I agree that Google is being a bit hypcritical[sic] here. It makes business sense that they don't want MSN to be the default, especially since Microsoft is also muscling into the search engine wars..
MS is a monopoly using that monopoly to gain market share in a separate market. Google is a competitor in that separate market that happens to be the default in Firefox. Even if Google made Firefox, which they don't, it is not the same thing in any way. Nor is it hypocritical. One is breaking the law, the other is not.
Microsoft should be free to choose whatever default they want and not add anyone else by default.
Microsoft, like any other monopoly, should (and is) legally bound to not use their monopolized product to give other products they offer in other markets an unfair advantage. They bundled IE with Windows and now most of the world uses an inferior browser with crappy security and whose support for HTML is a partially implemented support for a six year old standard. The reason for that is because they bundled it and it won by default. They did not have to innovate and make a better product to get users. It just has to remain "good enough" that people will not go out of their way to educate themselves and obtain something else.
What will happen if they keep MSN as the default? Most people will not know they have other options or know how to change the default and most people will use MSN. They won't be using it because it is better, or faster, or has less ads. They'll be using it because they use Windows and it is the default in Windows. Google will lose market share, despite having a better product.
Tell me again why it is a good thing to let a monopoly dominate new markets with inferior products? Why is it a good thing that the free market is bypassed and the best product does not win? How does this help innovation and benefit the people? Do tell.
Actually no, on this point, you could argue that MS has gained and advantage, but it is by no means an unfair advantage...
How do you figure? The advantage is a direct result of their having the ability to configure settings included with their default OS and the software bundled with it.
Just because a monopoly gains an advantage does not mean that they have done something wrong.
I never said it did. What is both unethical and illegal is when they gain an advantage as a result of their existing monopoly which gains them market share in a different market.
And this tenuous argument that MS maintains monopoly status is harder to argue each passing year. Their ability to control the desktop, and thus the way we see the internet is no longer truly valid in my eyes.
That is a completely different argument. You're arguing they don't have a monopoly, not that they haven't leveraged it. I'm convinced MS wields monopoly power for the desktop OS market. The courts in several countries agree with me. Apple makes basically no money in that market, instead bundling the OS with hardware to make money. IBM gives Linux away for free with their services and hardware, where they make money. HP does the same with HPUX and Sun with Solaris. Who exactly is making money competing against MS in the desktop OS market? Nobody.
As the next generation, the first generation to grow up with computers readily available, grows and becomes a serious market force we will see the erosion of MS's ability to weild their monopoly powers.
Sure, in the future things might change. That does not have an affect upon right now. Here's a question for you, if MS keeps this default setting will MSN start to gain market share against Google? If so, why? If not, why should they do it?
MS is trying to leverage their desktop OS monopoly into market share in the search services market. They should be making a better search engine instead, but they seem to have no motivation to innovate or give users abetter experience when they can instead just break the law and get the same effect without any work.
Your ISP doesn't expect everyone to fully saturate their given bandwidth. If they did, they would probably charge more. Do you think Google would offer as much space for Gmail if they thought everyone would use all that is given to them? So what happens when this gets off the ground and everyone starts using all available bandwidth?
Truth in advertising, where they actually tell you how much you can use? Possibly pay by the amount of data you send? I imagine the market will move towards whatever profits them the most, likely tiered service so everyone pays for more than they use and everyone thinks they are getting more than they are. If we actually had choices it would go a long way towards solving the market problems in the telecom industry.
Oh wait. We're talking just Mac users here... Nevermind.
IE is, by definition a Default & Preset. IE is forced upon you, Firefox and Opera is chosen. That is where the compaint is based from.
To elucidate slightly, IE is (bundled with/part of) Windows which has been ruled a monopoly. You can't legally use a monopoly to give you an advantage in another market. That is the whole point of antitrust law.
The problem with that defense of Firefox and Google is that Firefox doesn't ask you to specify which one you would like to use, it just defaults to it.
Google - has a monopoly on nothing. Thus it has no ability to illegally leverage a monopoly.
Firefox - has a monopoly on nothing. Thus it has no ability to illegally leverage a monopoly.
Microsoft - has a monopoly on desktop OS's. Thus it is forbidden from using that desktop OS to gain market share in another market, i.e. search engine services.
But if someone is going to bitch about setting a default without asking, the same standard should apply to Firefox/Google.
The same standard is applied. As soon as either of them gains a monopoly and enters into the other's market (or any other market) they will forbidden from abusing the first monopoly from gaining market share in the second. For example, If google dominates the search services industry and is declared a monopoly it is illegal for them to intentionally change their search algorithm to always return GoogleOS or GoogleBrowser as the first search result for "OS" or "Web browser."
Not saying that it actually IS wrong here, only that the comparison with FF is a very good one despite the differences. I think it's a stretch to say IE is wrong and FF isn't.
You're mistaken. With IE you have the case of a company with a monopoly, using the default settings of the product they have monopolized to gain market share. With Firefox you have a company without a monopoly setting a default based upon what they feel is best and/or who pays them. Choosing a setting is not in any way illegal or wrong by itself, it is leveraging a monopoly that is both illegal and unethical. It is perfectly legal for me to bundle or tie any two products I sell together, right up until I have a monopoly on one of them. MS was ruled to have a monopoly on desktop OS's, thus they can't use the settings in their desktop OS (and bundled browser) to gain market in search engine services.
DRM? just curious, I can't imagine that they would let you offer the pirated music and movies and then get itunes credit for it...
I think you're confusing the term upload. They aren't talking about you uploading some data you have to get credit to download other data. They are talking about you authorizing Apple to use your machine as a node in a bit torrent network that distributes data of their choice. Thus you click "yes" and they use your spare upload bandwidth to more cheaply and quickly send software updates, podcasts, iTunes downloads, etc. to other computers. The data is all encrypted and chunked so it is not useful to you at all, even though it is on your hard drive. In excahnge, they give a free itunes song or something every month or year or something.
You win, because you weren't using all your hard drive and bandwidth anyway (and presumably it gives your data precedence). Apple wins because they no longer have to pay as much to distribute iTunes data and software updates. Theoretically, they could even expand this to third party software, cheaply distributing up to date version of any software companies want to give Apple a copy of. Hopefully it would be tied to a full service to keep all your programs updated.
The risks are legally, Apple might have copyright challenges to copying little chinks of encrypted music, even if it is unusable, and the security risk of people masquerading as valid nodes to disrupt the network or try to inject fake data (unlikely unless the implementation is very weak).
A 'commercial' worm author doesn't give a shit about what you have on your PC, how much money the PC's owners have. Generally, all it cares about is that your PC is connected to the internet and that it can use the connection to send spam. That's it. They aren't trying to steal your secret family recipes or wedding photos.
I'm afraid you're woefully out of date. Worms can and do harvest CC numbers and other personal info and that trend is increasing. You can buy "identities" right now on underground Web sites where the higher the credit rating the higher the cost. A lot of those identities come from compromised databases, but more and more are garnered from worms reporting via the control channel. Further, the relative wealth of PC owner often correlates significantly with the bandwidth available to that computer.
Nice try on the whole "Mac users spend big bucks, so they're more valuable targets!" argument though. I wonder if you made any other irrelevant, probably incorrect generalizations in your post.
I don't know, why don't you actually read the post rather than complaining about the supposed inaccuracy of what you haven't bothered to read?
Antitrust would be if when you go to google.com or altavista.com and what not and it automatically goes to MSN.com.
MS falls afoul of antitrust law whenever they do anything with their existing monopoly on desktop OS's that gives them an advantage over others, in another market. More people will visit the MSN search because of this. Google will make less money and MS will make more. MS did not make a better search, they just used their desktop OS to gain market share in the search industry. That is illegal.
As a rule of thumb when looking at these issues, just ask, "Did MS change the service/product/application they are making money on; or did they change what ships with their desktop OS?" If they change their OS or something they bundle with their OS to take money away from anyone other than another supplier of desktop OS's, they are probably breaking the law. Another way to look at this is, can Google change the settings in their monopoly on desktop OS's to gain the same market share increase? No, they don't have a monopoly to abuse. Thus MS is breaking the law and gaining an unfair advantage that results in consumers using not the best product, but the one set as the default in or included with Windows.
