed with Netscape by making their product better and cheaper
You claim that MS made IE for 0 dollars??
The only reason to give away IE was to kill Netscape, because it might have been competition. Standard monopolist tactics to "remove the oxygen supply".
There is a third option: Incompatibility with earlier versions.
Some boss will buy a new portable that is preloaded with a new version of Windows and Office. Documents won't work that well between the new and earlier versions of Office...
(And, typically, the new portable can't run earlier versions of Windows... or something.)
He he, second post of a new user? (In the first discussion?!)
As close to anon as can be!:-)
I wrote the answer to your question somewhere else.
Consider profits. If you move most developers to other products and quit doing serious work on the application, your profits go up (costs are lower).
So without competition there won't be any new features, the same price -- and high profits. The loser is the customer that won't get new functionality or lower prices.
The original point you brought up was price. I pointed out that profit was a more relevant metric.
Don't just claim that Everyone wins -- show it.
I wait with baited breath for e.g. proof that IE is better than any other browser -- and just didn't stand still in features when it in practice didn't have competition (which supports my point -- and is NOT a win for the consumers).
If you don't give a good and relevant answer, I'll assume I've fed a troll.
My example didn't need that the prices had to be higher. Only that the profit was higher. Move developers out and profit margins increase. No new features. Like Office of IE for a long, long time. (The analogy would be to use cheaper flour for the bread.)
You assume the monopolist follows the law. (E.g. see the bloody monitor found in Netscape's bed...)
Also, the problem with high entrance cost.
(E.g. if a monopolist has a large area of monopoly, they can afford to undercut the prices longer than any competition is willing to wait -- so any possible competition goes into other areas of business.)
In short, there are reasons that the laws regulating monopolies exists.
Microsoft lowered the cost of browsing the web from $30 to nothing.
(Netscape was free for e.g. academic institutions and there were Mosaic, etc.)
A monopoly always undercuts the competition. M-soft did it here because they saw Netscape as a potential threat that might make operating systems irrelevant.
So, in sum, to kill competition before it existed, the monopolist Microsoft took away the oxygen supply of a competitor by giving away free software.
Are you seriously arguing that this might (in any but a very narrow minded way) be a good thing???
Yes, a historical science can't do experiments; you can still get useful information from it.
So we don't have an argument.
I am sensitive on this point, since I've read too many idiots writing things like:
"Well, since economics can't really prove anything... my unfounded theory, without any presented support, is worth as much as the consensus opinion among economists".
Or "Since it's not a real science, we don't need to care that all it's practitioners are claiming my idea is total lunacy".
And if you think I am attacking wind mills, be glad you don't have Swedish' politicians.:-)
Some similarities between paleontology and economics are:
Both are historical sciences; hard to do experiments.
New data is found (or time passes).
Both work with statistical models of complex findings -- economics in societies, evolution on species. (This makes it easy to take unusual data and do unserious attacks.)
Different religious groups hate the results of both fields of research and dearly wish to discredit them.
Sigh, all theories about reality are approximations. No theory is correct. The difference is in how close the approximations are.
What your wrote sounds like one of the conspiracy theories from European left wingers that is very similar to the creationist writings on paleontology. Please keep religion out of discussions.
I'm not an economist, but I think this is a classic monopolist example.
Consider an area with many small bakeries. A big company goes in and opens bread shops with lower prices so the small shops have to close.
Good for the consumers? No.
After the small companies close down, because of the lower prices from the big company, the prices are increased to higher than the small companies had before the big company went into the area!!
The profit from the high prices is used to undercut small businesses in the next area the big company takes over...
Now, replace a geographic area with a type of application (spreadsheet, writing, etc).
When Microsoft goes into a new area, they move their investments there. The speed of development in the old area goes down. (But while Msoft takes over an application area -- the speed and development is faster!)
The development speed for new revolutionary features of Internet Explorer or Office isn't high...
