Linked by Kroc on Thu 30th Aug 2007 13:03 UTC
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: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.
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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.