Is Microsoft a monopoly?

[Brickell]

Is Microsoft a monopoly?

I've taken both sides of the issue lately, and am looking to see what others think.

[monsoon]

No. There are plenty of alternatives to Microsoft's products. Most of them are better too. The vast majority of the Internet is operated on Unix & Linux servers. Corporations keep much of their corporate data on the big iron machines as they consider Microsoft's products simply too unreliable to risk their businesses on a hodgepodge OS from MS.

Only on the desktop does Micorsoft dominate and that is only because people won't consider the alternatives.

[Neo]

I'd say no, we make Microsoft a monopoly, not them. We DO have a choice in what we use so it's our fault for whatever we've made Microsoft. There are good alternatives out there.

[Brickell]

Well that's kind of my contention. They are not a "by the book" monopoly, however, their huge market share in the OS world allows them to act as such in many cases. IE is the perfect example. They bundled it with the OS and then required it for many applications.

[Cotuit]

Buy a Mac.

There's no M$ apps on my Mac. Many European governments are moving over to Linux for their computing needs, it looks like Linux is the OS of the new Iraq even.

Rumours abound about Google working on a Google branded version of Firefox and even of them developing an online OS, so that the apps that Microsoft provides through windows would be largely found through Google online, Yahoo would be sure to follow.

Microsoft seems so slow to adapt in so many areas, it's shocking that they have the market share they do. There's been a steady curve of new people buying computers and coming online, those people are quite naive and companies like Microsoft and AOL can get crap by them. That curve is slowing and people are becoming more and more savy, you can see it in the slow downfall of AOL. Microsoft is going to have to catch up, or face AOLs fate.

[Aessotariq]

I've always disliked the predatory licensing practices that MS uses on computer suppliers. Companies that sell PCs with the option of other operating system other than Windows would pay a substantially higher fee for copies of Windows licenses or be threatened with losing the ability to purchase them. Same with competing MS products, such as any competitor to MSOffice.

I would call MS a great marketer of deception as well as monopolistic. There have been products superior to Windows in performance, stability, and technology, that have come and gone, yet Microsoft was able to shut them down like a Wal-Mart and continue to deliver an inferior product and market it as new and state of the start. They don't innovate, they imitate. Plus MS is the same group of people who gave us ActiveX, and with it, the ability for companies to easily exploit our PCs with annoying spyware and ad-ware.

Since MS has a steady revenue stream from its other products, it was able to successfully kill Netscape by making IE free and creating a patchwork of HTML rendering engines and calling it "desktop integration".

So far the only product that has been able to compete and has held its own has been Linux. It helps that it had and continues to have a grassroots following, as well as gained respect in the server community. MS has balked at it because it's free and open source so therefore is must be insecure, but the fact that so many servers still continue to use time-tested UNIX-based platforms speaks volumes. It's even more profound that Apple rewrote the MacOS with a UNIX-based kernel.

With the desktop market, Linux isn't mature enough for the end user but it's getting there. I'd like to see more standardization among the different desktop development projects so that the protocols are interchangeable, such as if a product is being installed by a user running KDE, if that person decides to switch over to GNOME, that user's settings migrate as well. I also don't believe the general computer-using public is literate enough to understand operating systems and the choices available. And even if they knew the choices, they would likely remain status quo or use what the neighbor is using or whatever's used at work. Linux has a great variety of high-quality open-source software, like GIMP and others, but the general public doesn't know about them. The tipping point will be when more commercial software with name recognition continue to appear on retail store shelves in greater numbers.

Another thing is that Linux has become a buzzword, which is good, so it's out there in the media. I especially liked the ad campaign that IBM put with the little boy continuously learning and absorbing information. That was creative.

I would hate to see a world even more dominated by MS, and hopefully Linux can prove itself a formidable competitor in the desktop arena. My bank has been switching over to Windows-based touch-screen ATMs, and one thing I will say is that they are slower than molasses. On a traditional NCR terminal or equivalent, I can enter my PIN and perform transactions without missing a beat. With these new terminals, each screen takes forever to refresh. I saw an ATM crash and reboot for the first time in my life ever, and it was loading a Windows OS.

[PghUSA]

Buy a Mac. 

Doesn't Bill Gates own some of Mac nowadays? I thought Gates bailed out Mac? If this is correct (and please correct me if I'm wrong) isn't Mac just a subsidary of Gates business interests nowadays? I have heard that there is Gates money in Mac, say it ain't so please!)

Microsoft seems so slow to adapt in so many areas, it's shocking that they have the market share they do. There's been a steady curve of new people buying computers and coming online, those people are quite naive and companies like Microsoft and AOL can get crap by them. That curve is slowing and people are becoming more and more savy, you can see it in the slow downfall of AOL. Microsoft is going to have to catch up, or face AOLs fate.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

They can afford to be slow to adapt, think about the nature of every true monopoly if the buggy whip makers were organized, we would all still own horses. Microsoft can buy my patent for a whole new way to compute and decide the margins don't add up and supress it for eternity if they want. Thats what I don't like about Gates.

[Aessotariq]

Back in the late 90s, Microsoft purchased some Apple stock as a capital infusion, minus voting rights. Apple was not doing very well at the time. In return, MS developed Mac versions of Office, IE, and some other products and kept them on par with the equivalent Windows counterpart. I can't remember if they still hold that stock or not.

[StevenRocks]

Microsoft is a monopoly of sorts, but it's a good monopoly. The synergies between its products have been helpful to me and even if some of them suck, it's still a good company with good ideas overall.