Microsoft plays the spoiler, again

摘要

The $9.5-billion-a-year database market grew 10% last year, a respectable rise for a product that has been around for 20 years. So how is it that once-promising players Sybase and Informix have been struggling and Oracle, the market leader, warns of tough times ahead? The answer, in a word: Microsoft. Microsoft is roiling the database business with cutthroat pricing, product bundling and sweet deals for customers and software developers—the same tactics by which it dominated PC software, earned the enmity of competitors and provoked a bitter U.S. antitrust lawsuit that charges Microsoft, in effect, with the crime of giving consumers too good a deal.