I have nothing against MS gaining market share in the search space, but they have to to it honestly and legally by making a better product, not by these illegal tactics. May the best search win!
If Google has leading market share in the search marketspace, how can they claim that Microsoft's intent to default to MSN in IE7 is a not competative practice.
Easily. MS is using its monopoly to gain an advantage in the new market. That is the whole point and that is what the law forbids.
IE defaults to MSN as it's home page, correct? Well, MSN search is there. Google's stating that people won't use their search because users won't change the toolbar default is equivalent to saying that people don't change their default home page - which is untrue.
No, it is equivalent to them saying not all users will be knowledgeable or motivated enough to change it. Firefox is far superior to IE in most ways. Even the US government recommends all users switch for security reasons. Still most people use IE. That is not because MS has forced them not to switch, it is because most don't know they can or why they should. Thus consumers use an inferior product and everyone suffers (except MS).
It does not matter that they can switch it. The point is some users won't know they can. Others will know they can, but won't know how. Still others will know they can and how but will be too lazy to bother. The net result is MSN gains marketshare. Can Google set the default browser included with a monopoly on all desktop OS's to google.com? No, they don't have a monopoly to abuse. Thus MS has gained market using their existing monopoly. That is blatantly illegal.
Where does this end? The default home page? The toolbar option? At some point this gets ridiculous.
Legally, all of the above that reference a product in another market. If people make money doing something and MS takes part of that money away using their OS monopoly, they have broken the law.
The problem stems from the public not even understanding the difference between the competitors and not caring to change. Who's fault is that?
It is not Google's job to educate or motivate the people to have to change, rather the onus is upon MS to not make choices in their OS design or settings for people that gain them market share in other markets than desktop OS's. It is part of the price you pay for having a monopoly. When you're really big, the law says you have to watch where you step so you don't crush those smaller.
In this case, how do you establish that? The OS is entrenched, but Google market share is significant over MSN's search. I mean hell, its almost 50%. How can you argue that your dominance is in danger by a company who holds 8%?
MS's market share in Web browsers was 8% once too, before they started bundling it with the OS. Their market share for server OS's was below 8%, before they started tying it to the desktop with secret protocols. Now their products are still inferior, but one has dominated the market entirely and the other is gaining market share. Google has not locked people in in any way to their service. All MS has to do is get their search "good enough" that people won't go out of their way to change settings and they will win with this tactic. That is what is illegal. They aren't winning by producing a product that is better or even as good, just one that is "good enough" and bundled. "Good enough" is not what consumers deserve and the people that make a product that is just "good enough" should not be profiting on it over more innovative companies, just because they already have a monopoly on something else.
Yet, Microsoft is NOT forcing anyone to adopt it. If you want to change it, you can. If someone is so unlikely to switch that's a laziness/ignorance issue on the part of the end user, not Microsoft.
You're wrong, both conceptually and under the letter of the law. Will setting MSN as the default search engine gain MS market share for their service? Yes. Can Google gain the same advantage, not having a monopoly on desktop OS's to use? No. Thus MS has gained an unfair advantage by leveraging their monopoly. That is illegal.
Whether or not this exploiting the fact that people are lazy and ignorant does not figure into it.
people supporting alternative systems such as linux and unix (including mac os), etc. should avoid claiming they are not able to be infected with virus and worms. such false advertising may cause people to abandon the adoption at the end because they will just think "hey, why spend all the fuss when you get the same problems.) ignorance is the problem. education is the solution.
I agree with you, but I think most of the ignorance is in the other direction. Talking to the average Windows user, most assume Mac users do have to deal with the same level of spyware, worms, and other malware that they do. When told, "No I've never been infected with any of them and in fact no mac worm has ever spread to OS X machines on the internet," many simply don't believe it. Those that do, sometimes inaccurately claim when speaking to others that mac can't get viruses, when in fact they just don't get viruses (or haven't yet).
Apple has been very careful on this issue, to never claim their machines are immune to viruses. I think the fact that most users don't know Macs are more secure than Windows machines and are unlikely to have malware problems greatly overshadows the problem of Mac's security being overstated by some individuals.
This article claims 16% according to the SPA. Personally I'd estimate it is somewhat lower, maybe 7%. Sales figures alone place it at about 4% for the year, but the average in use lifespan of a mac tends to be 1-2 years longer than that of the average PC (although close to that of other high-end machines). Also sales of macs were up 32% year over year from 2004 to 2005. The industry as a whole went up 18%. That means 14% of roughly 4% of all computers old would put Apple ahead by a little more than half a percent of the total PC market, to 4.5%. They've been doing quite a bit better so far in 2006, by all reports. So for a very conservative estimate you could say they have more than 4.5%, possibly considerably more than that. Anecdotally, here at work they have grown from 5-10% of the machines to about 50% or more in just a few years (mostly professional coders and security experts).
I recall reading somewhere the first person executed when Europeans colonized North America was for bestiality, and they did commonly hang animals for their part in the offense. Sadly that is no where near the pinnacle of the ridiculous things done in the name of christianity.
You make several good points, and it is clear a lot of people who are not in the security field overestimate the security of an OS X system. It is somewhere on par with the average Linux workstation, which is to say people out there can hack it if they are targeting you specifically. Worms might, but probably won't be an issue for an average user. Notifications and restrictions on users are middle of the road for security versus ease of use. I think, however, you are slightly incorrect on several points and are basing your opinion on several incorrect facts.
If you write a virus, you most certainly DO aim it at the most popular platform amongst those it has to contact to spread, especially if all the other platforms combined don't even reach 10% of the market, unless there are serious mitigating circumstances.
This is true in some cases, but not all. A good number of worm authors are for-profit these days they want to make money. Windows is the biggest market segment and the easiest target. It is not, however, necessarily the most profitable. Half the Windows machines out there are sitting in a business office and have no data easily exploitable for profit. Another 25% or so are home machines owned by people in the third world who have pirated the copy and don't even have credit cards.
Mac users, on the other hand, are people who shelled out big bucks for a high-end machine. Some Windows users are too, but by no means a large percentage of them. What percentage of Macs do you suppose have valuable, credit card and personal info for someone with a high credit rating?
Macs are not so rare that dumping one on Comcast's network would not net you a pile of machines. Further a cross-platform virus that hit both macs and Windows machines would solve the propagation issues. No, the reason worms don't hit Macs is not propagation or lack of a target. Nor is it lack of motivation. While many worm authors are working for profit, a large number are also just showing off and being malicious for its own sake. A lot of them would love to take "those mac users" down a peg.
The reasons we don't have mac worms spreading are:
Unfamiliarity - many worm authors use tools and a knowledge base that is very Windows specific. Many just don't know how to write a Mac worm.
Difficulty - There is no IE or Outlook and the default, common internet apps avoid many of the security snafus MS has made with them. Ports are closed and services not running by default. Like it or not, the average Mac is harder to attack that the average Windows machine.
Community Expertise - you can have a worm propagate on Windows machines for weeks before it hits a honeypot or smart security guy's machine and becomes recognized. There is a higher percentage of security people and clueful professionals on Macs, so worms are/will be detected more quickly. The one attempt I know of to spread one used a Mac forum as the insertion point and was detected by users there and dissected immediately.
Zero day to a month - The time between the discovery of a vulnerability that actually presents a real risk of worm propagation and the rollout of the fix is shorter, due to Apple's faster response time. This is party due to the complexity of the architecture and partly due to policy.
Up-to-date security - If you're running Windows 95, 98, ME, or 2000 there are unpatched security holes on your machine. If you're running Windows XP, you may or may not be up to date depending upon your security update policy and what application you need and whether or not they work with specific security patches. If you are running any version of OS X you still get security fixes as they are rolled out. If you are running OS 9, well, there just isn't much pout there and isn't likely to ever be for a plethora of reasons.
And the truth is that Darwin's lack of fine grained security means it has a limit to how secure it'll ever be.
It is true that OS X has not implemented jails or Man
You have nothing else to criticise[sic] so you resort to semantical[sic] nonsense and critcise[sic] my spelling and grammar of which is rushed since I am at work and suck at typing!
I have plenty of other things to criticize; and I did. I just though I'd point out you are unlikely to be taken seriously when your spelling and grammar is worse than the average high school drop-out.
