Chinese surfers see red over Microsoft blackouts

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"MS accepted some level of casual piracy"

You got dat right!

You can't get blood out of a turnip. Microsoft has no business in China trying to squeeze money out of people so poor they couldn't afford Bill Gates' toothpaste or Ballmer's head polish.

How Microsoft conquered China

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/07/23/100134488/

By 2001, Microsoft executives were coming to the conclusion that China's weak IP-enforcement laws meant its usual pricing strategies were doomed to fail. Gates argued at the time that while it was terrible that people in China pirated so much software, if they were going to pirate anybody's software he'd certainly prefer it be Microsoft's.

Today Gates openly concedes that tolerating piracy turned out to be Microsoft's best long-term strategy. That's why Windows is used on an estimated 90% of China's 120 million PCs. "It's easier for our software to compete with Linux when there's piracy than when there's not," Gates says. "Are you kidding? You can get the real thing, and you get the same price." Indeed, in China's back alleys, Linux often costs more than Windows because it requires more disks. And Microsoft's own prices have dropped so low it now sells a $3 package of Windows and Office to students.

Bill Gates: "About three million computers get sold every year in China, but people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade."

LOOKS LIKE THE "NEXT DECADE" IS HERE!

Posted by: Ole Man   Posted on: 10/22/08 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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