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Let Me Go Back (2000)

by inferense on 6/21/23, 1:54 PM with 11 comments

  • by PreInternet01 on 6/21/23, 2:46 PM

    This is from 23 years ago, so a (2000) tag would be appropriate, methinks?

    Other than that, it seems pretty clear that locking in customers is the most profitable thing to do. And until the world at large starts valuing ethics over income, it's hard to argue with that logic.

  • by raesene9 on 6/21/23, 2:43 PM

    I started my IT career back in the mid-90's at an accountancy practice, who used Wordperfect and Lotus 1-2-3.

    The calculation to move to Excel (and office) was really easy. MS gave away Office Pro with the new Windows 95 Gateway PCs that we were buying to upgrade from DOS based ones. For a cost conscious company like they were, this was a compelling offer, when compared to paying for upgrades for wordperfect and 1-2-3

    It was bumpy at first going from a keyboard driven world that people were used to, to a mouse based Windows 95 one, but people adapted...

  • by jrott on 6/21/23, 3:17 PM

    It's interesting how things hold up over time

    "This calculus means that eliminating barriers to switching is the most important thing you have to do if you want to take over an existing market"

    Still holds up today for software products, switching between products is still a pain and making that easy makes it possible to justify switching.

  • by AlbertCory on 6/21/23, 3:37 PM

    His points are valid, but they'd make more impact if the underdog was not Microsoft.

    Tell us a story where a scrappy newcomer convinced customers to switch away from a monopolist's product. THEN you have something.

    If you're objecting to the word "monopolist": MS was indeed defined legally as a monopoly, IIRC.

  • by Jedd on 6/21/23, 2:50 PM

    Needs a [2000] because I was quietly confident / hopeful it was going to be a " ... to before we sold Trello to Atlassian" story.

  • by stakhanov on 6/21/23, 3:04 PM

    It's weird to see a David-and-Goliath story with Microsoft cast in the role of David. That doesn't really ring true, even if we're speaking about the 90s.

    What he forgot to mention: If you're up against a competitor who has a switching-cost-induced monopoly, it also kind of helps to acquire monopolies in adjacent spaces. You can then use anti-competitive practices to establish more monopolies and fight those remaining few that aren't already yours.

  • by AlbertCory on 6/21/23, 2:54 PM

    I was hoping from the title he wanted to take back StackOverflow.