02.07.08
Microsoft Carries on Dumping to Make Its Products a ‘Standard’
Dumping is a case where a sufficiently wealthy company sells products at a loss just to empty the pockets of potential rivals. Those rivals cannot afford to bear similar losses, so they eventually drop out of the market and allow the duo/poly/monopoly to elevate prices (enablement in a state of no competition).
In the context of OLPC, schools and Windows we have mentioned dumping rather frequently [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Additionally, on numerous occasions we mentioned dumping being used against ODF and Blu-Ray. If you have not read about this yet, you are encouraged to do so.
Dumping tactics are illegal, but there is little or no regulation in place. Policing is virtually non existent, despite the ill effects of dumping by monopolies, which makes them even stronger.
If you watch the news today, you may find that Microsoft has just halved (yes, that’s correct) the price of its Xbox 360 HD DVD drives. The company tries to ensure that this format war is not lost to Sony, which also manufactures/distributes/assembles the PlayStation3.
Microsoft have announced a dramatic drop in the Xbox 360 add on HD DVD drive package.
Quietly, the XBox 360 turned out to be a colossal disaster (financially at the very least) and a large proportion of XBox staff had quietly left. Microsoft must snatch a victory with HD DVD and escape the jaws of defeat. Otherwise, Microsoft must support Blu-Ray, in which case it can become reliant on Sony, its direct competitor. It seems like a lost case for HD DVD no matter where you look, so..
Guess who else is helping Microsoft? Intel, of course.
HD DVD News: Why Intel Supports the HD DVD Format
[…]
Regardless, many believe that the format which can proivde a replacement to current DVD players (HD DVD is support by the DVD forum) at a low cost is HD DVD; including tech giant Intel.
Microsoft and Intel try to hide this, but it’s clear that their long-enduring affair lives on.
Intel was also batting for OOXML, based on the fact that “Intel” was mentioned explicitly by Microsoft and its lobbying arms in Asia as an example of OOXML support from the industry. Another example was Toshiba, which unsurprisingly makes HD DVD (Microsoft stays in the shades because of its bad image) and is also behind the Zune, which failed miserably.
Whatever ‘format war’ Microsoft is involved in, rather than dumping its inferior formats in the bin (see picture on the right), it is dumping to fight the better formats. Only an abusive, careless mind has the ethics to do so, not to mention an above-the-law status. In the case of OOXML, briberies and free Office were part of the plot. █
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.