Let me clue you in, I do agree, generallizing[sic] populations is rarely something I would agree on but when it comes to BUSH[sic], its[sic] unamimous[sic].
The actions the US have taken during Bush's presidency have certainly increased the already present dislike for the US in many locations, created it in places it did not before exist, and has driven a number of people to a level of hatred that is significant. That does not mean you can assume any person who dislikes some actions of Bush, or the US government holds all the viewpoint you listed and attributed to them. You were generalizing and without cause.
It is also obvious to me that my perception on the EU is correct... the bias emmanating[sic] from the EU.
This entire sentence has no meaning. Europeans are biased against a person who does things they dislike? Of course they are and they should be; otherwise they would have a mental illness.
I truly believe we have entered and age of rampant anti-americanism...
Yeah, people do tend to dislike you when you repeatedly fuck them over, bully, and kill people for profit and to further domestic political agendas.
...our continued uber success in world markets with companies like MS and Boeing leading the charge but under contstant[sic] litigation in the EU
MS is breaking the law, very blatantly and deserve to be punished for it. Even the US government agreed with that. Boeing, on the other hand, is not being litigated against, but rather is part of a battle between the EU and US where both want to unfairly subsidize their domestic airline production in order to bolster their technological capabilities. To be fair, I believe the US was the first to violate our treaty on this matter.
We are not only engaged in a war on terror...
Please stop parroting that absurd rhetoric. You can't wage a war against a basic human emotion. You can't wage a war against 500 guys with bombs, and little relation to one another other than their hatred of what the US has done. You can't wage war against how upset people are by what the US has done. "Terrorists" are not now, and never have been a serious threat on the scale of a war, especially foreign "terrorists." Strictly speaking, the US army is the largest terrorist organization I know of. Remember the "shock and awe" campaign. It could just as easily be called the "incite terror" campaign. The whole "terrorist threat" is just a win-win for those running the US government and foreign religious radicals. Religious fanatics get a huge jump in recruiting and the US to alienate an entire religion. US official get an excuse to grab more power from the people and draw attention away from their corruption. Foreign "terrorists" have killed fewer people total than accidentally drown in the bathtub every year. Why don't we wage a "war on bathtubs."
...simulataneaously[sic] are fighting a far less hostile but still very competitive economic war with our so called allies.
Please spare me. The US citizens invested in large multinationals to a significant degree make up a tiny portion of the US about equal to the number of foreigners who own stock. These "american" companies are not american, they are multinationals. They aren't supporting the US, they're supporting themselves.
All litigation against american corps is the last tool the EU...
Yeah, how dare they enforce the laws, especially when they are the same laws we convicted that company of breaking. Those sneaky bastards!
If Apple bought Adobe, then they'd effectively be pursuing a strategy similar to Microsoft's - trying to control all major app vendors for the respective OS. It'd be costly for one thing, and might discourage other vendors from building on the platform. Not a great idea, in my opinion.
Actually, buying Adobe, rather than competing directly with them, would likely encourage developers and vendors. Most companies (and employees of companies) would not mind being acquired by Apple. Most investors would love to hitch their cart to Apple's climbing stock values. The fact that Apple doesn't routinely buy out their developers actually discourages development. Apple has a habit of developing the same sort of tech in house, and just leaving developers in the cold. There are a hundred companies right now who are positioning themselves to be purchased by Cisco or Juniper. There are a thousand hoping to be bought by Microsoft or IBM. Being bought out is like winning a small lottery. Your stock is now worth something Whoo Hoo! Employees with shares make some real dough. The guys at the top get a big payoff and a place to sit until they find the next startup or smaller company to hop on.
So I strongly disagree with your sentiment. On the other hand, I'm not sure that Adobe is the best bang for the buck. Their development seems a huge mess, with acquired software from many sources, overlapping products, half-dead and zombie software, and MS just starting to look at killing some of their core market. It might be a good buy, but it could also be a really bad buy. One of the things I'm surprised Apple hasn't done is bought a game company and started a games division. Just have a pile of Mac exclusive titles would be a big PR win for them, and should they introduce the ability to run Windows software at close to native speeds they could then boast a larger stable of both games and other applications than the Windows world provides. It seems almost like a given that they would buy up a few game companies. When MS bought Bungie was a dark day for the Mac platform. I suspect it is Jobs holding that back, with some idea that Macs are supposed to be general purpose machines and games are for consoles.
Only if customers allow them to. Your real problem seems to be with consumers who are making price/quality tradeoffs that you don't agree with.
I'm not trying to wholly absolve customers from blame. They certainly bear a lot of the responsibility, but if you read the conclusion of my post you'd see I talk about how trusted, respected brands are turned into "fronts" for cheaply made, low quality goods. That deception, is one of my main objections. Consumers don't have the time to research in depth each and every purchase and in many cases they rely upon brands to help them distinguish quality from crap. When Wal-mart gets ahold of a quality production chain they drag it down to the lowest level possible. In many cases they basically buy a brand and have that company develop all new products and facilities to manufacture cheap, low quality goods that masquerade as better quality goods by having a well respected brand name on them.
Wal-mart is not the only culprit here, but they are one of the biggest and most efficient at making this happen. It is so bad, I occasionally look at the Wal-mart Web store to get a good idea of which brands I should avoid purchasing. In many cases I can look at something and tell it has been made shoddily, of the cheapest components, but in other cases I don't have the expertise.
As an aside, I spent one summer working for Wal-mart. I installed security cameras so they could watch their cashiers and I assembled some of their more expensive products, like lawn mowers, that customers paid the extra cash to have assembled for them. After a summer of using the parts kits for three mowers, to get enough parts properly machined to even assemble one lawn mower, I'll never buy anything like that from any of their stores.
Now I know most American's demand low prices more than they do quality. I know most aren't willing to pay for knowledgeable staff or informed purchasing advice. I also know that before Wal-mart came to many towns people had the choice of buying cheap or quality. Now, many people have the option of buying cheap, or driving long distances to try to find a real store. Thank Buddha for the internet and online stores! Wal-mart is the triumph and doom of the lowest common denominator. I'm sad about that, but don't blame them for being heartless, ruthless, greedy, businessmen. It is the American way to believe ethics and business are diametrically opposed. I can and do object, however, to the deceit of buying up and buying out good brands and manufacturers and using them as a trick to sell low quality junk to the unsuspecting.
My basic complain about Wal-mart is that they are the driving force behind the "modernization" of American manufacturing. That is to say, they are a driving force in lowering wages of the average employee while raising the wages of the very wealthy who own stock in them. They drive out small retail business who actually have knowledge and skill in their field and replace them with people with neither subject knowledge nor the inclination to gain it.
They take american (and other) manufacturers under their wing and demand that they ramp up production to very high levels to ship to all Wal-mart stores. Companies have to take out big loans to do this, or they have to pass on what is the only retail venue left in many locations. Basically take a big loan and supply us or give up the market, since we've killed the other retailers. So companies take the loan and ramp up production. The next year Wal-mart demands they lower the price. Now they can't pay off their loan without sales from Wal-mart so they do it, every year until they can't make a profit. Then they have to either decrease quality to keep lowering their price, or move to cheaper labor markets. Either way America loses. We either get sold cheap crap, or lose jobs or both.
I can't even count the number of good companies they've killed. I can't count the number of companies that used to produce high quality goods, in local factories, and who were proud of what they made. They had a reputation for making something good. Now their reputation is slipping away as consumers realize the brand now sells cheaply made junk, often made in slave labor conditions in the third world. This deception of consumers, by baiting them with good quality then switching to crap is modern business, but it still stinks and Wal-mart still promotes it more than anyone else.
So, you do agree the market has locked in. And this is by choice of the market not because of MS (yes, MS may have twisted the arm in the deal, but the market still had a choice). Hence, it is the markets fault not MSs.
"Markets" don't make choices. Individuals within markets do. Players within a market who don't play by the rules (AKA laws). By your logic, just because the mafia held a gun to your head and forced you to buy a particular brand, you still had a choice. You could have stuck to your principals and died and then they would not have been able to dominate. It is all "the market's fault" because people weren't willing to die.
MS broke the law. The EU convicted them of it. What's the problem?
law requires a retailer to sell the machine with some O/S
Wherever did you get this idea from? It is not true in the US, or anywhere else I know of except China. MS is the one that keeps retailers from selling OS-less computers to big business.
