The remedy vanishes?

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Really?

I left Ashton-Tate off the list because Borland bought them just to remove a competitor (like Oracle wants to do to PeopleSoft.) Borland's Paradox could barely compete with spreadsheets, but they positioned it as a database program because Lotus123 was too entrenched. Nobody would buy Paradox. Borland bought the leading database program, but had too much NIH to market it. Their refusal to commit to maintaining DBase killed it.

MS fed misinformation to WordPerfect. Search for information about how MS helped WordPerfect perfect their OS2 version while MS was preparing MSWord and MSWindows3.0.

Lotus123 was better than MSExcel even after MSExcel captured the market. MSExcel is still awful. If MSExcel was not forced onto most computers, Lotus123 might still be the most-used spreadsheet program. That was a great example of MS exercising their monopoly power, but it happened before they were convicted.

The usual "self-destructive behavior" of software companies was to have enough success that MS would notice. Then MS would slap something together and steal the market. Their market-conquering product has never been better than the competitor's product they were attacking, although some of them have become usable after years of tweaking.

Posted by: solprovider   Posted on: 03/25/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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