Linked by John O'Sullivan on Tue 7th Oct 2003 18:42 UTC
Microsoft has a little liability problem called Windows. Many are no doubt aware of a would-be class-action lawsuit launched last week in California. The suit targets Microsoft over security problems. The plaintiff is a woman who had her identity stolen. Details are
here. (NYTimes, free registration required)
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Why do people keep repeating this tired old nonsense? Do they even know what a monopoly is? A company has a monopoly when it has the *only* available product or service in a market segment - when there are no alternatives. A company can have 100% marketshare and yet still not be a monopoly. "90% marketshare" does not mean "monopoly". It just means that MS are better able to meet the needs of their customers than the competitors - but those competitors are still there and are still alternatives, and therefore, MS has no monpoly hold.
Monopolies in general are only really a difficulty when they are legally enforced monopolies. Britain used to have this problem with the steel industry, the phone industry, and so on, because they were nationalised and so consumers had to put up with unbelievably shitty service with no legal competitors around. Now there is British Telecom, which must have 90% of the marketshare, and yet is *far* better than the old state monopoly, being cheaper, faster, and so on. No more waiting for a month for the Post office to enable your phone, thank God.
This singular fact - that MS is not a monopoly - is the reason that they keep trying to improve their products. Admittedly, their improvements may not please the geeks on this site, but those improvements, over time, are not aimed at the people who frequent this site. Their improvements are designed to serve the needs of the *customer*, they are not designed to be purely technical decisions - as many here would doubtless wish them to be. It is this positioning of their products and their ability to serve the needs of those customers that has built up MS's success over the years, and of course, their marketshare. People buy MS because they want to and because they percieve MS as providing the best solution for their particular needs. In a monopoly, they would buy MS because they *have* to, because there is no alternative, but for MS, this is not the case.
Another, related reason that MS is not a monopoly is that it has a massive installed base to compete with. Every time MS releases a product, it has to be better (as far as the consumers are concerned) than the previous, otherwise it will not sell. Every product that MS has competes with all the products that have went before.
All told, this "MS is a monopoly" talk is the utmost drivel and balderdash and anybody peddling it should feel ashamed of being either a fool or a demagogue.
Thank you.