When there is competition in an area taken over earlier, lots of developers (paid by the monopoly profits from some other controlled area) are moved back into that place -- until the threat is gone.
So now, with Firefox, there will be development on Internet Explorer.
At any given time, it's better to use the monopolist product -- but in total it's never good for anyone, except for the monopolist.
People seem to think democracies are somehow immune to lunacy, but one only has to take a look at the views held by American public to see the frightening fallacy of this idea.
Well...
The local people aren't doing the stupid things the US' public are doing. But, in total, it's no better.
So at least it is different idiocies in different places, so they have some entertainment value.:-)
I think the frightening part is that these kinds of democracies is the best alternative we've found yet.:-(
Re:Good luck building a military when you need it
on
Business Under Fire
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· Score: 1
[started mobilizing 1939 in] Canada
So, Canade started mobilizing when the war started?
Waiting so long would be a nice luxury to have...:-)
Considering history, even if we're talking a few percent risk of that happening the coming decade, it's quite bad.
Win or lose, the loss in the population's mental health and destruction of our culture would be even worse than the loss of life and property.
Then we might consider the furor about nuclear power plant accidents -- which historically is much less likely (for western types of reactors).
In short, the general public are fuckwits. 1/2:-)
Good luck building a military when you need it :-(
on
Business Under Fire
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
As soon as an actual "military" threat arises that has at least 1/100 of plausibility and importance as compared to our fancy social "safety net" we will sacrifice a lot of it to fund our military.
The main problem with that idea is that it takes many years to build (outfit, train, etc) a military.
Historically, the politicians haven't been exactly fast reacting when the storm clouds are showing up, either...
In the 1920's my country (Sweden) closed down almost all of the defence. When trying to buy weapons when needed, a decade later, the sellers had their order books filled...
Now Sweden has closed down everything. We can only hope that Putin is more democratic than he looks like.:-(
If you really mean that, then you would have to say that if the majority got together and decided to kill all the atheists, that they would be morally justified in doing so
Again, I don't base my moral position on might makes right. I choose my own way of living and what standards I follow.
My view of the universe is that there is no teddy bear that will torture people eternally for having the wrong opinions.
I think that no person, not even Hitler or Stalin, should be tortured forever. If such an a-hole do exist, I'd hate him.
You accept such a bastard as your god. Then you tell me I should think that might is right?!
Then we have e.g. that death sentence for mixing synthetic thread into cloth... Or a thousand other things.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow!!
Then you argue that Netscape lost because it wasn't actively developed, etc.
I think you're a troll or drunk. :-)
Consumers usually didn't pay for Netscape in practice (I think it was free for academic institutions). If my memory serves, corporations paid to get support.
Hence, I seriously doubt this was "huge" enough to ignore criminal monopolists killing competition.
(OK, duh, monopolies only undercut competition when they need to do it to kill 'em off.)
The only reason to give away IE was to kill Netscape, because it might have been competition. Standard monopolist tactics to "remove the oxygen supply".
(How the hell was that modded up??)
Some boss will buy a new portable that is preloaded with a new version of Windows and Office. Documents won't work that well between the new and earlier versions of Office...
(And, typically, the new portable can't run earlier versions of Windows... or something.)
As close to anon as can be! :-)
I wrote the answer to your question somewhere else.
Consider profits. If you move most developers to other products and quit doing serious work on the application, your profits go up (costs are lower).
So without competition there won't be any new features, the same price -- and high profits. The loser is the customer that won't get new functionality or lower prices.
Don't just claim that Everyone wins -- show it.
I wait with baited breath for e.g. proof that IE is better than any other browser -- and just didn't stand still in features when it in practice didn't have competition (which supports my point -- and is NOT a win for the consumers).
If you don't give a good and relevant answer, I'll assume I've fed a troll.
We have statistics on Microsoft's monopoly.
I don't know how much their historical lack of ethics in their misuse of their monopoly influence here. But, as I wrote, I'm not an economist.
Thanks for playing.
