Comment My small company has done the very same thing (Score 1) 476
Our company competes in the electronic medical records market and we've done the same thing as Microsoft in order to get our software and services into new clinics.
Depending on the clinic, it's often more important to add them to our client list than it is to make a huge profit from the initial software sale. There's a lot to consider when you're competitively pricing software and/or services. Outright profit is just one very small item on that list.
It's popular to hate on Microsoft because of their past behavior. But there's nothing 'unethical' or 'monopolistic' about it. It's normal business competition. You can bet Oracle does it, IBM does it, and just about every other software/services vendor does it.
