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Who wins if AOL swallows RedHat? | |
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| Time: 00:04 EST/05:04 GMT | News Source: The Register | Posted By: Robert Stein | ||
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It's hard to imagine of a deal that would allow Microsoft to pose as a champion of choice and plurality, but the acquisition of the leading Linux company by dismal media conglomerate AOL/Time Warner may just do the trick. Remember that for all its vices, Microsoft has next to no media content, and once you're away from your computer, The Beast has very little power to make to your daily cultural intake any more dismal and bland; while that's the entire raison d'etre of the AOL-Time Warner "synergies". We're baffled that anyone should find that absorbing a successful Linux enterprise company to such achieve such ends is anything to celebrate. Maybe they should be spending less time with their computers? | ||
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| #1 By 135 (208.50.201.48) at 1/21/2002 1:38:14 AM |
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I guess I don't understand. Since Linux is free, and AOL can already take whatever Redhat creates and utilize it... why buy RedHat? It would seem to be cheaper for them to pay RedHat for support/expertise. Or better yet, cultivate a Linux R&D department of their own by hiring bright young minds.
Ok, this is the reality of the Linux market... It is the same as the consulting market. The only thing at RedHat that is worth anything is the brain share. They have no intellectual capital that can be sold, since everything is released under the GPL. It is solely the people that work there. But the problem with buying out a consulting company to get access to the employees, is that employees can leave. Unless you are *REALLY* careful in the acquisition, and don't go in there mucking around with the culture or the benefits, you will lose everything. I worked for a consulting company that suffered being bought out by a company who was looking for profitable markets to diversify into. They tried to suck us dry for about two years, no training budgets, demands for more billable time, crappy 3 year old laptops... it became no fun and we all left. Within another two years they spun the consulting company back off as a seperate company. It had gone from 500 employees down to about 50. |
| #2 By 2062 (209.180.113.136) at 1/21/2002 6:35:19 AM |
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Just a couple years ago microsoft became the dominent browser over netscape primarily by preinstalling it into the OS. Now it looks like if aol gets red hat linux, aol will probably bundle winamp and netscape as defaults. Talk about hypocrytes. If anyone is fair, if aol does this they should be sued for antitrust just like microsoft was.
-gosh |
| #3 By 20 (168.215.253.242) at 1/21/2002 10:40:05 AM |
| I didn't think it was possible for even The Register to editorialize in EVERY SINGLE sentence in an article, but they managed to do it with this one. There are very few sentences which DON'T bash MS in some way, shape or form. |
| #4 By 135 (208.50.201.48) at 1/21/2002 12:09:04 PM |
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#8/gosh - "Just a couple years ago microsoft became the dominent browser over netscape primarily by preinstalling it into the OS."
Actually no, Microsoft became the dominant browser over netscape primarily because they produced a higher quality product. Nobody has proven that preinstalls have any bearing on marketshare. If they did MSN would now be the dominant ISP over AOL. However MSN had to resort to giving everybody $400 to convince them to sign up for their service which doesn't bode well for the preinstall argument. |
| #5 By 3465 (24.15.187.111) at 1/21/2002 12:55:33 PM |
| #18, where have you been? It's been widely known for years that Microsoft has forced PC's to have IE preinstalled with pc's. Of course IE was integrated into 9x so you couldn't uninstall it without damaging your OS. But I agree IE is a higher quality product than Netscape. |
| #6 By 135 (208.50.201.48) at 1/21/2002 1:14:08 PM |
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#19 - "where have you been?"
Developing an uncanny ability to think for myself. "It's been widely known for years that Microsoft has forced PC's to have IE preinstalled with pc's." Yep, so? The point is, that makes no difference in terms of marketshare and I use MSN as an example. "But I agree IE is a higher quality product than Netscape. " Which is why it has dominant marketshare position. |
| #7 By 2332 (129.21.145.80) at 1/21/2002 3:28:29 PM |
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#20 - Sodablue... while I agree that IE has been a much better browser than Netscape since perhaps version 4, and certainly version 5, I find it very hard to believe that bundling didn't have any impact on IE's dominance.
It seems a fairly logical conclusion that if a peice of software is on a machine, and it fits a need fairly well, people will use that software rather than seek out alternatives. Unlike Netscape, which has to be *that* much better than IE, IE just has to be "good enough." Again, I think IE is a much better browser, but I think it got its market share in part because of the bundling. |
| #8 By 2960 (156.80.64.157) at 1/21/2002 3:44:35 PM |
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Microsoft wins. Their "Linux thorn in the side" will cease to hurt so much because RedHat will fade away into AOL Nothingness...
MS has gotta be lovin this stuff :) TL |
| #9 By 135 (208.50.201.48) at 1/21/2002 7:48:10 PM |
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#24 - Exactly. I guess my claim is pretty simple, that some have attributed to bundling features that simply do not work out in real life.
Over the years there have been many times where I bought something, I got something else for free. It's not at all uncommon for me to throw that freebie out and buy something that does the same thing only better. I'm trying to think of an example, best one I can think of recently was the patch cables that came with my DVD player. They are in a box, replaced by some Tributary cables I picked up at the local hifi shop for $20 that work better. #27 - Exactly. I've been using WMP8 quite a bite lately, and while there are some aspects of it I like, it does not handle very large file libraries. Any more than say 20 CDs and it starts bogging down tremendously. So while I do like the built-in SRS filtering, it's an inconvenient product to use and I'm sticking with Musicmatch. Also Musicmatch has a much larger set of skins you can download, and I happen to like this one of theirs that makes it about 10 pixels high and can be hidden on the top bar of a window out of the way. #28 - You provide no evidence to support that conclusion. |
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