You assume the monopolist follows the law. (E.g. see the bloody monitor found in Netscape's bed...)
Also, the problem with high entrance cost.
(E.g. if a monopolist has a large area of monopoly, they can afford to undercut the prices longer than any competition is willing to wait -- so any possible competition goes into other areas of business.)
In short, there are reasons that the laws regulating monopolies exists.
A monopoly always undercuts the competition. M-soft did it here because they saw Netscape as a potential threat that might make operating systems irrelevant.
So, in sum, to kill competition before it existed, the monopolist Microsoft took away the oxygen supply of a competitor by giving away free software.
Are you seriously arguing that this might (in any but a very narrow minded way) be a good thing???
So we don't have an argument.
I am sensitive on this point, since I've read too many idiots writing things like:
"Well, since economics can't really prove anything... my unfounded theory, without any presented support, is worth as much as the consensus opinion among economists".
Or "Since it's not a real science, we don't need to care that all it's practitioners are claiming my idea is total lunacy".
And if you think I am attacking wind mills, be glad you don't have Swedish' politicians. :-)
Some similarities between paleontology and economics are:
What your wrote sounds like one of the conspiracy theories from European left wingers that is very similar to the creationist writings on paleontology. Please keep religion out of discussions.
Consider an area with many small bakeries. A big company goes in and opens bread shops with lower prices so the small shops have to close.
Good for the consumers? No.
After the small companies close down, because of the lower prices from the big company, the prices are increased to higher than the small companies had before the big company went into the area!!
The profit from the high prices is used to undercut small businesses in the next area the big company takes over...
Now, replace a geographic area with a type of application (spreadsheet, writing, etc).
When Microsoft goes into a new area, they move their investments there. The speed of development in the old area goes down. (But while Msoft takes over an application area -- the speed and development is faster!)
The development speed for new revolutionary features of Internet Explorer or Office isn't high...
When there is competition in an area taken over earlier, lots of developers (paid by the monopoly profits from some other controlled area) are moved back into that place -- until the threat is gone.
So now, with Firefox, there will be development on Internet Explorer.
At any given time, it's better to use the monopolist product -- but in total it's never good for anyone, except for the monopolist.
(Well, at least I thought it really funny, but you young ones might have forgot Y2K... :-)
Couldn't we wait a few billions of years before we start consider this question seriously?
Portability is very important for them -- they put lots of good money and talent into avoiding that terrible problem!
(I wish I could add a ":-)" here, but not being compatible is a standard monopolist tactic. See e.g. file formats.)
(The Mac should have a low noise volume since the electronics are similar to their portables? Can't find any dB spec on the net?)
If so, I'm impressed.
The local people aren't doing the stupid things the US' public are doing. But, in total, it's no better.
So at least it is different idiocies in different places, so they have some entertainment value. :-)
I think the frightening part is that these kinds of democracies is the best alternative we've found yet. :-(
Waiting so long would be a nice luxury to have... :-)
It isn't.
Considering history, even if we're talking a few percent risk of that happening the coming decade, it's quite bad.
Win or lose, the loss in the population's mental health and destruction of our culture would be even worse than the loss of life and property.
Then we might consider the furor about nuclear power plant accidents -- which historically is much less likely (for western types of reactors).
In short, the general public are fuckwits. 1/2 :-)
Historically, the politicians haven't been exactly fast reacting when the storm clouds are showing up, either...
In the 1920's my country (Sweden) closed down almost all of the defence. When trying to buy weapons when needed, a decade later, the sellers had their order books filled...
Now Sweden has closed down everything. We can only hope that Putin is more democratic than he looks like. :-(
My view of the universe is that there is no teddy bear that will torture people eternally for having the wrong opinions.
I think that no person, not even Hitler or Stalin, should be tortured forever. If such an a-hole do exist, I'd hate him.
You accept such a bastard as your god. Then you tell me I should think that might is right?!
Then we have e.g. that death sentence for mixing synthetic thread into cloth... Or a thousand other things.