Re: Boycott Microsoft Website

From: Rodger Coglan <rodger-@-oup-usa.org>

Date: Tue, 25 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000

Michael David McGrath wrote:
>
> In article <01bc36f8$cbcf96e0$620520ce@technodrome>,
> Dennis Moran <coolio@coolio9.com> wrote:
> >That's wrong. If you considered operating systems as a whole, they only own
> >a majority of the market, maybe 70% or so. MacOS takes at least 10%, Linux
> >and OS/2 each have something like 5% market share, and the other various
> >OSes have the rest.
> >
> >A monopoly has absolutely *no* competition, while Microsoft does.
>
>      You pay far too much attention to the strict, legal definition.
> Microsoft has no competition on a relative scale.  No one makes software
> for other operating systems (when I say "no one", I'm talking vast
> majority -- signifigant enough such that the rest of the field makes
> no difference.  Almost every statement is "gray" in such a way -- picking
> on definitions is the fools argument, IMHO), and hence, the other OS'es
> must survive on second-hand goodies from the *single* giant.

A good comparison would be the old AT&T; before it was broken up into
the Baby Bells, it was considered a monopoly.  It was considered a
monopoly even though in the U.S. there were approximately 2100 different
telephone companies in existance, 'competing' with AT&T.  They were,
without exception, in marginal markets like Outlook, Medicine Lake, Pine
Creek, Sappington, etc in Montana.  Every state has (had?) its small,
local, rural, phone company the  biggest of which was probably General
Telephone.  Even after the baby bells were brought into existence, there
was no real competition. The correlations with MS are pretty obvious --
the 2 main competing OS for pcs are os/2 and whatever Norton calls his
os.  I don't know where MacOS falls, but (whine!!) Intuition/CLI on the
Amiga is probably a sad 10th place

Rodger

References

Boycott Microsoft Website
Jack Teh <jteh@usthk.ust.hk>
Thu, 20 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Boycott Microsoft Website
Chris Lomont <clomont@omni.cc.purdue.edu>
Thu, 20 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Boycott Microsoft Website
mcgrath@epx.cis.umn.edu (Michael David McGrath)
Sat, 22 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Boycott Microsoft Website
"Dennis Moran" <coolio@coolio9.com>
Sat, 22 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Boycott Microsoft Website
mcgrath@epx.cis.umn.edu (Michael David McGrath)
Sun, 23 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000

Referenced By

Boycott Microsoft Website
Jack Teh <jteh@usthk.ust.hk>
Thu, 20 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Boycott Microsoft Website
Chris Lomont <clomont@omni.cc.purdue.edu>
Thu, 20 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Boycott Microsoft Website
mcgrath@epx.cis.umn.edu (Michael David McGrath)
Sat, 22 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Boycott Microsoft Website
"Dennis Moran" <coolio@coolio9.com>
Sat, 22 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000
Re: Boycott Microsoft Website
mcgrath@epx.cis.umn.edu (Michael David McGrath)
Sun, 23 Mar 1997 00:00:00 +0000