Also, I don't think this case is about bundling of software with the PC or bundling of the browser with the OS. It is more about competitors using the government to bite into the market share of the leader.
You're wrong in both cases. This particular case is about tying, not bundling. It is about competitors demanding various governments enforce the law evenly and protect the free market. MS only exists because the US government enforced anti-trust law against IBM and prevented them from leveraging their monopoly to dominate the PC market. For them or you to complain because the UE is now enforcing the very same laws to stop them from ruining the market is just hypocritical nonsense.
In short, as the consumer has already committed to the choice, the provider is leveraging the committment. So, why doesn't the consumer make a different choice?
I think you're oversimplifying. The point of a monopoly is that companies have no other choice. Whether you agree with it or not, the courts have found that most consumers have no choice but to buy Windows for the desktop. They need it to interoperate with file formats, it is the only option available in pretty much all stores, it is the only option you can purchase in bulk from Dell for your company. If you are using desktop computers, there are many things locking you into Windows, including the availability of software you need for some given task.
Given that ruling, and reality, the best choice for many consumers of servers is to buy Windows server because of the fact that it is illegally tied to the desktop (with which they must interoperate). If that tying did not exist then the best choice would probably be a different server OS. Companies go with Windows server because it is the best solution for them, but that is only the case because of MS's illegal behavior.
Continuing on the cheese example, the situation is that the consumer knew it was crappy cheese but found it useful (this may not match with the analogy), hence, they became comfortable in using the crappy cheese.
Ahh, but here's why the free market has failed... the cheese doesn't have to be as good, it just has to be "good enough" that consumers won't throw it away and buy cheese from somewhere else. And even if they do, they've already paid for it. Right now some users throw away IE and install Firefox, paying the very small price of the download bandwidth and time and looking at ads for a second browser. Most users, however, find IE "good enough" and don't pay a second time (having already paid for IE as part of the cost of Windows). The result, 85% of users use an inferior browser. Thus consumers have greatly suffered.
Now, when the TV maker decided to change the flavor of the cheese, the baker who was buying TV from TV maker is complaining about the cheese! Well, the purpose of buying a TV was not to buy condiments to run a bakery. So, I think the complaint is groundless.
You miss the point. The baker was forced to buy the cheese in order to get a TV. He paid for it, even though it is sub-par and now, he can't afford to pay again. He especially can't afford to pay again because the only cheese sellers left are very small and expensive specialty cheeses, since all the normal grade cheese sellers were driven out of business.
Forcing consumers to pay twice in a destroyed market, is not a good solution, compared to just banning the monopolist from ruining the market in the first place.
A more primitive example is that Harry sells Pete all of the land that surrounds Harry's house...
At this point your analogy is already critically flawed. You're talking about individuals, not markets. Yesterday some kid turned 18 and gained all the rights of an adult. He rents and apartment and goes to buy a workstation and server to start his own small business and become a big success. Due to the decisions of those who came before him, he has to buy a Windows desktop in order to run the software he needs. That is no fault of his own. The decisions were made by others long before he had any ability to make decisions. His choice of server to go with it is now encumbered by the fact that it has to work with his desktop. The best solution for him as an individual might be to buy a Windows server, but that is only true because of the illegal tying. Thus he buys what would otherwise be the inferior machine. MS's market share increases and they move towards having a monopoly on the server space as well... and so on into other markets.
As for the anti-trust law, the consumers should have complained 10+ years ago about the bundling (including SMB) into Windows with increased cost. I am sure none did as it was
If consumers wanted Linux based PC, then there will be some vendor who will cater it -- supply and demand. The issue is that consumers don't make the Linux choice for various reasons.
Supply and demand does not apply when dealing with a monopoly. It is one of the aspects of the market that is bypassed. For example, I have personally signed off on machine orders for hundreds of towers, all of which would be running Linux or OpenBSD. That order included hundreds of Windows licenses, because the major OEMs have been coerced into shipping only machines with Windows on them. That is hundreds of licenses unused, but money paid to MS for them. In larger companies it is much worse. Almost all major corporations by a corporate license which they use on all their machines, each of which already shipped to them with a regular Windows license included. The market is not demanding machines with Windows licenses that will never be used, but that is what it is getting.
Do you want to know why? MS has a monopoly on the desktop. Basically, no major computer retailer can afford not to sell Windows machines. The market is locked in in a huge number of ways. Several courts have ruled this to be true now. This means all the computer retailers must deal with MS for their licenses, which make up an ever larger portion of each sale. Now given that this is a very price sensitive and commoditized market, the company that succeeds is the one with the lowest price. MS has variable pricing. You don't just buy licenses from MS, you negotiate to try to get the lowest price from them. One major requirement to not be paying twice as much as your competitors is, don't ship any machines without Windows on them. Thus, they use their monopoly to create an illegal barrier to entry, despite the demands of the market.
After reading a little about the case, my understanding was that the commission is asking Microsoft to publicize their protocol standards so that it encourages competition. As my understanding goes, competition is not based on knowing how your opponent does what he/she does; it is based on if you can do better than your opponent.
What you are missing is an understanding of anti-trust law. You're looking too much at the specifics and not enough at the law and the reason for the law. You should read up on anti-trust law if you want to truly understand the topic.
Here is a short and dirty explanation. In most jurisdiction it is legal to have a monopoly. Whether the monopoly comes about because you make an innovative new product, or the nature of the industry, or geography, or some combination does not matter. Having gained a monopoly, you have done nothing illegal (necessarily). Once you have a monopoly, however, the law restricts you from using that monopoly in such a way as to gain an unfair advantage in another market. My stock explanations almost always involve cheese for some reason. Say you gain a monopoly on televisions; all well and good and legal. Now you decide, I think "I want to open a business that sells cheese as well. Since everyone has to buy a television from me or go without (I have a monopoly) why don't I just raise the price on TV's $3500 and give away a free lifetime supply of my cheese with it." It's brilliant! The cheese need not be as good as the competition, nor do I have to be able to make it cheaper. People will buy it anyway, because they want TVs. And what of other cheese sellers? Most will go out of business.
What happened in the above situation? The new cheese seller did not innovate better or cheaper cheese. In fact they might have more expensive and less tasty cheese. Still they have taken over a market. What happened is they used bundling to to bypass all the benefits (innovation, lower prices, etc.) that are brought about by the free market. Worse, there is nothing stopping them from parleying each of their two monopolies into yet more monopolies. People realized this was a bad thing long ago, and simply passed laws preventing it, for the good of consumers and the state of the industries.
Moving right along, we come to tying. What if, instead of bundling the two products together (like cheese and televisions) we just tied it to another product. Say we made all the TVs detect anything in between them and the cable TV and stop working if they found something. And then we added a special (patented) connector to the TV that hooked up to a VCR. Since only our VCRs worked, we'd quickly own the VCR market as well as the TV market. Maybe that would be too unsubtle. What if, instead we used a secret, encrypted protocol for the remote control, so people who bought VCRs from other people had to have two remotes, while ours only needed one. And in addition, what if we added a special connector that plugged into our new telephones and turned the TV volume down when you picked up the phone (but only our brand of phones). Well, we wouldn't take over the markets right away, but we would have an advantage over our competitors. And maybe we could sell cheap and crappy phones and VCRs at higher prices, since we were the only ones that worked with the TV that easily. Is there anything wrong with that?
According to the law in almost every country, yes. Consumers should not have to pay more and use crappier phones and VCRs just to gain the benefits of having them interoperate with TVs.
MS is not tying TVs and VCRs. They are tying their desktop OS (monopoly) with their server OS (which is gaining market share and selling well). Their server OS is slower, multitasks more poorly, is more expensive, is less secure, is less stable, and lacks a number of very useful features other server products have. People still buy it though, because it is tied to the desktop OS monopoly by being the only server that can speak the secret AD and Exchange protocols.
Youre so representtive[sic] of the idiocy that plagues 49% of the population her[sic] in the US and a much higher percentage of the population in the EU.
