Nobody believes you anymore, Microsoft. Until something concrete happens, this is all just hot air.

Let us watch what happens.

I find it really hard to believe that there are so many people out there that truely believe that Microsoft controls their company by a monopoly model.
yes they do have the largest market share, but that does not mean that they own the market. Microsoft works hard to bring new, better products to the marketplace everyday. This is what causes people to continue to purchase their products.
I have messed around with Linux. This si a wonderful product, but they cannot get their drivers down and in turn the product does not work on all laptops. When the day comes that they cross this hurdle you better believe that there will come a bigger cost to running the "good" linux programs. There already is. Google linux software and see how many of the "good" programs cost money. Many cost a lot/ comparable to MS. What does this say about their open source policies, but I bet they have the biggest flag protesting MS. This is to their benifit... think of all the money they can make... one day we will be bigger than MS... hehehe...
Look a Apple. You want a real monopoly model. Here is one. They control absolutely everything about everything that goes on with regards to Apple, right down to who bulds their hardware. Do you see any apple clone computers? Everything costs more here.
I am by no means a MS teammate. I think that they suck just as much as the next guy, but I do use their products. MS Office is great. (Most Mac people have this software too) They do have a lot of free software too. Their Virtual Web Developer ranks up there with Dreamweaver and is free. Of course that is because they are trying to push ASP.NET so there is always a reason. That is the same for every other software developer. Everyone wants to be rich so that they don't have to fight day by day, but can further pursue their dreams whatever those might be.
I cannot wait for MS's overall greed to cause their ultimate demise. I cannot wait for Linux to overtake the market. We are not there yet. If MS gives up their 'trade secrets' and opens their code, they might lose a couple of dollars but in the end they will hold that market share for a long long time. It would be a win win. Then it would be up to Apple to do the same and this world could really move forward one big step.
on another note... the only reason that the EU is against microsoft is because Europeans are tired of supporting the Americans. They want to bring in their own OS and control another piece of the pie.

Well that is my opinion.

Subcan

Ye gods, man, are you serious? This is a very thinly veiled attempt by Microsoft to enforce their own stadards yet again. They are basically making sure their asses are covered in light of the EU stuff, that's pretty much it. If they really wanted things to be open they would indeed make their products compatible with already existing standards. This is where they are monopolistic-they want conformity to THEIR model. It has nothing to do with controlling the whole widget a la Apple. With OS X apple has always supported EXISTING standards. This is an issue of interoperability, not hardware manufacturing; even though Macs ship with OS X, as an OS it already supports many open standards (including the majority of Microsoft's proprietary silliness), and additionally, it is the only HARDWARE platform that NATIVELY, out of the box natively mind you, can run Windows, OS X, or Linux.

Subcan- I almost think you're trolling, but.. I'm betting not. I think you're just a bit too optimistic about MS's capabilities. Go read this article from December 2006, apply the knowledge of today (what has failed since then- MS Live Search, XBox360 losing billions each year, the miserable failure of Vista, etc.) and I think you'll start to see how innovative they are as a company. http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB116490323676636989-HnHPKLzkyy9xKy2wnokbd2bc_bE_20071130.html?mod=blogs

The second poster (subcan) seems to be confusing the concept of proprietary software/hardware with monopoly. Microsoft and Apple are two companies that build and sell software and hardware that is engineered using proprietary solutions, which are their respective corporate secrets. Linux is built on open-source philosophy, where everyone can look at the blueprints of it.

Being a monopoly power in any industry or business is not against the law (at least not in the USA). Monopoly is a situation where certain market is dominated by only one company. Monopoly is defined by a lack of competition; it also happens when one single company commands market share that is significantly larger than what it would have attained, had there been conditions for a reasonable competition. While having monopoly status is not illegal, most common consequences are the abuse of the monopoly status in order to prevent competitors from entering the market space. This is exactly where MS differs from Apple. This is why Microsoft is deemed a monopoly, and an abusive one too (according to the US and EU courts), and why Apple, with all the proprietary technology they use, will never be deemed a monopoly.

One could argue that Apple is dangerously close to a monopoly status, and its consequent abuse, with its iTunes/iPod market dominance; however, Apple has never made any agreements with any of its partners that would prevent those partners from entering a relationship with Apple's competitors. In fact, Apple dominates with iTunes despite its partners; record labels are fighting hard to make better deals with Apple's competitors, in order to weaken Apple's dominance. Apple clearly does not have monopolistic power to prevent them from doing that.

While Linux (the operating system) is an open-source initiative, the team that develops it doesn't control the third-party software developed for it. In the free market, any enterpreneur can choose to develop for any platform and charge as much money as they think their work is worth. Good pieces of software have value and will always cost money, regardless of platform they were written for. This has nothing to do with monopoly, open source or proprietary architectures.

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subcan wrote:
I find it really hard to believe that there are so many people out there that truely believe that Microsoft controls their company by a monopoly model.
yes they do have the largest market share, but that does not mean that they own the market. Microsoft works hard to bring new, better products to the marketplace everyday. This is what causes people to continue to purchase their products.

