Should big companies be treated differently?
I was reading a blog entry today over at Robert Scoble’s blog, and noticed the following:
1) The company I work for MUST be judged differently than Google is. Why? Because of our market position. Yes, we have a monopoly. Even though Firefox has 25,000,000 downloads IE is still used on nine out of 10 computers out there. That makes it very important that Microsoft behave differently than any other company. Even Google. Translation: Google can do a lot of things that Microsoft can’t.
Feedback from a writer from the Inquirer on my article about why Microsoft is winning also mentioned that certain rules do apply to Microsoft because they have a dominant position.
This is something I don’t think I will ever agree with. I don’t see why rules should be different for a big company just because they have a monopoly. When there are rules, they should be fair rules and they should apply to everyone, regardless of who you are, how big you are etc.
You can’t have rules like “You can’t implement Smart Tags in your browser because you have a dominant position in the marketplace, but the other guy who’s very small is allowed to do it”. That’s bullshit.
It’s silly to invent rules that would in some way restrict the winner, or leader, in expanding or innovating and adding features to his product, in order to let the loser catch up, or in order to let the loser have a better chance. The fact that the leader is leading has its reasons, you know.
It’s so stupid I can’t find the right words to explain it. But let me try this way: You have 2 guys running in a race. One of these guys is in better shape and runs much faster than the other guy. So it’s like in order to let the other guy have a chance, you put the faster guy on a track with lots of deep holes and all kinds of barriers to make it more difficult for him so that the slower guy has a better chance of winning.
If I was the slower guy, I’d feel ashamed that I have to resort to special rules to give me a better chance of winning. Where’s the self-respect in that? Where is the fun in that? Where is the challenge?
It’s like Real, who is complaining about Microsoft distributing Mediaplayer with Windows. Instead of sitting with a mediocre, if not crappy, product and wanting special and protective treatment they could take an example from Apple and do something more productive.
Personally, instead of relying on special treatment because I am much smaller or because I plain suck, I would want to work on improving myself, and find out how I can move faster than the other guy, even if he has a head start, and even if he runs faster than me.
And this is what would drive innovation. That’s what brings the challenge, and that’s what’s fun. Before you know it, the slower guy invents a bycicle, and speeds pass the other guy without even breaking a sweat. This in turn drives the other guy to look for something better again, and on and on we go.
In my opinion, this is how it should be. No amount of complaining and lawsuits is going to help anyone to win against Microsoft. What they should be doing, and where they should be investing all that money they put in lawsuits, is in developing their products, doing research and innovating. Once you have a good product, an innovative and unique product, no amount of market dominance is going to help ANY company to win.
And if you carefully look around you, you’ll find enough examples to back this up.
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