Yep. This thread is full of people pooh-poohing this idea and meanwhile it's the strategy used by the most successful corporations on the internet. Welcome to Slashdot!

Yes, it means selling the product for less than it costs you to deliver it, and not for a limited introductory period intended to boost sales or to clear out old stock, either. In order to be dumping it has to be deliberate, for the purposes of putting others out of business. Except Starbucks isn't cheap and it never was, and in terms of value for money it has always been shit. Starbucks sells with an image, and because Americans are boring and like consistency, and everyone likes convenience and you can find one anywhere. It's unfortunate that it has trained at least one generation of Americans to drink burnt coffee, but they don't typically open a store, put someone out of business, and then close the store. They keep it open, and enjoy getting all the business.

It sucks that there's less diversity in coffee, and if small-time coffeeshops had united under some single banner that made them easier to find then perhaps Starbucks would never have existed. But that's not what happened.

So you're Microsoft. Your lunch is getting eaten by smaller competitors, but you still have cash lying around and cash coming in. You get a chance to kill one off rather than see it merge with someone else and potentially make them both stronger. In the process you can get a handful of customers and a browse through their IP for any goodies you can license at very agreeable terms. So, do you just wait to see what happens, or drop some of your cash to make something happen?

There is no right or wrong answer, because we'll never know what would have happened if things had played out differently...

ITYM "thanks obama", HTH, HAND

That's not special, though. That's normal. That's why we need national health care.

Who gives a shit? I can change my MAC all day.

Clearly you have a badassed internet connection. Mine is the opposite. It maxes out at 6Mbps. It's the best thing I can get where I live for $62/mo. I'd have to get a fractional T3 in order to get more bandwidth here, or a private point to point microwave link perhaps. I save ISOs for a rainy day. Literally.

Historically, there's been room for 1st place, 2nd place, and nintendo in the console market. The Steam Machine is a hard sell; it needs to be cheaper and better. And if you're building a real gaming PC, you're going to install Windows on it.

Perhaps the CC companies permit you to pass along swipe fees there, but in much of the world, they don't. They should probably be prohibited by law from prohibiting you from passing those fees on, but ha ha ha

I never did get it to work on Linux, on the very same machine on which it worked on Windows. Just always gave me a network failure. No firewall rules on the Linux box, same rules on the gateway, same IP. No uPnP. Windows is ten times the household name that Steam is. Virtually no AAA titles run on Linux, so you neeed Steam and Windows to play them.

Yes, but it doesn't actually deliver a better experience there; you have more flexibility on Windows. Sometimes a site craps itself in Chrome, I have the option to load up Firefox.

Windows is still compelling for gamers especially, and for people who run professional applications. It's true that chromebooks will do for most people who only websurf, but don't count Windows out yet. Especially for all those AMD GPU users, for whom the Linux driver is shit.

Yeah, like that time that Starbucks paid less than the average wage? Woops, they pay more. Or like that time that Starbucks put the competition out of business by dumping and then raised their prices, destroying jobs in the process? No, they put the competition out of business by being consistent, and they are totally willing to open a starbucks across the street from a starbucks so there's plenty of jobs. Wait, like that time they underpaid their suppliers? No, they pay more than fair trade amounts, although those amounts are arguably too low at least they've over the baseline. So in what way is Starbucks like Microsoft? Because they produce a product that more people want to use than the stuff you like?

FWIW I think starfucks coffee is ass and if I wanted a cup of sugar I'd just ask for it, but seriously, how is Starbucks like Microsoft? The occasional bullshit trademark lawsuit? That's lame, but nowhere near that territory.

So, basically Microsoft got access to all of Nokia's IP and a big portion of their customer base for $7b in cash they didn't know what to do with, and destroyed a competitor in the process?

Sounds like a bargain to me.

Fairly true.

Perfect is the enemy of good.

Right, it's a negative-sum game. We ignore externalities until the world ends.

They've got enough in common. In order for there to be winners there have to be losers, and the house always gets a cut.

I'm sure I don't like it when people spread FUD.