Microsoft contemplates move over tax deferral rules - Accountancy Age.
Software giant Microsoft has issued a stern threat to the Obama administration over its concerns of the US income tax deferral regime.
Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, said the company would be 'better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the US', particularly given current constraints of the the US corporate tax system.
When a monopoloist resorts to such threats you know:
a) it's time to break the monopoly;
b) the product is bust;
c) their entrepreneurial zeal has been replaced by sytem manipulation.
Whichever it is, ignoring them is the right policy.
And let's be candid: they won't do it anyway.
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Microsoft’s true innovation has been in the area of dubious business methods:
http://www.ecis.eu/documents/Finalversion_Consumerchoicepaper.pdf
A quick summary of their standard techniques are: monopoly leverage both between products and to manipulate OEMs, businesses and educational establishments; FUD; embrace and extend; anti-competitive standards manipulation and the manipulation of ratification procedure; pirate now/pay later; government lobbying.
As far as software goes, by and large, they bought, or otherwise ‘attained’ (see Internet Explorer), established products and developed them:
Microsoft Basic: An adaption of the BASIC language developed by Dr. John G. Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz at Dartmouth in 1964.
MS-DOS: Microsoft bought and renamed Q-DOS, purchased from the Seattle Computer Company in 1981. Microsoft then proceeded to thwart Seattle Computer’s license rights to the product. The tiny company sued Microsoft and won in court.
Windows: Technologies used in Windows multitasking came to Microsoft with their purchase of Dynamical Systems in 1986. Portions of the interface were licensed from Apple Computer also in 1986
XENIX: Microsoft’s version of Unix was actually written under contract by the Santa Cruz Operation(SCO)
Object Linking Environment OLE: Microsoft settled a suit with Wang Labs over patent infringement code portions of OLE which is also the heart of Microsoft’s ActiveX
PowerPoint: This presentation software package was renamed and re branded after Microsoft’s purchase of Forethought Inc in 1987
Internet Explorer: Microsoft licensed Spyglass browser, in return for a share of profits, and renamed it MSIE (1995). Microsoft then proceeded to distribute MSIE free.
SQL Server: This important database product is based on code purchased from Sybase in 1988
Visual Basic: Ruby the foundation for Microsoft’s highly important Visual Basic product was purchased from Cooper Software in 1991
Visual C: Microsoft purchased the Lattice C code compiler which became Visual C Microsoft’s software development environment
Visual SourceSafe: Purchased from OneTree Software Shortly after OneTree’s SourceSafe was released Microsoft preannounced a similar application called Microsoft Delta which failed to sell Microsoft then purchased OneTree and renamed SourceSafe as Microsoft Visual SourceSafe
Close Combat: Popular game purchased from Atomic Games
Flight Simulator: Purchased from the Bruce Artwick Organisation
Age of Empires: Collabaration with Ensemble studios(Gopal R S)
FrontPage: Microsoft’s HTML editor was purchased from Vermeer Technologies in 1996
FoxPro: This database application came along with Microsoft’s purchase of Fox Software in 1986
M$ don’t mind using US patent laws to protect “their” intellectual property.
MS is in no way a monopoly. Macs are an alternative, and, much cheaper, various Linux distros now do an extremely professional job on an ordinary workstation PC. I don’t like MS (I don’t use any of their software), but it’s not correct to describe them as a monopolist, just because most people cannot be bothered to buy (or just download) an alternative product.
Steve
I was in a seminar of pretty high level economists last week
MS was described as a monopolist
No one challenged the suggestion
So what sort of fantasy definition of monopoly do you have? 100% market share?
Get real
Richard