Bill G is a convicted monopolist. Microsoft had so much influence over whitehouse, that they got away without microsoft being split.
they have buried so many small companies, or arm twisted them into submission. even now they are a total monopoly, and have twisted the ISO process to forcefully ratify their ooxml format, which they have so deceitfully named it to be confused with open office.
Bill gates might have the money and even has the largest corpus for charity- but its kinda ill begotten. he could instead reduce the price of software and come out clean in software standards. instead even now they are actively seeking to make windows and microsoft word the default software world over. these are their cash cows - a copy of vista and word premium costs well over the price of an average laptop!
i hate and despise this wolf in his recent sheep's clothing (as a philanthropist)
RE:convicted monopolist
by Smaran Mandala on Jun 23, 2008 11:49 PM Permalink
That's called business my friend. not arm-twisting or anything. Even Mittal bought their nearest competotor Arcelor to form the monopoly steel giant ArcelorMittal. All businesspersons handle their business in their own way. Buying out companies is a part of every organisation's expansions. google too does this...it bought ORKUT,YOUTUBE...and many more companines. The standard of mocrosoft is uncomparable in the IT industry....so it's priced rightly. no point arguing its price. And the high-price also prevents piracy....and the high-price has no affect on the demand of the microsoft OS- windows ....it's still the best OS in the world.
RE:convicted monopolist
by raj on Jun 25, 2008 09:43 AM Permalink
there is a difference between doing it ethically and doing it unethically. and if you dont know this difference, its for this precise reason there's the monopoly restriction bodies in every country. its for the same reason that european trade union has punished micosoft for abusing their monopoly. US government came close to splitting microsoft, but dint do it, because microsoft has an office just for lobbying at washington and in the name of bill gates' dad, and pretty much has an iron grip of the top government officials there.
RE:RE:convicted monopolist
by raj on Jun 25, 2008 09:53 AM Permalink
lots of companies buy smaller companies, there's consolidation in the marketplace - it happens all the time ,silly! they do it through swapping shares, buying the company out for cash or stock, or the vendor sells his stock, or if its a privately held firm the promoters sell the firm. yeah, yeah everyone knows about these, and im not talking about these deals.
the standard of microsoft is very ordinary. it isnt even remotely priced right.
if you buy their office suite and the premium OS - for that price you cant get the whole PC or a low priced laptop for that deal! that's VERY expensive.
the high price encourages piracy, and microsoft soft pedals on piracy because they want marketshare - they will make noises about piracy but will not clampdown, because linux will come into picture then. for eg: the new asus eeepc initially came with linux, that scared microsoft, and now they are allowing windows xp to be sold (despite xp having a deadline this june!).
vista is bloated, all the whiz bang is bettered in linux and compiz with ordinary hardware. people are used to the microsoft way, which is why there's reluctance to try out anything new. thankfully, things are changing for the better, and if the monopoly is broken with persistence, we might see linux come out of the shadow of microsoft hegemony and prove an alternative to microsoft.
