ur brand new computer manufactured by IBM. You look at the price for Windows 99 , and the price reads 300 dollars!! You walk over to one of the workers at the store and ask him, “Is there a mistake with the price on Windows 99?” He replies, “no” without stopping what he is doing. You open your mouth to say something but nothing comes out, you are to shocked. Then you walk away with absolutely nothing to say.
How would you like this to happen to you in the following years? This could happen in the next couple of years if somebody or the government does not stop Microsoft from becoming a monopoly. If the government allows Microsoft to become a monopoly, then the people of the world would have to pay ridiculous prices for any software made by Microsoft!! Prices could soar to any price Microsoft would want to sell their product for. The judicial branch of the government needs to stop Microsoft and Bill Gates from taking over the computer software industry.
Orrin R. Hatch, a member in the panel for the judicial courts, recently gave a speech stating why he believes Bill Gates is trying to create a monopoly. He said quote, The critical debate, many believe, is the extent to which Microsoft is exploiting its current monopolies, both to kill off potential threats, and to leverage these monopolies to control new technologies which will define the future of computing, of the Internet, and of how we conduct much of our daily lives, in the future and the present end quote. This statement states that the reason Microsoft is trying to become a monopoly is for leverage and protection from other companies.
Through the last ten years, Microsoft has been a multi- billion dollar company. It is a proven fact that through the last couple of years, Microsoft has been accounted for about ninety percent of computer software sales, leaving the closest competitor, Macintosh, with about four percent of software sales.
Although Bill Gates claims that Microsoft is not a monopoly, he uses an amazing fact to support that they are not. He states that Microsoft contains only four percent of all sales. Although in theory this is true, it does not give the real facts of how powerful Microsoft and Bill Gates are in the computer software industry. Gates is counting ALL categories of software from spreadsheets, to children’s games, to computers for banks, and the newest WebTV. What the government is focusing on is a much smaller category, the market for the operating- system software that runs personal computers. To make Gates’s theory more clear, it is as if Gates is talking about the whole drinking business, from beer, to soda, to Kool-Aid, to milk. But the government is only talking about soda. If Bill Gates narrows his categories down to just computer software, he will find out that he controls about ninety percent of the computer software business, and the government should charge Microsoft as being a monopoly. After hearing that Microsoft owns ninety percent of the computer software business, they should be charged of being a monopoly. I think the government should pay more attention and be aware of how companies control the market they serve.
