Bill Gates becomes world’s richest person again

Smart decision smiths22.

This thread is about Bill Gates wealth.
Microsoft has positioned itself as the defacto world OS and price gouges in markets outside of the USA. An argument given by MS for price gouging in Australia is that market forces will determine price - what a load of rubbish. At the moment it is difficult for business to compete with one of the linux offerings and non US businesses pay an effective imposed tax which is contrary to a free trade agreement. The philanthropy is paid for in part by such price gouging. Do a web search on "does microsoft price gouge".

Then, MS are not the only Corp. playing this game.

Britton30 said:

First Smiths, Jesus has nothing to do with activation!

Amen to that

Keep well and regards

mjf said:

This thread is about Bill Gates wealth.
Microsoft has positioned itself as the defacto world OS and price gouges in markets outside of the USA. An argument given by MS for price gouging in Australia is that market forces will determine price - what a load of rubbish. At the moment it is difficult for business to compete with one of the linux offerings and non US businesses pay an effective imposed tax which is contrary to a free trade agreement. The philanthropy is paid for in part by such price gouging. Do a web search on "does microsoft price gouge".

Then, MS are not the only Corp. playing this game.

True, I know from other Aussie buddys how your prices are higher than what shipping would cause.

Lomai said:

Britton30 said:

First Smiths, Jesus has nothing to do with activation!

Amen to that

Keep well and regards

Thank you.

Since purchasing any software download (or just an activation key, and downloading readily available downloads separately), over the internet is possible from just about anywhere, the idea that location is the deciding factor is rather spurious. If a locally based business cannot match a price from an internet retailer from afar, then their issue is what price MS sells them the product. A Guy

A Guy said:

Since purchasing any software download (or just an activation key, and downloading readily available downloads separately), over the internet is possible from just about anywhere, the idea that location is the deciding factor is rather spurious. If a locally based business cannot match a price from an internet retailer from afar, then their issue is what price MS sells them the product. A Guy

Sorry I believe you are wrong because there is a nasty thing called geoblocking. There are ways to circumvent it at a risk. Geoblocking just plain stinks.
Another example of gouging is hardware. If I buy an Epson scanner (eg V600 which I own) from Epson or an Australian retailer I pay twice the price I would buying in the US taking into account exchange rate and shipping. If I tried to buy it online from a US supplier then it needs to be delivered to a US zip code.
In a global market, companies who play this game deserve to go out of business. Then, Australian regulators are just so limp.

A Guy said:

Remember that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has given more then $28 billion to charitable causes. He and 69 other billionaires have pledged to give more then 50% of the income to charities.

A Guy

I agree. The price gouging issue has more to do with Microsofts board of directors than Mr. Gates I'm thinking. From what I've read Mr.Gates hasn't been actively involved in the running of Microsoft for years now. Yeah , in some senses of the word I guess I'm a fanboy of Microsoft. I don't like how the company is run now, and I think they have lost their way BUT, if not for Microsoft the majority of us would not have these wonderful machines to work and play with. Mr. Gates gave computing to the world, not just the few, and I will be forever grateful for that.

indianacarnie said:

BUT, if not for Microsoft the majority of us would not have these wonderful machines to work and play with...

I doubt that very much. At the heart of personal computing was developments in semiconductor technology. The Intel 8088 would have happened and someone would have run with it. IBM played with the PC and gave MS their big opportunity. Unfortunately IBM were still focused on mainframes but someone would have seen the opportunity to build an OS for PCs based around new CPU developments.

I think we would not have what we have today without MS. Ever hear of MS/DOS? That's Microsoft Disk Operating System, Gates wrote it at the behest of IBM because they had no clue or just didn't want to fool with it at the time. Gates' big score was having IBM grant him full rights and ownership to MS/DOS, the seed for Windows.