Bonum Certa Men Certa

Competing by Crippling a Competitor's Product

Microsoft: innovating or handicapping?

Return on investment (RoI, or even return on revenue (ROR)) is an interesting economical notion when you are a monopolist. On the one hand, if you introduce a new technology, then you add risk. If you introduce new products, you need to invest in development. So why develop anything? Why ever improve?

On the other hand, how about breaking compatibility or castrating features from rival products? How can this ever be achieved? How about subverting their development process and making them financially liable/obliged (e.g. using software patents and contracts)?

“To Microsoft, as history has shown many times before, sabotage of competing products has usually been seen as the more preferable choice.”In the face of strong competition, the situation can be further complicated. What would be the more financially-viable and thus the wiser response? Would it be to make better products or to simply to break the products of that newly-emerging competition? To Microsoft, as history has shown many times before, sabotage of competing products has usually been seen as the more preferable choice. Why improve your own when you can vandalise others'? Like a totalitarian regime, one needs to identify and then eradicate dissidents while they are young, just before their roots spread too widely and reach critical mass, exposure.

Increasingly -- although it's not entirely obvious -- what's described above is a tactic which is used not only against GNU/Linux and Free software, but also against competing office suites and disruptive trends like SaaS. Microsoft spent money on generating FUD 'studies' which mock Web-based applications (including office suites) before realising that it must adapt to/embrace them and therefore it can no longer suppress and fight them. The same goes for many other things (not just office suites), which is why Microsoft tried (and failed) to move Office online and sustain revenue. Subscription and ads were attempted also, but they are seen as experimentation.

Microsoft just loves to rave about OOXML as though it promotes competition and permits applications to inter-operate more nicely, but that's just utter nonsense that can be made believable if it's repeated often enough. The reality is, as BECTA put it very recently [1, 2, 3], that Microsoft just continues to limit choice, not only using OOXML but also using predatory licences.

In 2005, the same group published a study showing that British primary schools could save up to 50 percent of their software costs by choosing open source applications over "proprietary" ones.

In a related piece of its complaint to the EC, BECTA charges that Microsoft is displaying "anti-competitive practices" by requiring all computers on a school campus to carry Microsoft licenses, if any of the computers use such licenses.


Those who were led to believe that OpenOffice.org does not hurt Microsoft needn't look further than articles such as this new one and also take a glimpse at Microsoft's latest report which shows a decline in Microsoft Office sales. Appended at the bottom [1, 2] are a couple of separate yet slightly repetitive messages that I posted in public an hour ago.

All in all, OpenOffice 3.0 shows that you don't have to pay a bundle for a great office suite. In fact, you don't even have to pay a penny.


Returning to the key subject at hand, Microsoft's fight against competing office suite is actually very similar to the way its fights GNU/Linux. It's not about improving its own over-priced product, but about ensuring that others cannot work properly.

We recently wrote about the crippling of laptops (affecting both Windows and GNU/Linux, to Microsoft's benefit) and artificial restrictions on motherboard-tied hypervisors. One reader mailed us to add: "Low end computers are about to swing 180 degrees away from Microsoft. Microsoft is really feeling the pressure and fighting back the only way it knows, not by improving, but by trying to trip up the competition."

___ [1] If the numbers are still correct, Microsoft has pumped $36,000,000,000 into its stock because *real* investors was leaving (buybacks). This leaves Microsoft with the possibility of going into debt of about $30,000,000,000 pretty soon (they have a proxy fighter shooting heads inside Yahoo!) and the company's value declined another $30,000,000,000 in the past 3 months.

Is Microsoft Aura Fading?

,----[ Quote ] | Yesterday's early relief rally reversed, and Microsoft's value has now fallen | by more than $30 billion since it unveiled its bid for Yahoo on February 1. `----

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121004447596669953.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

To the extent possible, Microsoft will continue to use the press to feed people the illusion that the company is in good shape. It's not. At the moment it sells Windows for just $18 (laptops). It has no choice because Linux was eating its lunch. How fat can the cash cow be at $18 apiece?

