From: rmah@panix.com (Robert Mah)
Subject: Re: DISMANTLE MICROSOFT (Was Re: Industry market shares)
Keywords: Microsoft
Organization: PANIX Public Access Unix, NYC
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 00:15:51 GMT

In <C1F3Kx.267@phage.cshl.org> boutell@isis.cshl.org (Tom Boutell) writes:

[stuff deleted]

 > Of course, never mind that for a company without competition to worry about,
 > they have a strange tendency to keep producing new and better products.
 > ...
 > But as it is, they're quite competitive and they're consistently improving
 > their products. Some of us have our beefs with their compilers, but
 > it's hard to deny that Excel is the most powerful spreadsheet yet built.

MS products are not, IMO, the paragon of quality.  For example, did you 
know that MS-Excel does not accept DDE request's if it's in "input mode"?  
We had to rework an entire system because of this "anomoly".  Many other 
examples of designlaws exist.

 > Never mind, more importantly, that these figures utterly ignore the
 > issue of international competition. No, there isn't much international
 > competition for the U.S. software giants yet. There wasn't much for
 > the U.S. automakers at one point either. 
 > ...
 > Microsoft, as the spearhead of that market, is a significant national
 > asset, and if we do break it up we'd best

Please don't make the mistake that what's good for "American" corporations
is good for the American people.  The only reason MS has the vast majority
of it's employees here is that the market is here and the people with the
needed skills are hear.  If that changes, they move.  Just as happened with
the big 3 carmakers.  

Way back, the chairman of GM made the statement that "What's good for GM
is good for America".  When he said that, it was actually sort of true. 
There was an implicit compact between the government, the business com-
munity and labor unions.  But the world has changed.  It doesn't really
matter today which _individual_ companies do well.

 > Software is an unusual market: it's one in which the U.S. holds both a 
 > production and a technological lead. 

That does not make software an "unusual" market.  The US holds the lead in
a great many industries.  Aerospace, medical equipment, construction, 
advertising, entertainment, legal services, etc., etc.  In fact the retail
software business is consolidating, and follow the pattern that was 
established in many other industries such as auto and aircraft manufacturing.

Sorry to ramble on for so long.  But my basic point is that MS is neither 
that important or powerful.  Maybe it wouldn't be fair or right to break
up MS, but it probably wouldn't have that much impact.  DOS will still be
sold. So will Windows. So will Excel, Word, etc.  Development on those and
other new products will still go on.

Note that the world did not end when Ma Bell was split up.  Many people
loudly proclaimed that our telecom system would collapse in anarchy.  
In general, people will get done what needs to get done.

The split of MS will only _really_ affect a few people at the top of MS,
it's shareholders (they'd probably lose some money), the people who bought
shorted MS stock (they'd make a bunch of money) and the media (they'd make
some more $$ hyping up the story).  Most of MS's employees won't see any
change, it's customers MAY see a new name on their products, etc.  Not a
real big deal.

Cheers,
Rob
-- 
[----------------------------------------------------------------------]
[ Robert S. Mah   | Voice: 212-947-6507   | "Every day an adventure,   ]
[ One Step Beyond | EMail: rmah@panix.com |  every moment a challenge" ]
[----------------------------------------------------------------------]