The Ethics of Microsoft’s Product Pricing Structure
Introduction
Microsoft, currently one of the world’s biggest and most influential software companies, was found in 1975 by William Gates and Paul Allen.[1] It quickly positioned itself as a leader in the software community and due to the strength growth of its user base for the Windows operating system and numerous other products, it became both widely popular and widely hated. Many consumers love the suite of products that Microsoft offers because they are easy to use, are widely supported, and have many applications written specifically to for them. On the other hand, there are many who dislike Microsoft, claiming that their policies lead to an uncompetitive market and that their practices are unethical. In recent years many court cases, including a major anti-trust suit have been brought against Microsoft. This paper aims to focus on the issue of Microsoft’s product pricing structure and to discuss the issues that have arisen because of it.
There are two different yet similar ethical issues surrounding Microsoft’s product pricing. Within the United States there has been growing concern that because Microsoft controls such a large portion of the market that they are using this to their advantage and to drive prices up. A number of cases have been brought to court and found Microsoft guilty of price fixing, causing them to refund money to consumers in states like California and Iowa. The ethical issue clearly surrounds Microsoft’s motives. Are they driving up prices and simply trying to make more money with no thought to the impact on the community, or are they trying to run a legitimate profit-based business that strives to keep make everyone happier and ...
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[10] AFP, Microsoft Still in Talks with EU for Possible Compromise, 15 March 2004, <http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040316/bs_afp/eu_us_it_software_040316204225>
[11] InfoTech, Erwin Lemuel G. Oliva, Software Makers: Pricing Standard Worldwide, 2003, 15 March 2004, <http://www.inq7.net/inf/2003/jun/09/inf_1-1.htm>
14 Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, 2003?, 10 February 2004, <http://cseserv.engr.scu.edu/NQuinn/COEN288/EngrHandbook_Ethics.pdf>
[12] University of Central Florida, Barbara Moore’s Slides, Antitrust and Industrial Policy, 2003?, 15 March 2004, <http://www.bus.ucf.edu/moore/forms/eco2023_b001_ch19.pdf>
[13] Russel Verney, Price Fixing in Plain Sight, 2001, 15 March 2004, <http://www.judicialwatch.org/printer_1302.shtml>
Through the period of 1865-1900, America’s agriculture underwent a series of changes .Changes that were a product of influential role that technology, government policy and economic conditions played. To extend on this idea, changes included the increase on exported goods, do the availability of products as well as the improved traveling system of rail roads. In the primate stages of these developing changes, farmers were able to benefit from the product, yet as time passed by, dissatisfaction grew within them. They no longer benefited from the changes (economy went bad), and therefore they no longer supported railroads. Moreover they were discontented with the approach that the government had taken towards the situation.
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The American culture was built upon farming and agriculture but since the end of the civil war and the abolition of slaves, things have changed dramatically to the American lifestyle. This time brought on the Industrial Revolution which sparked many factories and new ways of transportation across America. There were many acts passed to encourage the agricultural lifestyle still such as the Homestead Act of 1862, the Timber Culture Act of 1873, the Desert Land Act of 1877, and the Timber and Stone Act passed in 1878. As a result of these acts, farm income dropped and new machines and methods or systems to farm such as sharecropping and tenant farming became available and made it much easier to increase crop yields. The people who had the smaller farms, uncultivated land, or limited resources could not compete against the farms who were bigger, better, and more modernized with the new technology. After many people failed on the farms, they were seen heading to t...
Of course, this could be justified by the target audience, as it is a Disney princess film after all. However, this relationship between two sisters is special enough to be analysed. Indeed, female friendship is often depicted as conflictive, in films such as Bride Wars for instance, whereas male friendship is made more valuable, as seen in most Seth Rodgen films. Here, the feminine solidarity is the core of the plot in Frozen, which motivates each protagonist’s designs and solves central issues of the
The period between 1880 and 1900 was a boom time for American Politics. The country was finally free of the threat of war, and many of its citizens were living comfortably. However, as these two decades went by, the American farmer found it harder and harder to live comfortably. Crops such as cotton and wheat, once the sustenance of the agriculture industry, were selling at prices so low that it was nearly impossible for farmers to make a profit off them. Furthermore, improvement in transportation allowed foreign competition to materialize, making it harder for American farmers to dispose of surplus crop. Mother Nature was also showing no mercy with grasshoppers, floods, and major droughts that led to a downward spiral of business that devastated many of the nation’s farmers. As a result of the agricultural depression, numerous farms groups, most notably the Populist Party, arose to fight what the farmers saw as the reasons for the decline in agriculture. During the final twenty years of the nineteenth century, many farmers in the United States saw monopolies and trusts, railroads, and money shortages and the loss in value of silver as threats to their way of life, all of which could be recognized as valid complaints.
Critics say that Article 2B is biased in favor of software vendors. While this is the dominant issue for this paper, there are some positive ideas prop...
knowledge of what happened, but speaking with more of an, if anyone took a moment to think about this, how wouldn’t have they noticed an indication to the coming terror. Hitler never hid his intention and neither did the events of operation hummingbird16. So were these all just repercussions to not accepting the Partition plan of 1939, and instead accepting a version of it in 1947? No matter how many questions are answered, there will always be many more to take its place. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict may seem to be just another what-if, and understandably, it’s hard to look at what happened without the knowledge of what happened, and maybe for that reason, the Peel Commission, is still silently being persistent, even after falling between the cracks of history.
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Griffin questions the cause of violent tendencies. Is it the way one is raised? To answer this question, she looks at Himmler's childhood. He was raised in a stern and regimented manner with his father controlling every aspect of his life. His father ruled even an act as simple as keeping a journal. Griffin writes, "The very act of keeping a journal, I sensed, would help me into this life that would now be my own" (Griffin 407). She is speaking of the benefits of keeping a journal and how it can act as a way to express your feelings and that it can be an outlet for your emotions. Himmler did not have this luxury. "Gebhard writes the first entry in his son's diary, to show the boy how it is to be done. July 13 Departed at 11:50 and arrive safely on the bus in L. We have a very pretty house. In the afternoon we drink coffee at the coffee house" (Griffin 407). As we can see, Himmler is not even allowed to write as ...
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