{Spam?} Re: [Cialug] Odd reaction

[D. Joe Anderson]

On Sat, Dec 18, 2004 at 01:05:48AM -0600, Kevin C. Smith wrote:
> http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/17/2155238&from=rss
> http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/12/16/microsoft.spyware.ap/index.html
> 
> I thought the general reaction on /. to be a little odd. It seems to me that
> Microsoft if playing fair (this time).

I guess if you look at in software marketing terms, in which
instead of completely undercutting the still-infant anti-spyware
software market by bundling their own solution at no additional
charge, they are selling their solution, then yeah it seems like
they are being more fair than when they've just attempted to
englobulate whole markets (office productivity, web browsing,
media players) by ties and bundling.  That's a macro view of the
situation.

At the microeconomic level, talking about individual Microsoft
customers, it looks like charging the customer to fix problems
that are partially the result of Microsoft's design decisions
(which just happen also to be related to the bundling mentioned
above) in the first place.  

Those of us who are less beholden to Microsoft because we've
made other choices might be more enthused by the first
perspective, and have less sympathy for the second one.  After
all, it's not like these folks weren't going to need
anti-spyware stuff one way or the other, so long as they stick
with their current OS.

-- 
Joe