Rich People Don't Create Jobs...

No, it includes recessions.

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There were 1000 other Bill Gates. He just drove them out of business with his Windows monopoly. Know many folks who use Word Perfect or Lotus 1-2-3 these days? Me neither.

 

So, Microsoft has done better than them all by delivering a consistently great product. The horrors!

 

When you get to develop your competing product for the next release of the operating system you monopolize, its not because you have a better product.

 

Millions of people beg to differ, as they seem to prefer Word over, say, WordPerfect and Google Docs. Wo what is immoral about that?

 

... someone prefers Word?






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One of the top ten occupations of the 1% is Un-Employed.

But bias Right Wing media knows how to spin their own flaws on the opposing party. It's called, "reflecting".

 

It isn't jealousy but reality that people address. I'm not sure exactly how much Bill Gates annual income is but based upon what I've found it was $11.5 billion in 2013. A 1000 more Bill Gates would have $11.5 trillion in annual income from a nation where the workers (not investors) are only producing about $16 trillion in gross GDP leaving less than $4.5 trillion for all of the workers to live on. That would result in the median income dropping by 40% from $50,000 today to less $30,000.

The "pie" doesn't magically grow bigger based upon the extremely high incomes of the wealthy. The "pie" stays the same while the wealthy simply take a bigger slice of it.

An even greater problem would occur. With only $30,000 in median income the GDP would drop dramatically because consumer demand would also decrease by 40% and those 1000 Bill Gates would actually have more income than the entire GDP leaving people with zero dollars of income as the economy collapsed.

 

... and then force customers to purchase the new product by stopping support for past products like Microsoft has done with Windows XP.

 

Many would argue that Windows 95 is better than Windows 10.

 

MIllions of people preferred Word because Microsoft had the monopoly on the operating system, and thus had the ability to optimize their word processior to be ready with the release of the new and first really functional Windows.

Competitors like Word Perfect and Quattro Pro and 123 didn't have that access and it took several months for them to refine their products. But by then it was all over.

Millions of others were forced to change because their business or the standard did.

 

I use Open Office as opposed to Microsoft and guess what, it's FREE software.

 

Microsoft did not have a monopoly in operating systems. Competitors included Unix, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, Mac OS, BeOS, and Next.

 

What was their market share of PCs at the time? 95%?

 

Not 100%. People had several alternatives. Some of them, such as linux, were even free.

 

Close enough to wipe out the competitors and capture domination of the related markets by leveraging their monopoly.

 

Apparently not, as they could not wipe them out. They all still exist as possible alternatives to the consumer.

 

Check the Word Perfect market share lately? How about Quattro Pro?

 

Are your questions supposed to show that Microsoft has a monopoly in operating systems? As I have already told you there are several alternative operating systems currently available to consumers. Your contention that Microsoft has a monopoly has been falsified.

 

Nonsense. You don't need 100% market power to have monopoly power. Microsoft had close to 100% of the installed base on PCs, more than enough monopoly market power to tie in its word processing and spreadsheet software, which it did very successfully.

 

Monopoly power? Power to do what?

Microsoft has no monopoly in either word processing or spreadsheets. They are available in both Linux, Mac, and Google.

Microsoft has no power to prevent people from using alternate operating systems that provide similar applications.

 

Which came first, the "great product", or the monopoly ?

Most would say it was the monopoly that "created" the great product. Microsoft did something early on that gave them the monopoly that they have today. Once they had a large market share (nowhere near monopoly status), they contractually obligated manufacturers who pre-loaded their software on any PC's they manufactured to license that same software on ALL the PC's they manufactured whether they loaded it or not. Michael Dell talks about this in one of his early books.

That strategy forced manufacturers to load Windows on all PC's to be competitive. Once they did this, Microsoft stepped in with "trial" versions of MS Office to be loaded those same PC's. Basically this got everyone using their product because it was "already there". The ancillary result was that for the manufacturer to load the competitor's product drove up the cost of the PC to the point that buyers just used what was on it.

Microsofts downfall is that they were a little late and under powered for the "Cloud" revolution. Google docs for sharing is great. Google made themselves a one stop shop for much more than just Office productivity programs, and Microsoft is trying to play catch up. AWS and Google are eating MS's lunch for that one stop cloud shop.

 

Or the consumer could have bought a Mac. Or he could have bought a PC with Windows preloaded and just install a free OS like Linux. The consumer always had a choice.

And now they have even more choices.

 

If they need the features that Word has. Let's consider for a moment if Microsoft really has a monopoly on word processing, and what that would mean. Would they continue to upgrade it with significantly useful new features? Do you know that Word and Excel documents can be saved as XML files so that they can be automated using a number of different programming languages? There are huge benefits for programmers trying to create reporting systems. Why would they do this, if they have a monopoly and can be lazy about it? Might be that Google Docs is right on top of them, and it's free. Corel WordPerfect is a relatively inexpensive alternative. And, as much as Microsoft upgrades their software on a regular basis, I still have clients happily using Office 2000 and the converters let them read newer documents without many issues. I even have custom software written for Windows 98 and XP that runs better and faster on Windows 7, and it's easier to isolate that old software from newer software that use to create conflicts. Why would Microsoft want that when, as a greedy monopoly, they could make it harder and more expensive to do things?

 

People get use to a certain thing and resist change. I'm sure that many will argue that big old steel death traps were better than modern cars, even though modern cars are generally much safer and handle like the best race cars from the 90's.

I still dislike the Office ribbons (menus) and haven't found it to be getting any better, and I use a lot of keyboard commands to get around it. I have a friend who still uses WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS. Keeping that going has been a challenge, and he really doesn't want to change.

 

Microsoft releases versions of their upcoming operating systems months before the public release. Technet subscribers get access to these so they can prepare and optimize their software for the new systems. They do this for pretty much all of their advanced software.

Evidence, please. Windows 10 Beta was available last October. http://www.ibtimes.com/microsoft-of...-download-where-get-technical-preview-1697776

How do you think IT people plan rollouts months in advance?