If you want to go off on a rant about how some group of people are a bunch of idiots, perhaps you should try not to make quite so many elementary grammar and spelling errors. It makes your arguments rather comical. Further trying to group "49% of the population her[sic] in the US and a much higher percentage of the population in the EU" as having one set of beliefs as annotated in the rest of your post is just sad. People don't have homogeneous beliefs systems and your arguments smack of the classic fallacy, because you state A, I'll assume you also believe B, C, and D and since C is absurd you and all your statement must be wrong. Why aren't logic and rhetoric taught in schools anymore? The Greeks and Romans mocked people who tried to make these sort of illogical statements thousands of years ago. How long does it take for them to become mainstream again?
Now maybe you're just trolling here and I've fallen for it. If so, good job. If not though, please please please read a book on logic and rhetoric and perhaps one on critical thinking. Some of the points you make are more or less correct while others are infantile. Whether you are parroting the speaking points of others or honestly have such a fragmented world look, all you are doing here is embarrassing yourself.
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Someone mod this down please.
I agree that Google is being a bit hypcritical[sic] here. It makes business sense that they don't want MSN to be the default, especially since Microsoft is also muscling into the search engine wars..
MS is a monopoly using that monopoly to gain market share in a separate market. Google is a competitor in that separate market that happens to be the default in Firefox. Even if Google made Firefox, which they don't, it is not the same thing in any way. Nor is it hypocritical. One is breaking the law, the other is not.
Microsoft should be free to choose whatever default they want and not add anyone else by default.
Microsoft, like any other monopoly, should (and is) legally bound to not use their monopolized product to give other products they offer in other markets an unfair advantage. They bundled IE with Windows and now most of the world uses an inferior browser with crappy security and whose support for HTML is a partially implemented support for a six year old standard. The reason for that is because they bundled it and it won by default. They did not have to innovate and make a better product to get users. It just has to remain "good enough" that people will not go out of their way to educate themselves and obtain something else.
What will happen if they keep MSN as the default? Most people will not know they have other options or know how to change the default and most people will use MSN. They won't be using it because it is better, or faster, or has less ads. They'll be using it because they use Windows and it is the default in Windows. Google will lose market share, despite having a better product.
Tell me again why it is a good thing to let a monopoly dominate new markets with inferior products? Why is it a good thing that the free market is bypassed and the best product does not win? How does this help innovation and benefit the people? Do tell.
Actually no, on this point, you could argue that MS has gained and advantage, but it is by no means an unfair advantage...
How do you figure? The advantage is a direct result of their having the ability to configure settings included with their default OS and the software bundled with it.
Just because a monopoly gains an advantage does not mean that they have done something wrong.
I never said it did. What is both unethical and illegal is when they gain an advantage as a result of their existing monopoly which gains them market share in a different market.
And this tenuous argument that MS maintains monopoly status is harder to argue each passing year. Their ability to control the desktop, and thus the way we see the internet is no longer truly valid in my eyes.
That is a completely different argument. You're arguing they don't have a monopoly, not that they haven't leveraged it. I'm convinced MS wields monopoly power for the desktop OS market. The courts in several countries agree with me. Apple makes basically no money in that market, instead bundling the OS with hardware to make money. IBM gives Linux away for free with their services and hardware, where they make money. HP does the same with HPUX and Sun with Solaris. Who exactly is making money competing against MS in the desktop OS market? Nobody.
As the next generation, the first generation to grow up with computers readily available, grows and becomes a serious market force we will see the erosion of MS's ability to weild their monopoly powers.
Sure, in the future things might change. That does not have an affect upon right now. Here's a question for you, if MS keeps this default setting will MSN start to gain market share against Google? If so, why? If not, why should they do it?
MS is trying to leverage their desktop OS monopoly into market share in the search services market. They should be making a better search engine instead, but they seem to have no motivation to innovate or give users abetter experience when they can instead just break the law and get the same effect without any work.
Your ISP doesn't expect everyone to fully saturate their given bandwidth. If they did, they would probably charge more. Do you think Google would offer as much space for Gmail if they thought everyone would use all that is given to them? So what happens when this gets off the ground and everyone starts using all available bandwidth?
Truth in advertising, where they actually tell you how much you can use? Possibly pay by the amount of data you send? I imagine the market will move towards whatever profits them the most, likely tiered service so everyone pays for more than they use and everyone thinks they are getting more than they are. If we actually had choices it would go a long way towards solving the market problems in the telecom industry.
Oh wait. We're talking just Mac users here... Nevermind.
Good point, unless this becomes part of iTunes.
IE is, by definition a Default & Preset. IE is forced upon you, Firefox and Opera is chosen. That is where the compaint is based from.
To elucidate slightly, IE is (bundled with/part of) Windows which has been ruled a monopoly. You can't legally use a monopoly to give you an advantage in another market. That is the whole point of antitrust law.
The problem with that defense of Firefox and Google is that Firefox doesn't ask you to specify which one you would like to use, it just defaults to it.
But if someone is going to bitch about setting a default without asking, the same standard should apply to Firefox/Google.
The same standard is applied. As soon as either of them gains a monopoly and enters into the other's market (or any other market) they will forbidden from abusing the first monopoly from gaining market share in the second. For example, If google dominates the search services industry and is declared a monopoly it is illegal for them to intentionally change their search algorithm to always return GoogleOS or GoogleBrowser as the first search result for "OS" or "Web browser."
Microsoft is in the wrong here.
Not saying that it actually IS wrong here, only that the comparison with FF is a very good one despite the differences. I think it's a stretch to say IE is wrong and FF isn't.
You're mistaken. With IE you have the case of a company with a monopoly, using the default settings of the product they have monopolized to gain market share. With Firefox you have a company without a monopoly setting a default based upon what they feel is best and/or who pays them. Choosing a setting is not in any way illegal or wrong by itself, it is leveraging a monopoly that is both illegal and unethical. It is perfectly legal for me to bundle or tie any two products I sell together, right up until I have a monopoly on one of them. MS was ruled to have a monopoly on desktop OS's, thus they can't use the settings in their desktop OS (and bundled browser) to gain market in search engine services.
DRM? just curious, I can't imagine that they would let you offer the pirated music and movies and then get itunes credit for it...
I think you're confusing the term upload. They aren't talking about you uploading some data you have to get credit to download other data. They are talking about you authorizing Apple to use your machine as a node in a bit torrent network that distributes data of their choice. Thus you click "yes" and they use your spare upload bandwidth to more cheaply and quickly send software updates, podcasts, iTunes downloads, etc. to other computers. The data is all encrypted and chunked so it is not useful to you at all, even though it is on your hard drive. In excahnge, they give a free itunes song or something every month or year or something.
You win, because you weren't using all your hard drive and bandwidth anyway (and presumably it gives your data precedence). Apple wins because they no longer have to pay as much to distribute iTunes data and software updates. Theoretically, they could even expand this to third party software, cheaply distributing up to date version of any software companies want to give Apple a copy of. Hopefully it would be tied to a full service to keep all your programs updated.
The risks are legally, Apple might have copyright challenges to copying little chinks of encrypted music, even if it is unusable, and the security risk of people masquerading as valid nodes to disrupt the network or try to inject fake data (unlikely unless the implementation is very weak).
A 'commercial' worm author doesn't give a shit about what you have on your PC, how much money the PC's owners have. Generally, all it cares about is that your PC is connected to the internet and that it can use the connection to send spam. That's it. They aren't trying to steal your secret family recipes or wedding photos.
I'm afraid you're woefully out of date. Worms can and do harvest CC numbers and other personal info and that trend is increasing. You can buy "identities" right now on underground Web sites where the higher the credit rating the higher the cost. A lot of those identities come from compromised databases, but more and more are garnered from worms reporting via the control channel. Further, the relative wealth of PC owner often correlates significantly with the bandwidth available to that computer.
Nice try on the whole "Mac users spend big bucks, so they're more valuable targets!" argument though. I wonder if you made any other irrelevant, probably incorrect generalizations in your post.
I don't know, why don't you actually read the post rather than complaining about the supposed inaccuracy of what you haven't bothered to read?
Antitrust would be if when you go to google.com or altavista.com and what not and it automatically goes to MSN.com.
MS falls afoul of antitrust law whenever they do anything with their existing monopoly on desktop OS's that gives them an advantage over others, in another market. More people will visit the MSN search because of this. Google will make less money and MS will make more. MS did not make a better search, they just used their desktop OS to gain market share in the search industry. That is illegal.
