Microsoft Hatred FAQ

[Tim Roberts]

"Jeroen Wenting" <jwenting at hornet dot demon dot nl> wrote:
>
>Microsoft isn't evil, they're not a monopoly either.
>If they were a monopoly they'd have 100% of the market and there'd be no 
>other software manufacturers at all.

This is wrong.  The dictionary definition of a monopoly is when a
manufacturer has all or nearly all of a market.  Microsoft DOES have a
monopoly on PC operating systems.

That, in itself, is not necessarily illegal.  However, Microsoft then USED
that monopoly power to stifle their competition, and that IS illegal.

Part of their behavior really escape me.  The whole thing about browser
wars confuses me.  Web browsers represent a zero billion dollar a year
market.  Why would you risk anything to own it?

>Without Microsoft 90% of us would never have seen a computer more powerful 
>than a ZX-81 and 90% of the rest of us would never have used only dumb 
>mainframe terminals.

Utter hogwash.  Computer hardware would still have followed the path it
did.  I suspect we'd all be using WordPerfect or AbiWord on some kind of
Unix clone, and I also suspect application integration wouldn't be as
commonplace as it now is, but it's silly to credit Microsoft with the
ubiquity of powerful computers.
-- 
- Tim Roberts, timr at probo.com
  Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.