Microsoft has lost its appeal against a record 497m euro (approx: $690m) fine imposed by the European Commission. The European Court of First Instance upheld the ruling that Microsoft had abused its dominant market position.

I am faced with the task to evaluate between several strongly competing product ideas in Web 2.0 space. It is not an easy task to evaluate strong competing ideas, each with a reasonable business model, in this space because of unpredictability of the market. So I asked this question to my highly experienced peers in my LinkedIn Network. I received excellent ideas and suggestions from the group. Here are the full details: My question was: I am looking at few strong competing product ideas for our next product. The factors I am already looking into are: 1. Expected short term and long term business potential 2. Competitor products, their market and platform valuations 3. Barrier to entry for new competition 4. Key applications where this platform can be applicable The IP is probably not defendable but I will anyway check with my lawyers. I am having a hard time evaluating proper business potential of an idea in Web 2.0 space. How would you generally compare ad based revenue model with subscription based web service model? Does that look familiar? Read on...

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