As a rule of thumb when looking at these issues, just ask, "Did MS change the service/product/application they are making money on; or did they change what ships with their desktop OS?" If they change their OS or something they bundle with their OS to take money away from anyone other than another supplier of desktop OS's, they are probably breaking the law. Another way to look at this is, can Google change the settings in their monopoly on desktop OS's to gain the same market share increase? No, they don't have a monopoly to abuse. Thus MS is breaking the law and gaining an unfair advantage that results in consumers using not the best product, but the one set as the default in or included with Windows.
I have nothing against MS gaining market share in the search space, but they have to to it honestly and legally by making a better product, not by these illegal tactics. May the best search win!
If Google has leading market share in the search marketspace, how can they claim that Microsoft's intent to default to MSN in IE7 is a not competative practice.
Easily. MS is using its monopoly to gain an advantage in the new market. That is the whole point and that is what the law forbids.
IE defaults to MSN as it's home page, correct? Well, MSN search is there. Google's stating that people won't use their search because users won't change the toolbar default is equivalent to saying that people don't change their default home page - which is untrue.
No, it is equivalent to them saying not all users will be knowledgeable or motivated enough to change it. Firefox is far superior to IE in most ways. Even the US government recommends all users switch for security reasons. Still most people use IE. That is not because MS has forced them not to switch, it is because most don't know they can or why they should. Thus consumers use an inferior product and everyone suffers (except MS).
It does not matter that they can switch it. The point is some users won't know they can. Others will know they can, but won't know how. Still others will know they can and how but will be too lazy to bother. The net result is MSN gains marketshare. Can Google set the default browser included with a monopoly on all desktop OS's to google.com? No, they don't have a monopoly to abuse. Thus MS has gained market using their existing monopoly. That is blatantly illegal.
Where does this end? The default home page? The toolbar option? At some point this gets ridiculous.
Legally, all of the above that reference a product in another market. If people make money doing something and MS takes part of that money away using their OS monopoly, they have broken the law.
The problem stems from the public not even understanding the difference between the competitors and not caring to change. Who's fault is that?
It is not Google's job to educate or motivate the people to have to change, rather the onus is upon MS to not make choices in their OS design or settings for people that gain them market share in other markets than desktop OS's. It is part of the price you pay for having a monopoly. When you're really big, the law says you have to watch where you step so you don't crush those smaller.
In this case, how do you establish that? The OS is entrenched, but Google market share is significant over MSN's search. I mean hell, its almost 50%. How can you argue that your dominance is in danger by a company who holds 8%?
MS's market share in Web browsers was 8% once too, before they started bundling it with the OS. Their market share for server OS's was below 8%, before they started tying it to the desktop with secret protocols. Now their products are still inferior, but one has dominated the market entirely and the other is gaining market share. Google has not locked people in in any way to their service. All MS has to do is get their search "good enough" that people won't go out of their way to change settings and they will win with this tactic. That is what is illegal. They aren't winning by producing a product that is better or even as good, just one that is "good enough" and bundled. "Good enough" is not what consumers deserve and the people that make a product that is just "good enough" should not be profiting on it over more innovative companies, just because they already have a monopoly on something else.
Yet, Microsoft is NOT forcing anyone to adopt it. If you want to change it, you can. If someone is so unlikely to switch that's a laziness/ignorance issue on the part of the end user, not Microsoft.
You're wrong, both conceptually and under the letter of the law. Will setting MSN as the default search engine gain MS market share for their service? Yes. Can Google gain the same advantage, not having a monopoly on desktop OS's to use? No. Thus MS has gained an unfair advantage by leveraging their monopoly. That is illegal.
Whether or not this exploiting the fact that people are lazy and ignorant does not figure into it.
people supporting alternative systems such as linux and unix (including mac os), etc. should avoid claiming they are not able to be infected with virus and worms. such false advertising may cause people to abandon the adoption at the end because they will just think "hey, why spend all the fuss when you get the same problems.) ignorance is the problem. education is the solution.
I agree with you, but I think most of the ignorance is in the other direction. Talking to the average Windows user, most assume Mac users do have to deal with the same level of spyware, worms, and other malware that they do. When told, "No I've never been infected with any of them and in fact no mac worm has ever spread to OS X machines on the internet," many simply don't believe it. Those that do, sometimes inaccurately claim when speaking to others that mac can't get viruses, when in fact they just don't get viruses (or haven't yet).
Apple has been very careful on this issue, to never claim their machines are immune to viruses. I think the fact that most users don't know Macs are more secure than Windows machines and are unlikely to have malware problems greatly overshadows the problem of Mac's security being overstated by some individuals.
This article claims 16% according to the SPA. Personally I'd estimate it is somewhat lower, maybe 7%. Sales figures alone place it at about 4% for the year, but the average in use lifespan of a mac tends to be 1-2 years longer than that of the average PC (although close to that of other high-end machines). Also sales of macs were up 32% year over year from 2004 to 2005. The industry as a whole went up 18%. That means 14% of roughly 4% of all computers old would put Apple ahead by a little more than half a percent of the total PC market, to 4.5%. They've been doing quite a bit better so far in 2006, by all reports. So for a very conservative estimate you could say they have more than 4.5%, possibly considerably more than that. Anecdotally, here at work they have grown from 5-10% of the machines to about 50% or more in just a few years (mostly professional coders and security experts).
I recall reading somewhere the first person executed when Europeans colonized North America was for bestiality, and they did commonly hang animals for their part in the offense. Sadly that is no where near the pinnacle of the ridiculous things done in the name of christianity.
You make several good points, and it is clear a lot of people who are not in the security field overestimate the security of an OS X system. It is somewhere on par with the average Linux workstation, which is to say people out there can hack it if they are targeting you specifically. Worms might, but probably won't be an issue for an average user. Notifications and restrictions on users are middle of the road for security versus ease of use. I think, however, you are slightly incorrect on several points and are basing your opinion on several incorrect facts.
If you write a virus, you most certainly DO aim it at the most popular platform amongst those it has to contact to spread, especially if all the other platforms combined don't even reach 10% of the market, unless there are serious mitigating circumstances.
This is true in some cases, but not all. A good number of worm authors are for-profit these days they want to make money. Windows is the biggest market segment and the easiest target. It is not, however, necessarily the most profitable. Half the Windows machines out there are sitting in a business office and have no data easily exploitable for profit. Another 25% or so are home machines owned by people in the third world who have pirated the copy and don't even have credit cards.
Mac users, on the other hand, are people who shelled out big bucks for a high-end machine. Some Windows users are too, but by no means a large percentage of them. What percentage of Macs do you suppose have valuable, credit card and personal info for someone with a high credit rating?
Macs are not so rare that dumping one on Comcast's network would not net you a pile of machines. Further a cross-platform virus that hit both macs and Windows machines would solve the propagation issues. No, the reason worms don't hit Macs is not propagation or lack of a target. Nor is it lack of motivation. While many worm authors are working for profit, a large number are also just showing off and being malicious for its own sake. A lot of them would love to take "those mac users" down a peg.
The reasons we don't have mac worms spreading are:
And the truth is that Darwin's lack of fine grained security means it has a limit to how secure it'll ever be.
It is true that OS X has not implemented jails or Man
You have nothing else to criticise[sic] so you resort to semantical[sic] nonsense and critcise[sic] my spelling and grammar of which is rushed since I am at work and suck at typing!
I have plenty of other things to criticize; and I did. I just though I'd point out you are unlikely to be taken seriously when your spelling and grammar is worse than the average high school drop-out.
Let me clue you in, I do agree, generallizing[sic] populations is rarely something I would agree on but when it comes to BUSH[sic], its[sic] unamimous[sic].
The actions the US have taken during Bush's presidency have certainly increased the already present dislike for the US in many locations, created it in places it did not before exist, and has driven a number of people to a level of hatred that is significant. That does not mean you can assume any person who dislikes some actions of Bush, or the US government holds all the viewpoint you listed and attributed to them. You were generalizing and without cause.
It is also obvious to me that my perception on the EU is correct... the bias emmanating[sic] from the EU.
This entire sentence has no meaning. Europeans are biased against a person who does things they dislike? Of course they are and they should be; otherwise they would have a mental illness.
