RealNetworks Suit About More Than Money

“If use of the player drops, less content is developed for it, and fewer people buy the server. Breaking out of this cycle of declining market share is the major goal of the suit RealNetworks filed against Microsoft Thursday — although a $1 billion victory would certainly help the Seattle-based company…”

But not everyone agrees that Microsoft is the villain here. “It’s not clear to me where the billion dollars of unspecified damages came from,” said Sanford C. Bernstein software analyst Charlie Di Bona, who questioned whether Microsoft actually controls which media player is used, as Real Networks suggests. “Fundamentally, I think it’s content providers who dictate the use,” Di Bona said.

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