Maybe "monopoly" is not quite correct the word to describe what is MicroSoft, but have they not been found guilty of monopolistic practices?

People continue to buy MicroSoft products for a number of reasons, inertia being one of them and perhaps the Stockholm Syndrome is another.

As to them working daily to bring better products to the marketplace. Well they have no choice, better is the only direction to go when you are starting from worse.

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subcan wrote:
I find it really hard to believe that there are so many people out there that truely believe that Microsoft controls their company by a monopoly model.

It really isn't that hard to beleive. The US government and the European Union both have found Microsoft guilty of illegaly monopoly behaviour. By the way, it is not illegal to be a monopoly. It is how you compete with others once you achieve that status that counts. Microsoft is unquestionably a monopoly in the areas of operating systems and its Office Suite (that is not an opinion, but the view of the US and European governments). In my view, it maintains it dominance with its Office Suite by having proprietary document formats. Companies have to reverse engineer Office document formats to gain cross application compatibility. This prevents competitors from being able to have full compatibility with Word.

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yes they do have the largest market share, but that does not mean that they own the market. Microsoft works hard to bring new, better products to the marketplace everyday. This is what causes people to continue to purchase their products.

That seems to be a optimistic view in which disregards Microsoft's history. Most people that I know who use Windows and Office use it because it is what ever one else they know use. In turn, those people use it because that is what is used at work. They also use it because when they go to a store that is what they see filling up the computer isles. There is also more flexibility in terms of cost. I really doubt most people go out and compare alternatives and make an informed choice.

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I have messed around with Linux. This si a wonderful product, but they cannot get their drivers down and in turn the product does not work on all laptops. When the day comes that they cross this hurdle you better believe that there will come a bigger cost to running the "good" linux programs. There already is. Google linux software and see how many of the "good" programs cost money. Many cost a lot/ comparable to MS. What does this say about their open source policies, but I bet they have the biggest flag protesting MS. This is to their benifit... think of all the money they can make... one day we will be bigger than MS... hehehe...

Sure, they want to compete with Microsoft. It, however, is hard to compete even if your product is better if you can't offer people a way to take all their documents with them over to a new platform. I have thousands of documents in Microsoft's various Office formats. I can't switch to another platform if I can't take my documents with me. Many competing products work great, however, document compatibility is not reliable enough for business use. People give Apple such a hard time about Fair-play (something the labels force Apple to use), however, Microsoft's actions are much more egregious because it doesn't allow me to free my documents and take them with me to a new software platform.

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Look a Apple. You want a real monopoly model. Here is one. They control absolutely everything about everything that goes on with regards to Apple, right down to who bulds their hardware. Do you see any apple clone computers? Everything costs more here.

I do not think you understand Apple's business model. Apple is not competing with Microsoft directly. It is a hardware company. It is competing with companies like Dell. It, however, uses software to differentiate its hardware. Accordingly, it wouldn't make much sense to license its OS to other companies because it makes very little money off software. It wants to sell hardware. Apple clearly is not a monopoly in the computer hardware market because Dell and HP are much bigger companies. Consumers clearly have a choice in which computers to use. Moreover, everything does not cost more in Apple land. There are three general computer markets: low end, middle of the road, and high end. Apple doesn't compete in the low end market. The Mac Pro is cheaper then comparable alternatives from companies like Dell. The Mac Book Pro and Mac Books are also very cost competitive in the middle of the road and high end markets they compete in.

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I am by no means a MS teammate. I think that they suck just as much as the next guy, but I do use their products. MS Office is great. (Most Mac people have this software too) They do have a lot of free software too. Their Virtual Web Developer ranks up there with Dreamweaver and is free. Of course that is because they are trying to push ASP.NET so there is always a reason. That is the same for every other software developer. Everyone wants to be rich so that they don't have to fight day by day, but can further pursue their dreams whatever those might be.

Microsoft Office great? I use it and do not mind it. I even think Microsoft did a good job updating Office 2008. However, since Microsoft has a lock on the productivity suite market, I doubt many companies are pouring big dollars into coming out with something much better. Why bother? Most people like me couldn't switch even if we wanted to. I work in the business world, and I need compatibility with other business people. They all use Office. However, you do touch on how Microsoft has used its monopoly power illegally. Most companies cannot afford to give away free things. Microsoft can though because it has guaranteed money coming from other markets where it holds a monopoly. So Microsoft can act in anticompetitive manner by using its money gained from its monopoly to give away a product that a competitor is selling. Most competitors cannot compete with free.

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on another note... the only reason that the EU is against microsoft is because Europeans are tired of supporting the Americans. They want to bring in their own OS and control another piece of the pie.

Not really. European governments are much less beholden to lobbyists then here in the US. They often have a much more common sense point of view (well a lot of the time anyway). They have the same grievance I do. They want to be able to use their documents in any software package they please. They don't want a company like Microsoft to be able to hold them hostage by controlling the document format and being able to charge whatever it pleases. it essentially is the same argument levied against Apple's Fairplay.