No need to grudge Microsoft’s success

It’s a very interesting scen-ario out there. The whole world seems to have
got together and is going in for bashing Microsoft collecti-vely. In fact, there
seems to be a virtual Microsoft para-noia out there.

Earlier, companies like Oracle, Sun and Netscape lost no opportunity to take
potshots against the software giant. Though some like Sun have now settled its
feud, others like Oracle are not letting it go. And here Linux is a handy tool
with which they hope to get Microsoft.

But the biggest question is that why is everybody out to get Microsoft? The
answer is not very difficult to seek. More often than not, the market leader
always manages to evoke such extreme sentiments.

History is replete with such examples. Remember IBM, and more recently Intel,
which has also attracted its fair share of adverse reactions. Closer home, HCL
too once upon a time used to evoke similar reactions.

However, surprisingly, nobody till date has managed to attract such extremely
adverse reactions as Microsoft has to endure. In fact, today the dice seems to
be loaded against the company. And mostly, it is rather unfair.

Granted that Microsoft is the undisputed software leader and at times has
managed to garner leadership position by maybe unfair means. Still, by and
large, it has played by the book and has managed to reach its pre-eminent
position by the sheer superiority of its products and rather innovative
marketing techniques.

It is not that Microsoft did not have to contend with competition in the
market it was addressing. In the late eighties and early nineties, there were
vendors like WordPerfect who also had a set of some very good products. But they
wanted to achieve too much too soon and in the process fell by the wayside.

At present, Microsoft has to contend with a whole host of players including
Red Hat who are proving to be a very strong adversary in the Windows versus
Linux battle.

Interestingly, despite being there for a number of years and also most
importantly, being free, Linux has not been able to make any significant dent in
the Windows market. According to IDC, 94 percent of all PCs worldwide run on
Windows. In comparison, just about three percent are on Linux, a figure which is
forecast to go up to at best 10 percent by the end of this decade.

So, it fails to pass muster why does everybody grudges Microsoft its success.
Maybe they don’t have the stomach to fight, leave alone take it to the enemy
battle camp.