RE: merge Intel & Microsoft

Billy Brown (bbrown@transcient.com)
Mon, 8 Nov 1999 12:16:23 -0600

A question for Robin Hanson:

IMHO, one of the big problems with any kind of mega-merger is that the organizational effectiveness of a company tends to be inversely proportional to its size. As a result, when a company tries to do many different things it tends to do a poor job of all of them. This is a particularly significant issue in the Microsoft/Intel case, because software engineering and CPU design are both exceptionally difficult disciplines where relatively modest mistakes can quickly have a large effect on product quality.

So, I am wondering whether modern economic theory offers any concrete means of analyzing this kind of concern. Can you offer any basis for predicting that this sort of problem would or would not become significant?

Billy Brown, MCSE+I
bbrown@transcient.com