on profit and loss

[acroyear]

Op-Ed Contributor - Chrome vs. Bing vs. You and Me - NYTimes.com:

Microsoft makes most of its money from two products, Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. Nearly everything else it makes loses money, sometimes deliberately. Google makes most of its money from selling Internet ads next to search results. Nearly everything else it does loses money, too.

Comments

[thelongshot.livejournal.com]

And this is a bad thing how? It is competition, and competition is good for driving innovation. Most of us don't REALLY want to see Microsoft topple, to be replaced by another monolithic company behaving in the same way. What we want is a better product.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

it's not that it is a bad thing (this wasn't a rant). it's that the people don't really understand this particular reality, and the press does a lousy job of reporting about it, which in turn creates distorted images of what these companies actually do on Wall Street.

The Wall Street that knows this much loves them for it because
1) it means that *something* breakthrough might happen anyways (see Apple), or
2) it means that these companies have a lot of fat they can trim in a bad turn, making them able to hold onto their profit margins that are so damn important.

[thelongshot.livejournal.com]

I was going off of what Cringley was saying, which seems that HE wants to see someone make an all-in bet to knock off Microsoft. In my view that is unrealistic and not necessarily desirable.

BTW, he seems to ignore the fact that Android is clearly aimed as a competitor to the iPhone and not really aimed at Microsoft. Microsoft isn't the only company that Google is competing with.