cat Xerox | Apple | Microsoft ?

The Ford analogy would be correct only if the purchase of the car allow you on certain key roads and forced you to use only one brad of gas with a funny nozzle. You could not buy the car without either. <Microsoft's API monopoly allowed them to make mistakes and inferior <products and not only survice, but flourish. This was an unprecedented <advantage over ever other competitor, and continues to be so to this day This was one of MS marketing ploys. The other was licensing. <If Microsoft had to compete on an even playing field, I think they would <have been a good match for Lotus, and they probably would have put Word <Perfect to bed as well. But Borland? Geoworks? Novel? Netscape? Sun <Next? Apple? Amiga? I think we would all have much better software and <operating environments today if Microsoft had to compete soley on <technical merit. Early on MS was recognized as a language house (MSbasic, Basic compiler, fortran, cobal...) They were good at that but applications was clearly the market though getting tools out there was the first step. <Too little, too late. IBM, famous for tying customers to proprietary <systems, gave away both the PC architecure and the O/S platform. Later on at first IBM PCs were seen as typical IBM and proprietary. This gave rise to dos on s100 and machines like the z100. <they own the browser market, they own the "API" (HTML, HTTP, etc.), and <eventually they'll own the internet. I, for one, don't like that idea. They also hold a peice of the internet backbone. <Of course, I put all of my disposable income into Microsoft stock, becaus <the strategy is *so* damn good. I love them as an investment, but I don' <like the way they grab power, and most of the time, I don't like what the <do with the power once they have it. Reminds me of the oil industry in the early 1900s. Allison