In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Roy Schestowitz
<newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote
on Wed, 23 Aug 2006 08:46:17 +0100
<11475276.7YnOCOQXir@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
> Microsoft lands Facebook ad deal
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | Microsoft failed to sign MySpace to an advertising deal, so the
> | software giant went out and landed Facebook, the second-largest
> | social networking site.
> `----
>
> http://news.com.com/2100-1024_3-6108514.html?part=rss&tag=6108514&subj=news
>
> I am not fond of what Google has done either, namely /Paying/ sites merely to
> have the 'honour' to become a provider, rather than be paid for the service.
> It means that market share can be /bought/. Imagine the same concept being
> applied to O/Ses. This requires budgets which OSS does not have. And it is
> the same as bribery (like Microsoft paying off OEM's and Web hosts,
> including GoDaddy, in order to tweak server statistics).
Market share has always been purchasable. Think on this:
if Company A sells a widget for $10.00, and Company B
sells a loss-leader almost identical widget for $7.00,
and both companies can make their widgets for $5.00 (not
including general overhead), but Company B is squandering
60% of its potential profits, then Company B will probably
get most of the widget market.
I'm being slightly hypothetical here, of course, but I'd
have to dig for more real apps. "Loss leaders" are well
known, or used to be, in stores, and of course competition
gives consumers a lower price -- unless Microsoft in
particular manipulates the market with come-ons such as
lower prices for Windows in exchage for selling Windows (or
at least getting paid therefor) on every box.
Of course if the widget (software, in this case) is sold
for "free", things get relatively interesting. Presumably,
IBM in particular donated hundreds of millions of dollars
of programmer labor to the freeware effort, and Google
sponsored a "Summer of Code" festival/event.
http://code.google.com/soc/
I'll admit to wondering what Google's advertisers, who
ultimately paid for all this, think.
--
#191, ewill3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Windows Vista. Because it's time to refresh your hardware. Trust us.
|
|
