EU report details Microsoft’s thinking | CNET News.com:
“It is this switching cost that has given the customers the patience to stick with Windows through all our mistakes, our buggy drivers, our high TCO (total cost of ownership), our lack of a sexy vision at times, and many other difficulties,” the e-mail said. “Customers constantly evaluate other desktop platforms, (but) it would be so much work to move over that they hope we just improve Windows rather than force them to move.”
The Commission also quotes senior vice president Bob Muglia’s internal memo to the Developer Tools division, dated August 16, 1996, as saying: “In short, without this exclusive franchise called the Windows API, we would have been dead a long time ago.”
Exclusive franchise: what a well-turned phrase.