Diving deeper in to Microsft's monopoly status
Hello All and Welcome to Under the Hood with Scott Honeycutt. I will be posting these blogs for the next month. I hope you like the discussions I will be doing. I will be doing different blogs each week to help promote my new book and to get some great discussions going.
The first edition is going to be about a subject that when you think about it, it’s rather strange. Yes, I am talking about Microsoft. Now it is no secret that the Federal Government has labeled Microsoft as a “Monopoly” they have also been fined repeatedly in Europe as well, now I know that they are the biggest software company around and I am not trying to defend them here since they have enough money to go around, but when you really look at it objectively you may look at it a little differently.
Now look at it this way. You live in a country that you can do or say anything you want, so I don’t understand how you can corner the market when there are so many options around. Let’s look at the Operating Systems first. Now you have Windows everything for Microsoft. You have the Mac OS whatever they are using now, Linux/Unix has so many different flavors to use they sometime remind you of a 100 pack of Dum Dums sucker package and they are all free. Google now has their own OS as well. Is the picture getting clearer yet? Now let’s look at Office Products. There may not be that many of these but again, you can use what you want. You have Microsoft Office, you have the open source product OpenOffice, and you have the iWork for Apple products and of course the new biggie on the block Google Docs.
Now I know this sounds like I am kind of defending Microsoft and Yes, I am. But, look at it this way. This is America, you can do or say anything you want, so I believe this should hold true with software as well. To my knowledge, there is no school yard bully twisting your arm behind you back telling you to use Microsoft products So, If you don’t like Microsoft then use another one of the products I have listed here. For those in the Government, go after the real “Monopoly” fine the gasoline retailers because we have a choice to use what products we like best. But if we want to go places such as work, vacation or any type of travel, we have NO choice but to purchase gas. 🙂
