Microsoft Hatred FAQ

[Eike Preuss]

David Schwartz wrote:
> "Eike Preuss" <usenet at eikepreuss.de> wrote in message 
> news:3s8t89FmdnriU1 at individual.net...
> 
> 
>>>    Right, except that's utterly absurd. If every vendor takes their tiny
>>>cut of the 95%, a huge cut of the 5% is starting to look *REALLY* good.
> 
> 
>>Sure, that would be true if the market would be / would have been really
>>global. In practice if you have a shop you have a limited 'region of
>>influence'. Optimally you are the only shop in this region that sells
>>the stuff, or perhaps there are a few shops that compete with you. Lets
>>say in your region are two shops competing with you, and you must decide
>>wether to sell product A (95%) or B (5%), but you may not sell both.
>>Decision 1: Sell A, share the 95% of the local market with two -> about
>>32% of the local market for all of you, if all perform equally good
>>Decision 2: Sell B -> you get the 5% of the market, the others 47% each
>>
>>This calculation is probably still a very bad approximation of the
>>truth, but things are definitely not as easy as you state them.
> 
> 
>     It depends upon how different the products are and how easy it is to 
> shop out of your local market. If the products are equally good and 
> reasonably interchangeable and it's hard to shop out of your local market, 
> then you're right. The more the smaller product is better than the larger 
> product, the less interchangeable they are, and the easier it is to shop out 
> of your local market, the more wrong you are.
> 
>     How often do you hear, "I'd like to use Linux, but I just can't get 
> ahold of it"?
> 
>     And how many people do you hear saying, "I'd like to use Linux, but I'm 
> not willing to shell out the bucks to buy it since I already bought Windows 
> with my computer".
> 
>     On the other hand, where you might be right is in the possibility that 
> Microsoft's lock on the market prevented other companies from making 
> operating systems at all. That is, that had Microsoft used different 
> policies, other companies would have introduced operating systems to compete 
> with Microsoft, and we'd all have better operating systems for it. If 
> Microsoft's conduct was legal, this argument establishes that the conduct 
> was necessary.
> 
>     DS
> 
> 

Yes, as I said: It is much more complicated than your beautiful argument
'well, then, taking a huge portion of 5% would be much more preferable
anyway' suggests.