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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"So maybe we could say that there are sane competitions and bad competitions? Any comments about this? "
Agree completely. The car is the perfect reason to point out good competition. Japanese and European cars forced features into the American public that American manufacturers were forced to match if they wanted to keep business. If you got fed up with your car, the barrier to move to another car was low. Therefore, the consumer won.
Competition like BluRay vs HD DVD can hurt the consumer. The productions are fairly close to equivalent, at least to the point where the average consumer isn't going to notice. But choosing a format and investing in it could hurt the consumer 5 years down the road. There's a huge barrier to change in this technology once you've entered. It leads to people either getting burned years down the line when standards have been set, or a slow adoption rate (leading to consumers using dated technology).
There are times when competition is absolutely necessary. There are also times when standards are necessary to protect the consumer. I don't think these two need to be mutually exclusive.