Comment Microsoft strategy to own markets it enters (Score 1) 726
Consider what happened to the market for TCP/IP networking software when Microsoft entered. In 1994, there were probably a dozen or more companies publishing and selling TCP/IP stacks and applications to run over those stacks: FTP Software, Beam & Whiteside, NetManage and others.
Then, Microsoft cobbled together their own TCP/IP support in Windows for Workgroups 3.11, and made it almost usable in Windows 95. By 1997, the industry segment had effectively disappeared along with all those little networking companies.
Netscape, like many other vendors in the server market, was crushed by Microsoft's superior sales effort; just like IBM customers could safely buy what they needed from IBM ("no one ever got fired for choosing IBM"), corporate buyers can always safely choose a Microsoft "solution".
However, everything changes and now you can't buy an IBM PC anymore. Eventually, corporations will get hip to the fact that Microsoft-sponsored TCO "studies" are a load of crap and do their own due diligence before committing their company's future on feeding Microsoft's cash cushion.
Then, Microsoft cobbled together their own TCP/IP support in Windows for Workgroups 3.11, and made it almost usable in Windows 95. By 1997, the industry segment had effectively disappeared along with all those little networking companies.
Netscape, like many other vendors in the server market, was crushed by Microsoft's superior sales effort; just like IBM customers could safely buy what they needed from IBM ("no one ever got fired for choosing IBM"), corporate buyers can always safely choose a Microsoft "solution".
However, everything changes and now you can't buy an IBM PC anymore. Eventually, corporations will get hip to the fact that Microsoft-sponsored TCO "studies" are a load of crap and do their own due diligence before committing their company's future on feeding Microsoft's cash cushion.