,----[ Quote ] | A prominent example of open source software is the Linux operating system... | To the extent open source software gains increasing market acceptance, sales | of our products may decline, we may have to reduce the prices we charge for | our products, and revenue and operating margins may consequently decline. `----

http://www.microsoft.com/msft/SEC/default.mspx




[2] Microsoft's greatest problem revolves around profits per unit. In their SEC they said:

,----[ Quote ] | A prominent example of open source software is the Linux operating system... | To the extent open source software gains increasing market acceptance, sales | of our products may decline, we may have to reduce the prices we charge for | our products, and revenue and operating margins may consequently decline. `----

http://www.microsoft.com/msft/SEC/default.mspx

Recently a leaked document showed that they give Windows away for just $18, so the warning you see above is already a reality. Ballmer called Linux the company's number 1 threat in February. Under a months ago we came to discover that the company's sales of Windows declined 24%.

Also see this recent one (a week ago):

Wimpy: Why is Yahoo so afraid of Microsoft?

,----[ Quote ] | This has everything to do with business and nothing at all to do with | technology. Wearing my business reporter's fedora, then, I'll point you back | a week or so to Microsoft's most recent earnings announcement, which | disappointed Wall Street. This is significant because it is hard to find a | Wall Street analyst who remembers the last time Microsoft's earnings were | disappointing. It simply doesn't happen. That's because Microsoft has a | myriad of tools for adjusting the numbers to look just right. `----

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20080509_004880.html

Shades of Enron, but never mind.

Around the same time:

A reminder of why Microsoft wanted Yahoo

,----[ Quote ] | Henry Blodget at Silicon Alley Insider has posted Tuesday a good look at how | Microsoft's Windows and Google's search will stack up by 2009. The results | aren't necessarily surprising, but they're certainly interesting to see in | print: By this time next year, Blodget predicts, Google search will pass | Windows in total revenue. `----

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9943247-7.html

Recent:

Is Microsoft Aura Fading?

,----[ Quote ] | Yesterday's early relief rally reversed, and Microsoft's value has now fallen | by more than $30 billion since it unveiled its bid for Yahoo on February 1. `----

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121004447596669953.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Recent Techrights' Posts

Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, and Google News
We've also just noticed more slop from UbuntuPIT
 
