Microsoft's Greatest Hits: Top 5 internal e-mails
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| Raikes highlighted the dominant market position of Windows and described
| the "pricing discretion" that Microsoft has been able to exercise.
|
| "In some respects I see the business characteristics of Coca Cola or
| See's Candy as being very similar to Microsoft," Raikes wrote, referring
| to two of Buffett's high-profile investments. "E.g. in FY96 there were 50
| million PC's sold in the world, and about 80% of them were licensed for a
| Microsoft operating system. Although I would never write down the analogy
| of a 'toll bridge,' people outside our company might describe this
| business in that way."
|
| Raikes added later, "There is an R&D charge to the business, but I'm sure the
| profits are probably as good as the syrup business!"
|
| The message didn't turn Buffett into a big tech investor, but it was helpful
| to plaintiffs pursuing the company on antitrust charges. It surfaced years
| later as evidence in a class-action suit against Microsoft in Minnesota.
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http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/133050.asp?source=rss
"Toll bridge..."
Recent:
Raikes and Other Exits
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| It's weird that Mini and all the commenters here have failed to notice the
| mass exodus from the Xbox team in 2007. By my count, more than 15% of the
| product team (dev/PM/test) have left Microsoft for Apple, Sony, Google,
| Yahoo, MySpace, Amazon, and various other companies (including several
| startups, local and in the Valley).
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http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2008/01/raikes-and-other-exits.html
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