I truly believe we have entered and age of rampant anti-americanism...
Yeah, people do tend to dislike you when you repeatedly fuck them over, bully, and kill people for profit and to further domestic political agendas.
MS is breaking the law, very blatantly and deserve to be punished for it. Even the US government agreed with that. Boeing, on the other hand, is not being litigated against, but rather is part of a battle between the EU and US where both want to unfairly subsidize their domestic airline production in order to bolster their technological capabilities. To be fair, I believe the US was the first to violate our treaty on this matter.
We are not only engaged in a war on terror...
Please stop parroting that absurd rhetoric. You can't wage a war against a basic human emotion. You can't wage a war against 500 guys with bombs, and little relation to one another other than their hatred of what the US has done. You can't wage war against how upset people are by what the US has done. "Terrorists" are not now, and never have been a serious threat on the scale of a war, especially foreign "terrorists." Strictly speaking, the US army is the largest terrorist organization I know of. Remember the "shock and awe" campaign. It could just as easily be called the "incite terror" campaign. The whole "terrorist threat" is just a win-win for those running the US government and foreign religious radicals. Religious fanatics get a huge jump in recruiting and the US to alienate an entire religion. US official get an excuse to grab more power from the people and draw attention away from their corruption. Foreign "terrorists" have killed fewer people total than accidentally drown in the bathtub every year. Why don't we wage a "war on bathtubs."
Please spare me. The US citizens invested in large multinationals to a significant degree make up a tiny portion of the US about equal to the number of foreigners who own stock. These "american" companies are not american, they are multinationals. They aren't supporting the US, they're supporting themselves.
All litigation against american corps is the last tool the EU...
Yeah, how dare they enforce the laws, especially when they are the same laws we convicted that company of breaking. Those sneaky bastards!
You are just spouting uninforme
If Apple bought Adobe, then they'd effectively be pursuing a strategy similar to Microsoft's - trying to control all major app vendors for the respective OS. It'd be costly for one thing, and might discourage other vendors from building on the platform. Not a great idea, in my opinion.
Actually, buying Adobe, rather than competing directly with them, would likely encourage developers and vendors. Most companies (and employees of companies) would not mind being acquired by Apple. Most investors would love to hitch their cart to Apple's climbing stock values. The fact that Apple doesn't routinely buy out their developers actually discourages development. Apple has a habit of developing the same sort of tech in house, and just leaving developers in the cold. There are a hundred companies right now who are positioning themselves to be purchased by Cisco or Juniper. There are a thousand hoping to be bought by Microsoft or IBM. Being bought out is like winning a small lottery. Your stock is now worth something Whoo Hoo! Employees with shares make some real dough. The guys at the top get a big payoff and a place to sit until they find the next startup or smaller company to hop on.
So I strongly disagree with your sentiment. On the other hand, I'm not sure that Adobe is the best bang for the buck. Their development seems a huge mess, with acquired software from many sources, overlapping products, half-dead and zombie software, and MS just starting to look at killing some of their core market. It might be a good buy, but it could also be a really bad buy. One of the things I'm surprised Apple hasn't done is bought a game company and started a games division. Just have a pile of Mac exclusive titles would be a big PR win for them, and should they introduce the ability to run Windows software at close to native speeds they could then boast a larger stable of both games and other applications than the Windows world provides. It seems almost like a given that they would buy up a few game companies. When MS bought Bungie was a dark day for the Mac platform. I suspect it is Jobs holding that back, with some idea that Macs are supposed to be general purpose machines and games are for consoles.
Only if customers allow them to. Your real problem seems to be with consumers who are making price/quality tradeoffs that you don't agree with.
I'm not trying to wholly absolve customers from blame. They certainly bear a lot of the responsibility, but if you read the conclusion of my post you'd see I talk about how trusted, respected brands are turned into "fronts" for cheaply made, low quality goods. That deception, is one of my main objections. Consumers don't have the time to research in depth each and every purchase and in many cases they rely upon brands to help them distinguish quality from crap. When Wal-mart gets ahold of a quality production chain they drag it down to the lowest level possible. In many cases they basically buy a brand and have that company develop all new products and facilities to manufacture cheap, low quality goods that masquerade as better quality goods by having a well respected brand name on them.
Wal-mart is not the only culprit here, but they are one of the biggest and most efficient at making this happen. It is so bad, I occasionally look at the Wal-mart Web store to get a good idea of which brands I should avoid purchasing. In many cases I can look at something and tell it has been made shoddily, of the cheapest components, but in other cases I don't have the expertise.
As an aside, I spent one summer working for Wal-mart. I installed security cameras so they could watch their cashiers and I assembled some of their more expensive products, like lawn mowers, that customers paid the extra cash to have assembled for them. After a summer of using the parts kits for three mowers, to get enough parts properly machined to even assemble one lawn mower, I'll never buy anything like that from any of their stores.
Now I know most American's demand low prices more than they do quality. I know most aren't willing to pay for knowledgeable staff or informed purchasing advice. I also know that before Wal-mart came to many towns people had the choice of buying cheap or quality. Now, many people have the option of buying cheap, or driving long distances to try to find a real store. Thank Buddha for the internet and online stores! Wal-mart is the triumph and doom of the lowest common denominator. I'm sad about that, but don't blame them for being heartless, ruthless, greedy, businessmen. It is the American way to believe ethics and business are diametrically opposed. I can and do object, however, to the deceit of buying up and buying out good brands and manufacturers and using them as a trick to sell low quality junk to the unsuspecting.
My basic complain about Wal-mart is that they are the driving force behind the "modernization" of American manufacturing. That is to say, they are a driving force in lowering wages of the average employee while raising the wages of the very wealthy who own stock in them. They drive out small retail business who actually have knowledge and skill in their field and replace them with people with neither subject knowledge nor the inclination to gain it.
They take american (and other) manufacturers under their wing and demand that they ramp up production to very high levels to ship to all Wal-mart stores. Companies have to take out big loans to do this, or they have to pass on what is the only retail venue left in many locations. Basically take a big loan and supply us or give up the market, since we've killed the other retailers. So companies take the loan and ramp up production. The next year Wal-mart demands they lower the price. Now they can't pay off their loan without sales from Wal-mart so they do it, every year until they can't make a profit. Then they have to either decrease quality to keep lowering their price, or move to cheaper labor markets. Either way America loses. We either get sold cheap crap, or lose jobs or both.
I can't even count the number of good companies they've killed. I can't count the number of companies that used to produce high quality goods, in local factories, and who were proud of what they made. They had a reputation for making something good. Now their reputation is slipping away as consumers realize the brand now sells cheaply made junk, often made in slave labor conditions in the third world. This deception of consumers, by baiting them with good quality then switching to crap is modern business, but it still stinks and Wal-mart still promotes it more than anyone else.
Is that enough of a complaint for you?So, you do agree the market has locked in. And this is by choice of the market not because of MS (yes, MS may have twisted the arm in the deal, but the market still had a choice). Hence, it is the markets fault not MSs.
"Markets" don't make choices. Individuals within markets do. Players within a market who don't play by the rules (AKA laws). By your logic, just because the mafia held a gun to your head and forced you to buy a particular brand, you still had a choice. You could have stuck to your principals and died and then they would not have been able to dominate. It is all "the market's fault" because people weren't willing to die.
MS broke the law. The EU convicted them of it. What's the problem?
law requires a retailer to sell the machine with some O/S
Wherever did you get this idea from? It is not true in the US, or anywhere else I know of except China. MS is the one that keeps retailers from selling OS-less computers to big business.
Also, I don't think this case is about bundling of software with the PC or bundling of the browser with the OS. It is more about competitors using the government to bite into the market share of the leader.
You're wrong in both cases. This particular case is about tying, not bundling. It is about competitors demanding various governments enforce the law evenly and protect the free market. MS only exists because the US government enforced anti-trust law against IBM and prevented them from leveraging their monopoly to dominate the PC market. For them or you to complain because the UE is now enforcing the very same laws to stop them from ruining the market is just hypocritical nonsense.
In short, as the consumer has already committed to the choice, the provider is leveraging the committment. So, why doesn't the consumer make a different choice?