Links 09/10/2025: Farewell to Jane Goodall, California Bans Algorithmic Price-Fixing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Lost Wages and a Saga Of Continuing To Use Palm PDAs
Links for the day
Richard Stallman's Talk in Helsinki is Done. Tomorrow Göteborg.
There are scarce details in Finnish about Dr. Stallman's talk
New XBox Leaks Probably Serve to Confirm XBox's Collapse (Many More Layoffs)
It's very much consistent with what many other sites have reported lately
The Slop Song
The train wreck marches on
LLM Slop/Advanced Plagiarism Flooding the Zone With Capital That Does Not Exist
Many publishers out there still participate in this bubble instead of calling it what it is
Links 09/10/2025: Sacked Microsoft Workers Make "Sackbird", IBM Taps CockroachDB for PostgreSQL
Links for the day
"Happy Hacking Day" Richard Stallman Talk This Afternoon (From 14:00 to 16:00) at Haaga-Helia University in Pasila
Richard Stallman in Helsinki, Finland
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 08, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 08, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Impact of Microsoft Layoffs, More Data Breaches
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Autumn Blues and C IRC Bot
Links for the day
Slopwatch Appreciated by Real Authors of GNU/Linux Articles
We do try to keep on top of those things
Upgraded R.R.R.R.R.R. Today
The Web of 2025 is full of garbage, not limited to slopfarms
Freedom From Proprietary Prisons
Forking always an option
IBM's Watson Died in 1956, Now Watson Dies Again
IBM is becoming just a reseller of GAFAM and other stuff
Microsoft Says That Constant Mass Layoffs Are Success, the Media Isn't Buying This Microsoft Narrative Anymore
If people in the media feel an obligation to repeat whatever lies Microsoft tells, what point will there be to the media?
Links 08/10/2025: "Mali Puts Free Speech on Trial" And Apple Enforces Dictatorship
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: ‘Death to Spotify’ and Law to Ban Loud Commercials on Streaming (Dis)Services
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: Real Innovation and Nina.chat is Dead
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: Y2K38 Bug is a Vulnerability, Chat Control in Europe a Threat
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows is No Longer an Operating System, It's Surveillance Project
Why is this even legal to preload on PCs outside the US?
How and Why Once-Legitimate Sites Turn Into Slopfarms
Many sites will go offline and many social control networks will shut down once they realise or even openly admit they spend money and time gardening a bunch of bots and slop
UbuntuPIT Became a Slopfarm and Gnoppix Tarnishes Its Own Brand With Slop
It fits all the characteristics of mildly-edited (if at all) slop
Slopwatch: Linux Journal and Other Slopfarms
GAFAM needs to go the way of the dodo
Gemini Links 08/10/2025: "Seek Seek Revolution" and Gradient Backgrounds
Links for the day
Qualcomm Arduino Takes Aim at Raspberry Pi
Qualcomm is a Microsoft partner
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 07, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 07, 2025
Stagnation of the Economy and What Free Software Can (or Could) Do For It
If your economic model is based on a pyramid of lies, it won't last very long
Social Control Media is Sinking
it would rightly seem like the era of centralised "social" sites (they're not social, they're about controlling the users) is ending, not overnight but gradually
Participation in Cancel Culture Detrimental to One's Career
A cautionary tale
Passion Wins
we've increased the number of birds we feed to 100+
How Solderpunk and Sean Conner Started Gemini Protocol (and, Collectively, Geminispace) Back in 2019
Based on the "official" history
Arduino is Now a Patent Bully (Qualcomm)
Qualcomm has just bought Arduino
Many Years of Microsoft Cancellations and Faked (Acquired) Revenue "Growth"
XBox is basically the "next Skype"
The Comment TheLayoff.com Has Just Censored for Criticising a Ridiculous Puff Piece of IBM Management
If comments get censored for their "style" rather than their substance, then society will be worse off
The Power of Writing Down Facts
The more we write and publish, the more people will know what happened
Microsoft's Non-Denying Denial About XBox's Death is Already Being Shattered to Pieces
Like Microsoft's 'open' 'hey hi', heralding meaningless non-committing agreements with AMD is little more than vapourware
Slopwatch: UbuntuPIT Joins the Slopfarms Club
Slopfarms gonna slop
Links 07/10/2025: Privacy at Risk, GAFAM Remains Off the Hook
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/10/2025: Modern Retro Console Idea and Batch vs Bash
Links for the day
Links 07/10/2025: International Criminal Court (ICC) Convicts Ali Kushayb; Moroccan Imprisoned for 'Offensive' Shirt
Links for the day
Links 07/10/2025: EU' Chat Control is Back, US Cracks Down on Democracy
Links for the day
Techrights Pursues Justice and Truth Because, Without Those, Society Descends Into Chaos
most people reject dogma and pseudoscience
Upcoming Talks by Richard Stallman in Helsinki, Göteborg, and Rome
Join with him and share the software
Something Bad is Happening in the Open Source Initiative (OSI)
The latest OSI blog post is from a Microsoft operative and a few weeks ago the Executive Director left
TLS 1.3 Dominates Geminispace (99% of Known Capsules)
it's nowadays safe to assume almost every capsule can handle TLS 1.3
Why soylentnews.org Has Been Having Technical Difficulties Lately
The network has been going up and down quite a lot this past week
A Statement Against Violence
The facts are on our side
They've Run Out of Things to Rebrand or Label as "AI"
The next few years will be interesting because if Microsoft lays off tens of thousands of workers each year, there won't be much left except mountains of debt and dying brands
The Register MS is Still Being Paid to Participate in the "AI" Ponzi Scheme Which Will Crash the Economy
The Register MS is hoping to get lucky by tricking people into a scam
Richard Stallman Confirms His Talk in Göteborg This Coming Friday
"The hosts say that the list will not be given to the state"
Most of the "Linux" Results This Morning in Google News Are LLM Slop From the Same Slopfarm, Plagiarising Phoronix
The main question is, does Google even care at this point?
Gemini Links 07/10/2025: Civil War and "Goodbye Web"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 06, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 06, 2025