4 ms·

I definitely had a good laugh at "keeps competitors weak by being the best"

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
AlexandrB 5y ago
I think the idea here is "dumping". By subsidizing a free, best-in-class editor Microsoft prevents any competing paid options from gaining a foothold. This is not too different from their old strategy with IE.
- xxpor 5y ago
  Making a paid product for something that's a choice of the individual user is a non-starter these days. What I mean by that is something without network effects. If your company uses Google Docs, you don't have much choice because that's where everything is (modulo apps that can sync to it so you can use a different editor). For something like VSCode, at the end of the day it's still just a text editor. My use of VSCode doesn't stop my teammate from using vim. For something like that, do you know how much of a pain in the ass it is at most companies to get them to buy something? The issue isn't even if it's $5 or $500. It's just going through the process of figuring out how to buy something, getting approvals, figuring out how to deal with the invoice, etc. Unless I'm already super committed to it, there's no chance when I can simply download any number of free options out there.
  - nrook 5y ago
    Even if it's explicit policy at a company that employees can expense a text editor or IDE, a large proportion of people will still never bother. I saw the "Please buy Sublime Text!" pop-up all the time at my last job, and that was at a small startup where everyone knew the company was happy to pay for it.
- smarx007 5y ago
  I understand what you mean, of course. I am not sure if anti-dumping was ever applied to products given away for free with zero unit cost economics. If applied incorrectly, Apple and Microsoft could argue that Linux and Linux-based OSes being free is illegal!
  - zrm 5y ago
    Dumping operates by selling below cost. If you sell below cost and your competitors don't, nobody buys from them but they still have to pay rent and the salaries of their factory workers if they want to maintain the ability to resume production, which drives them out of business. If you sell below cost and your competitors match you, they lose money on every sale, which drives them out of business. Then you have no competitors and can start charging the monopoly price, and no one tries to enter the market for fear you'll start dumping again. Charging nothing for a product with no unit cost doesn't work like that. You're not forcing anyone to sell at a loss and the intent isn't to raise prices after they're gone. The concern there is that you could come to dominate the market (even if the price remains zero) and then leverage that into other markets. If one IDE has more users than any of the others (market dominance) and it integrates with the vendor's hosting service and their proprietary APIs for their proprietary operating system and their app store and payment systems, that's more like tying than dumping.
nonbirithm 5y ago
Doesn't this describe a lot of significant software in the present? IE and Skype were criticized for being terrible pieces of software, and people were desperate for something to come and disrupt their target markets. Now Chrome and Discord are being criticized for being so functionally superior to their predecessors - as well as every other option - that nobody is left with a choice anymore. Developers don't want to choose anything besides Chrome because nearly everyone has been convinced to use it from the quality of the product, so sites are broken on other browsers, causing more people to move to Chrome. Critical information found nowhere else on the internet is locked within Discord, because almost everyone wants to use Discord, so you have no choice but to also use Discord to communicate with those people and view that information. In the process, Discord becomes the sole owner of that crucial information, and Chrome becomes the single deciding factor in how web standards are developed.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

I think the idea here is "dumping". By subsidizing a free, best-in-class editor Microsoft prevents any competing paid options from gaining a foothold. This is not too different from their old strategy with IE.

xxpor 5y ago
Making a paid product for something that's a choice of the individual user is a non-starter these days. What I mean by that is something without network effects. If your company uses Google Docs, you don't have much choice because that's where everything is (modulo apps that can sync to it so you can use a different editor). For something like VSCode, at the end of the day it's still just a text editor. My use of VSCode doesn't stop my teammate from using vim. For something like that, do you know how much of a pain in the ass it is at most companies to get them to buy something? The issue isn't even if it's $5 or $500. It's just going through the process of figuring out how to buy something, getting approvals, figuring out how to deal with the invoice, etc. Unless I'm already super committed to it, there's no chance when I can simply download any number of free options out there.
- nrook 5y ago
  Even if it's explicit policy at a company that employees can expense a text editor or IDE, a large proportion of people will still never bother. I saw the "Please buy Sublime Text!" pop-up all the time at my last job, and that was at a small startup where everyone knew the company was happy to pay for it.
smarx007 5y ago
I understand what you mean, of course. I am not sure if anti-dumping was ever applied to products given away for free with zero unit cost economics. If applied incorrectly, Apple and Microsoft could argue that Linux and Linux-based OSes being free is illegal!
- zrm 5y ago
  Dumping operates by selling below cost. If you sell below cost and your competitors don't, nobody buys from them but they still have to pay rent and the salaries of their factory workers if they want to maintain the ability to resume production, which drives them out of business. If you sell below cost and your competitors match you, they lose money on every sale, which drives them out of business. Then you have no competitors and can start charging the monopoly price, and no one tries to enter the market for fear you'll start dumping again. Charging nothing for a product with no unit cost doesn't work like that. You're not forcing anyone to sell at a loss and the intent isn't to raise prices after they're gone. The concern there is that you could come to dominate the market (even if the price remains zero) and then leverage that into other markets. If one IDE has more users than any of the others (market dominance) and it integrates with the vendor's hosting service and their proprietary APIs for their proprietary operating system and their app store and payment systems, that's more like tying than dumping.

nonbirithm 5y ago

Doesn't this describe a lot of significant software in the present? IE and Skype were criticized for being terrible pieces of software, and people were desperate for something to come and disrupt their target markets. Now Chrome and Discord are being criticized for being so functionally superior to their predecessors - as well as every other option - that nobody is left with a choice anymore. Developers don't want to choose anything besides Chrome because nearly everyone has been convinced to use it from the quality of the product, so sites are broken on other browsers, causing more people to move to Chrome. Critical information found nowhere else on the internet is locked within Discord, because almost everyone wants to use Discord, so you have no choice but to also use Discord to communicate with those people and view that information. In the process, Discord becomes the sole owner of that crucial information, and Chrome becomes the single deciding factor in how web standards are developed.