In regards to google, yeah your right they are a advertisment company, but if you look around the web, who is microsoft most worried about. Google, look up google and microsoft in the same search and you will get a whole lot of listings. Things such as employees fleeing ms to go work for them etc. They are the only company really doing a good job of inovating. They have a lot of power and are earning respect. They have a revenue stream that microsoft cannot stop through traditional methods, and as the famous words of steam ballmer, ill F****** bury google! so now there is my point, if they come out with a linux distro or something similiar and an office suite which is web based. Give it away for free, they can beat them right where it counts and that is in their huge cash cows, and manage it through their revenue stream. so yeah maybe you didn't think of that. In regards to everything else your points were well, not very well taken. IE and their desktop was just an example. if you have a death grip on the industry where will your competition come from. Some people who don't know better seem to think, oh well if the products were better from other companies then they would be on top. But it's like having a 800 pound gorilla going against a house cat. Not to mention Linux, who knows what their install base really is, there is no way to tell with free downloads, and free installation. The problem is when you have thousands, maybe even millions of people and companies using the linux install base it's nearly impossible to make a profitable company that can compete with microsoft on their own grounds and on the home desktop which ms has a death grip on. Now what linux could do to become more successful, come out with a marketing blitz, educate consumers that there is an alternative, get the oem's on board, key players would be hp, dell and gateway. Then maybe we will start to see linux start to take over and get some good press. Well then you have to get the gaming community on board, and go back to opengl instead of directx, yeah there is more to it then originally thought.

Now in regards to mac os x, well let's see they have a 2 percent market share, which makes the antitrust laws not apply in the first place, so they can do that. Then figure otu that hey apple does actually care about their products and inovation. There browser is actually pretty cool and most of the operating system features are cool as well and actually useful.

Do I want all the money to go to companies I like, well if they deserve it sure I do. Does microsoft deserve or earn the profits they reep? I think not, do I pay for any ms products, nope I don't. I use open office, firefox and itunes. I also use xp which came from a oem. have I bought a ms product in the past sure, I bought Windows ME, which should be an antitrust lawsuit in itself for being such a piece of crap. Do I know much about programming to reply to your .net comments, no not really. But I know I read some stories about .net, like steve ballmer didn't even know what it was and the whole idea of .net has been almost a complete failure.

So tell me are you one of Ms's pr people trying to put the facts straight because, you know I didn't even see one argument. You actually defended most everything I said. Now yes under the hood changed in Vista is a good thing the security lacking which should have a nice band aid over it in vista should be better. But let's see what did ms promise in early development for longhorn and just with their billions of dollars in profit couldn't deliver because, well let's face it. They have no reason to invoate or live up to anything they promise. I would like to argue that Ms, has a duty as being the greater then 90 percent holder in a industry to do good things, instead they steel ideas, crush the competition with brute force and starvation. You can't really argue with that, you can say well that is capitalism and the world in which we live, but it doesn't make what I say not true, it maybe less painful to just not think of it in such context but well I do. I hate the fact that they can do nothing and still make billions. They have no incentive to do anything well, because they have no worries that their market share or profit margin will be affected. let' see over the past 5 years they have done nothing with their os, except for apply bug patch after security patch after patch. Their excuse is, they are the target because they are the most popular os, well if you have billions, why can't you put some security guys in to actually fix the bugs before they are discovered, why do you release a product that has bugs in the first place. It's called beta testing and microsoft says oh it's stable, put it ou, sp1 will be started on day 1 it's shipped.

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