[ozyx]

And you don't know what you're talking about.

1. VMware was giving out a free product too (Player).

2. As chipx86 pointed out on his blog post, VMware Workstation and Fusion were profitable.

[Swannie]

Player was crippled, to prompt purchase of Workstation.

Many people I know who were serious about managing their VMs virtual networks were using Virtual Box.

[chipx86]

Player wasn't crippled. It just served a different purpose. It was never meant to be on the same level as VirtualBox or anything, and existed to be a simple "run this VM" application.