I hear often that when something new appears that "competition is good". The primary reasons competition is seen as good, are: it drives down prices; it gives consumers more choice; it pushes technology forward, quicker. Competition is not good because: competition is why consumers have to choose between HD-DVD and BluRay; competition is why DRM exists; and more. In this article, each of the supposed benefits of competition will be looked at in more detail.
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Member since:2006-07-30
Yep, that's what I thought, too.
To me it seems there are two kinds of competition:
competition of products and competition of formats/standards.
The first is obviously good as we can see by the IE example.
If somebody creates a competing product, say, a nicer web browser or DVD player, etc, I cannot see the harm.
It is only when different companies try to dominate the market by pushing their own, incompatible and often closed "standards" that competition becomes harmful.
This is what has happened with IE-only sites or Documents in some closed formats:
You are locked into using one application because the data is not stored in an open format or (in the case of IE-only sites) uses behavior of IE that is not part of an open standard. Another example are DVD or video formats.
I think a good comparison (don't be afraid, no cars ahead ;-)) are railways:
You can have competing companies, using different kinds of trains and having different schedules and prices but the basic, underlying infrastructure has to be standardized. It does not make sense for every company to use a different, incompatible railway type.
Formats/standards/infrastructure is, imo, one of the few areas where competition and free market lead to suboptimal results.
The reason is that competition works best on a level playing field. By allowing competition on data formats and standards you basically allow the players to change the playing field and the outcome will very likely be tilted in favor of whoever puts most money in pushing his own "standard".
Member since:2005-11-10
It's a cycle. You get competition, and one wins, then you get stagnation, and then it starts over again. Nobody really wins in this cycle. It feels like good is happening, but that's just the cycle of movement.
If there was no competition, Microsoft would have supported the standards in IE because they wanted too. There wouldn't be a reason to exclude standards for anti-competitive actions et al.
Member since:2005-09-28
I don't agree with your point, Kroc. In the PC hardware market, there are lots of competing companies. You predict that stagnation is the inevitable consequence of competition. Yet, the hardware market features a steady pace of innovation and new development.
As someone else pointed out, MS went years without developing IE. They kept improving their product when they had competition and resumed improvements when substantial competition reemerged.
If it weren't for desktop Linux and the Mac, I'm sure that we would still be running Windows 95, at best.
Who knows how far things would have developed in terms of operating systems and software if MS had been kept under control and forced to operate within the law?
You seem to repeatedly state a principle that competition leads inevitably to stagnation but there are many perfectly healthy technology markets in which competition is fierce and development is healthy. PC hardware and mobile phones would be two obvious examples.
What motive would a single producer of VHS videos and cassettes have to develop a successor if it were not for competition? Same argument goes for a single producer of 286 PCs.
Member since:2005-07-06
Official Apple statement on PRISM and privacy: "Regardless of the circumstances, our Legal team conducts an evaluation of each request and, only if appropriate, we retrieve and deliver the narrowest possible set of information to the authorities. In fact, from time to time when we see inconsistencies or inaccuracies in a request, we will refuse to fulfill it." This is basically Apple re-publishing their earlier statement in a more official manner. You either believe it, or you don't.
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
"Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it's forced to give the government. The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment's guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic." Draining the ditch after the cow has drowned in it."I can't find one person who has been using the Nexus 7 for an extended period of time, and hasn't seen a massive downgrade in performance. Just what kind of downgrade are we talking here? I cannot pick up my Nexus 7 without experiencing problems like a lag of ten seconds, or more, just to rotate the display; touches refusing to acknowledged; stuttering notification panel actions; and unresponsive apps." Fully and utterly agreed. My Nexus 7 was blazing-fast and awesome for a few months, and at some point, it just started sucking. Just like that. I've tried loads of ROMs, and nothing helps.A new release of the hobby operating system MenuetOS! The release notes are a bit non-descript, but you'll have to take what you can get: "updates and improvements (picview, httpc, ehci, ...)"."The Internet is one of the most transformative technologies of our lifetimes. But for 2 out of every 3 people on earth, a fast, affordable Internet connection is still out of reach. And this is far from being a solved problem. There are many terrestrial challenges to Internet connectivity - jungles, archipelagos, mountains. There are also major cost challenges. Right now, for example, in most of the countries in the southern hemisphere, the cost of an Internet connection is more than a month's income. Solving these problems isn't simply a question of time: it requires looking at the problem of access from new angles. So today we're unveiling our latest moonshot from Google[x]: balloon-powered Internet access." Insane.
"MineAssemble is a tiny bootable Minecraft clone written partly in x86 assembly. I made it first and foremost because a university assignment required me to implement a game in assembly for a computer systems course. Because I had never implemented anything more complex than a 'Hello World' bootloader before, I decided I wanted to learn about writing my own kernel code at the same time. Note that the goal of this project was not to write highly efficient hand-optimized assembly code, but rather to have fun and write code that balances readability and speed. This is primarily accomplished by proper commenting and consistent code structuring." Just cool.
Jon Rubinstein, former CEO of Palm: "Well, I'm not sure I would have sold the company to HP. That's for sure. Talk about a waste. Not that I had any choice because when you sell a company you don't get to decide that. Obviously, the board and shareholders decide that. If we had known they were just going to shut it down and never really give it a chance to flourish, what would have been the point of selling the company? I think the deal we had with Verizon really hurt us, but who knew that at the time? These things are all hindsight.""And so it is with Dell's Alienware X51 R2, a small form factor gaming PC in console digs. It's shaped similar to Microsoft's Xbox 360 Slim, and though it's slightly larger than either a 360 or PlayStation 3, the X51 R2 would be right at home in a living room setting nestled next to a large screen TV. Indeed, it's adept at running Steam's Big Picture mode, and if your primary objective is to play games in the living room, go ahead and consider the X51 R2 a hybrid game console." This is obviously not the only machine like this - still, these are very valid console alternatives even for those that don't like being hunched over with a cramped WASD-claw. Also, PC gamers among us: could you get away with the $699 model for gaming?
From Bloomberg: "Microsoft, the world's largest software company, provides intelligence agencies with information about bugs in its popular software before it publicly releases a fix, according to two people familiar with the process. That information can be used to protect government computers and to access the computers of terrorists or military foes." The lid has officially been blown off.
Member since:
2006-03-08
Quote: "When the opponent is beaten, there is no need to continue with any of the competitive actions, such as lowering prices or improving technology. Competition ultimately ends with stagnation and vendor lock in."
Isn't that an argument for competition? As soon as competition stops the winning product stagnates? Look at Internet Explorer 6. It stagnated until firefox hit the big scene. I think that's an argument for competition, not against it.