Monopolists · 2007-07-02 23:07
I've been looking to buy a laptop as my current PC, which I bought about 3 years ago, is starting to make funny noises and is dog when running a lot of programs. Being a UNIX geek I can't stomach the thought of actually paying my hard earned dollars for XP or, heaven forbid, Vista. After all, why would you pay through the nose for buggy software when you could get quality for free?
Anyway, found This article, that makes a very good analogy about the state of the market in Australia today, even though it was written in 2005. We haven't heard a blip about this whole Microsoft monopoly thing in any mainstream media, but Telstra's monopoly makes it to the evening news. Computers are vital to the way we work these days - doesn't that mean this affects almost everyone? This should be a current issue as it affects quite a lot of the population. Very interesting read.
If hardware vendors weren't so locked in, there might even be local OS providers come to market. At the very least we'd get our computers cheaper.
And it would open the door for people like me to become rich and famous by selling network and or desktop solutions based on open source technology. The whole reason we can't do this already is because of Microsoft's monopolistic practices. Witness the Word document format, their Kerberos extensions, or Internet Explorer's own unique perspective of Javascript and HTML. Every other company out there designs their products to integrate with each other using known standards; In web development, most people write their sites using the standards first, then spend days hacking in order to get it working in IE.
Because it's an already entrenched monopoly, Microsoft basically has a strangle hold on those of us who would like a piece of the action. There's no way in, and without competition laws no hope of finding one.
Computerised telecommunication seem to be poised to overtake the traditional telco business model now, so maybe when more people are relying a net connection to call that client than the people on POTS or mobile, maybe soon we'll start seeing more public outrage about Microsoft's monopoly of the desktop market, and less about Telstra's. That is assuming they don't try and "Embrace and extend" that one too.
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