I think you're oversimplifying. The point of a monopoly is that companies have no other choice. Whether you agree with it or not, the courts have found that most consumers have no choice but to buy Windows for the desktop. They need it to interoperate with file formats, it is the only option available in pretty much all stores, it is the only option you can purchase in bulk from Dell for your company. If you are using desktop computers, there are many things locking you into Windows, including the availability of software you need for some given task.
Given that ruling, and reality, the best choice for many consumers of servers is to buy Windows server because of the fact that it is illegally tied to the desktop (with which they must interoperate). If that tying did not exist then the best choice would probably be a different server OS. Companies go with Windows server because it is the best solution for them, but that is only the case because of MS's illegal behavior.
Continuing on the cheese example, the situation is that the consumer knew it was crappy cheese but found it useful (this may not match with the analogy), hence, they became comfortable in using the crappy cheese.
Ahh, but here's why the free market has failed... the cheese doesn't have to be as good, it just has to be "good enough" that consumers won't throw it away and buy cheese from somewhere else. And even if they do, they've already paid for it. Right now some users throw away IE and install Firefox, paying the very small price of the download bandwidth and time and looking at ads for a second browser. Most users, however, find IE "good enough" and don't pay a second time (having already paid for IE as part of the cost of Windows). The result, 85% of users use an inferior browser. Thus consumers have greatly suffered.
Now, when the TV maker decided to change the flavor of the cheese, the baker who was buying TV from TV maker is complaining about the cheese! Well, the purpose of buying a TV was not to buy condiments to run a bakery. So, I think the complaint is groundless.
You miss the point. The baker was forced to buy the cheese in order to get a TV. He paid for it, even though it is sub-par and now, he can't afford to pay again. He especially can't afford to pay again because the only cheese sellers left are very small and expensive specialty cheeses, since all the normal grade cheese sellers were driven out of business.
Forcing consumers to pay twice in a destroyed market, is not a good solution, compared to just banning the monopolist from ruining the market in the first place.
A more primitive example is that Harry sells Pete all of the land that surrounds Harry's house...
At this point your analogy is already critically flawed. You're talking about individuals, not markets. Yesterday some kid turned 18 and gained all the rights of an adult. He rents and apartment and goes to buy a workstation and server to start his own small business and become a big success. Due to the decisions of those who came before him, he has to buy a Windows desktop in order to run the software he needs. That is no fault of his own. The decisions were made by others long before he had any ability to make decisions. His choice of server to go with it is now encumbered by the fact that it has to work with his desktop. The best solution for him as an individual might be to buy a Windows server, but that is only true because of the illegal tying. Thus he buys what would otherwise be the inferior machine. MS's market share increases and they move towards having a monopoly on the server space as well... and so on into other markets.
As for the anti-trust law, the consumers should have complained 10+ years ago about the bundling (including SMB) into Windows with increased cost. I am sure none did as it was
If consumers wanted Linux based PC, then there will be some vendor who will cater it -- supply and demand. The issue is that consumers don't make the Linux choice for various reasons.
Supply and demand does not apply when dealing with a monopoly. It is one of the aspects of the market that is bypassed. For example, I have personally signed off on machine orders for hundreds of towers, all of which would be running Linux or OpenBSD. That order included hundreds of Windows licenses, because the major OEMs have been coerced into shipping only machines with Windows on them. That is hundreds of licenses unused, but money paid to MS for them. In larger companies it is much worse. Almost all major corporations by a corporate license which they use on all their machines, each of which already shipped to them with a regular Windows license included. The market is not demanding machines with Windows licenses that will never be used, but that is what it is getting.
Do you want to know why? MS has a monopoly on the desktop. Basically, no major computer retailer can afford not to sell Windows machines. The market is locked in in a huge number of ways. Several courts have ruled this to be true now. This means all the computer retailers must deal with MS for their licenses, which make up an ever larger portion of each sale. Now given that this is a very price sensitive and commoditized market, the company that succeeds is the one with the lowest price. MS has variable pricing. You don't just buy licenses from MS, you negotiate to try to get the lowest price from them. One major requirement to not be paying twice as much as your competitors is, don't ship any machines without Windows on them. Thus, they use their monopoly to create an illegal barrier to entry, despite the demands of the market.
After reading a little about the case, my understanding was that the commission is asking Microsoft to publicize their protocol standards so that it encourages competition. As my understanding goes, competition is not based on knowing how your opponent does what he/she does; it is based on if you can do better than your opponent.
What you are missing is an understanding of anti-trust law. You're looking too much at the specifics and not enough at the law and the reason for the law. You should read up on anti-trust law if you want to truly understand the topic.
Here is a short and dirty explanation. In most jurisdiction it is legal to have a monopoly. Whether the monopoly comes about because you make an innovative new product, or the nature of the industry, or geography, or some combination does not matter. Having gained a monopoly, you have done nothing illegal (necessarily). Once you have a monopoly, however, the law restricts you from using that monopoly in such a way as to gain an unfair advantage in another market. My stock explanations almost always involve cheese for some reason. Say you gain a monopoly on televisions; all well and good and legal. Now you decide, I think "I want to open a business that sells cheese as well. Since everyone has to buy a television from me or go without (I have a monopoly) why don't I just raise the price on TV's $3500 and give away a free lifetime supply of my cheese with it." It's brilliant! The cheese need not be as good as the competition, nor do I have to be able to make it cheaper. People will buy it anyway, because they want TVs. And what of other cheese sellers? Most will go out of business.
What happened in the above situation? The new cheese seller did not innovate better or cheaper cheese. In fact they might have more expensive and less tasty cheese. Still they have taken over a market. What happened is they used bundling to to bypass all the benefits (innovation, lower prices, etc.) that are brought about by the free market. Worse, there is nothing stopping them from parleying each of their two monopolies into yet more monopolies. People realized this was a bad thing long ago, and simply passed laws preventing it, for the good of consumers and the state of the industries.
Moving right along, we come to tying. What if, instead of bundling the two products together (like cheese and televisions) we just tied it to another product. Say we made all the TVs detect anything in between them and the cable TV and stop working if they found something. And then we added a special (patented) connector to the TV that hooked up to a VCR. Since only our VCRs worked, we'd quickly own the VCR market as well as the TV market. Maybe that would be too unsubtle. What if, instead we used a secret, encrypted protocol for the remote control, so people who bought VCRs from other people had to have two remotes, while ours only needed one. And in addition, what if we added a special connector that plugged into our new telephones and turned the TV volume down when you picked up the phone (but only our brand of phones). Well, we wouldn't take over the markets right away, but we would have an advantage over our competitors. And maybe we could sell cheap and crappy phones and VCRs at higher prices, since we were the only ones that worked with the TV that easily. Is there anything wrong with that?
According to the law in almost every country, yes. Consumers should not have to pay more and use crappier phones and VCRs just to gain the benefits of having them interoperate with TVs.
MS is not tying TVs and VCRs. They are tying their desktop OS (monopoly) with their server OS (which is gaining market share and selling well). Their server OS is slower, multitasks more poorly, is more expensive, is less secure, is less stable, and lacks a number of very useful features other server products have. People still buy it though, because it is tied to the desktop OS monopoly by being the only server that can speak the secret AD and Exchange protocols.
Youre so representtive[sic] of the idiocy that plagues 49% of the population her[sic] in the US and a much higher percentage of the population in the EU.
If you want to go off on a rant about how some group of people are a bunch of idiots, perhaps you should try not to make quite so many elementary grammar and spelling errors. It makes your arguments rather comical. Further trying to group "49% of the population her[sic] in the US and a much higher percentage of the population in the EU" as having one set of beliefs as annotated in the rest of your post is just sad. People don't have homogeneous beliefs systems and your arguments smack of the classic fallacy, because you state A, I'll assume you also believe B, C, and D and since C is absurd you and all your statement must be wrong. Why aren't logic and rhetoric taught in schools anymore? The Greeks and Romans mocked people who tried to make these sort of illogical statements thousands of years ago. How long does it take for them to become mainstream again?
Now maybe you're just trolling here and I've fallen for it. If so, good job. If not though, please please please read a book on logic and rhetoric and perhaps one on critical thinking. Some of the points you make are more or less correct while others are infantile. Whether you are parroting the speaking points of others or honestly have such a fragmented world look, all you are doing here is embarrassing yourself.