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Story: Pricing scuppers Media Player-free XP

Posted by: Arthur B. (Monday 27 June 2005, 10:43 PM)

Doesn't matter if Microsoft integrates something or not. All they need to do is make something a preferred downloadable in WindowsUpdate and voila, instant market. 90% of Windows users that can will install that within the year. And 90% of those Windows users won't de-install it even if they could. And if things don't go fast enough they simply throw in a huge PR campaign that can easily be a multiple of the entire year revenue of most organizations out there.

Microsoft doesn't care about software or functionality. All they want to maintain is an iron grip on the markets. Because that's how you can maintain an unusual high profit margin for an unusual low effort. Maybe someday those boys in Brussel will figure out that this is only about control of and access to yours, mine and our data (information). And it's not about some having various software tools at their disposal to access certain data but more about what most will do because that's what investors are after. And without investors the brightest of ideas will turn to dust unless there's a movement behind it that doesn't follow traditional commercial models.

It's important to have various ways of controlling and accessing all sorts of data with tools from various vendors using different business models (local markets for one). Simply because diversity is the best protection for all sorts of bad or unwanted things. And actually inspires innovation and so forth. Look at nature, look at the car industry. Look at everything that has balanced competition in place. Competition works. Competition inspires.

The opposite however leads to ever increasing groups of people so close minded that they actually believe the Stalin-like version of the truth they are getting shoved down their throats day in and day out. Simply because that's the only "truth" they hear and see. And if all of your information leads to the same point time and time again then that must be true, right? Never mind that such information has in reality been manufactured.