For all those who dont know much about the internet, or its origins. before Itunes, windows media player, VLC we had this player called realplayer.. it was pretty nifty and I think almost everyone who had an ISDN(64K+) line or above, had one. they pretty much killed realmedia.

Netscape is basically what you see as firefox, its a old old old grandmother to the current browser, and honestly was very good. Netscapes best browser however was their gold version, something which they charged for. m$ didnt for explorer and bundled it with windows, suffice to say we know the rest.

The xbox was sortof born out of the dreamcast( well sega sought MS's help to build windows CE for it) and seganet ultimately formed the backbone for xbox LIVE.

Heck, even the zune player..the first one was nothing more than a rebranded toshiba gigabeat player.

SO.. we are pretty clear on MS's ability to screw the competition or copy them..

1. No one is complaing about realplayer being gone. Realplayer was shit...seriously. It was hardcore bloatware just like nero is. 

2. Like you said, netscape charged. What's your point and how does it relate to MS screwing competition? Because they offered a product for free? Ohhh nozzz, netscape went out of business cuz they wanted to continue to sell a web browser, shame on MS.

3. This is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. Sega seeks help from MS to port CE over for dreamcast and Sega lays the foundation for how the xbox was made? Nice try stretch armstrong.

4. Nice one, but this isn't copying the competition, toshiba and microsoft worked together on the zune. Toshiba actually got paid for their work.

sigh... my point was each of microsofts products are derivative of something that has already been accomplished by someone else, and IS NOT original

1. Realplayer wasnt half bad. In fact almost every video in the late 90's was available as realmedia on the internet, the other alternative usually being, quicktime- and not windows media.

2. MS USED their OS dominance to fix everone with a browser THEY made, and  supported languages which only worked on THEIR machines. Yes MS did drive netscape out of business, did they offer netscape pre installed on windows 95, 95 or xp.. they didnt. So thats unfair business monopoly right there.

3. MS entered the console business through sega- they helped sega and then realised how wonderful the console world is.That was my point. Oh and seganet did form the backbone of LIVE

4. yea.. taking a rivals player and rebranding it, is not copying. Its copying since they didnt design the damn player. It may be not be an illegal business practise but it just shows how copy n paste MS's thinking process is..

1. Late 90's = dialup, poor video quality that realplayer specialized in was great. 2009 = Dialup is dead. 

2. True point, they did fix everyone with their browser, but it was a free one - as browsers should be. Well you'll be happy people are not required to have IE8 on Windows 7.

3. LOLOL start putting some facts in with your claims. MS decision to make xbox was because sega - who was bleeding massive amounts of money at the time - came to them and told them about the wonderful console world and how close to heaven it was.... did i get that right? If you say so. Yeah Xbox live as based on the same idea as seganet. I wouldn't go as far to stay that it is backbone of Live. They didn't pioneer any revolutionary technology with seganet that didn't already exists and could easily be modified, think battlenet and WON. 

4. Not sure what part if it you don't understand. MS worked with Toshiba to make the Zune, there was no copying involved. In fact, with some digging I found out that Toshiba is the company that manufactures the damn Zune. 

Microsoft to Outsource Zune to Toshiba

Ok I dont get what part of "fair business practises" you dont understand.. no one cares if IE is free: actually they do.. MS bundled one product into another product which they have a monopoly in to get rid of the competition. THAT IS UNFAIR TRADE PRACTISE. IF MS had bundled in netscape/opera/eudora etc into windows along with IE/outlook it wont be considered as using their muscle to capture marketshare. Instead of giving people a choice, they said here is what wer offering. Look its free so its better.And its already on your desktop coz we put it there. So use it.

Real player had optimised technology for what bandwidth was available in those days. Just because they had optimised video for dailup doesnt mean that the company didnt deserve to market their product- or that their product was BAD. Thats the stupidest comment I have heard anyone ever make.

The original zune was a dolled up toshiba gigabeat.

Competition is what keeps evolution going. If it wasnt for netscape or realplayer or google we'd be stuck with some real substandard MS BS.

http://jezlyn.wordpress.com/2006/11/14/microsoft-zune-toshiba-gigabeat-s-20/

That stuff seems pretty competitive to me.

In the business world, you have to play hardball. What kind of naive society do you think we live in.

Naivete has nothing to do with it, as that would amount to not understanding the hows and whys of such business tactics.

Understanding them perfectly, one could always find that some of them break what is healthy competition from the point of view of the general public, resulting in a loss of value for anybody who is not a MS shareholder.

I have a question, if giving IE/WM player away killed the competition then:

1. Why are there so many video player alternatives, yet they are all free?

2. If Linux is given away for free when Microsoft has to charge for their software, isn't that anti-competitive too? Should Linux cost people money as well to make it fair?

Don't use Windows or any MS related if you hate them so much.

It did not kill the competition, but it surely damaged it. And the price is not the issue (price is just a component of product value), the combination of bundling/monpolistic marketshare is what was found unfair in court.

1) I don't get the point. They are mostly free because WMP is free, so they had to find other revenue sources. Same as browsers, with Opera first going with ads and Firefox gathering money from its Google searchbar.

2) Once again, price is not the issue: MS is free to give Windows away at no cost, too. If Linux was a single commercial entity in a monopolistic position then it would have to be watched closely as well.