“Why didn’t the U.S. and the USSR just ignore each other and save themselves the cost of an arms race? Answer: Each had the potential to do such serious damage to the other, they dared not risk it,” Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. writes for The Wall Street Journal.
“Microsoft and Google also have the power to damage each other, and are better off if they don’t. They too spend a lot of money on deterrence—a puzzle since both are inevitably owned by many of the same shareholders, including large mutual and pension funds. Even more than the Cold War superpowers, they have every incentive quietly to agree to be deterred without investing quite so much on an arms race,” Jenkins, Jr. writes.
“Naturally, the fondest wish of both companies’ shareholders is that they find a cheaper way to deter each other, or better yet strike a cease-fire,” Jenkins, Jr. writes. “In short, they wish Google and Microsoft would reach the kind of condominium that Google and Apple have reached.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Citymark” for the heads up.]
