How does Microsoft benefit from Internet Explorer?
We all know how Microsoft attempted to use every advantage to popularize Internet Explorer and take down Netscape. But what I'm wondering is how does Microsoft benefit from Internet Explorer if it's free? Are there products that they sell that benefit directly from Internet Explorer's popularity? Or is it just that in the future they will use IE to proprietize the internet?
Comments
<strong> Or is it just that in the future they will use IE to proprietize the internet?</strong><hr></blockquote>
I believe this part of your statement has validity. Embedding a web browser in their OS seems like one of the shrewdest (if not illegal, wrong, etc.. another argument) decisions Microsoft made. To me IE is like a tenacle extending from their desktop monopoly to the internet. Later they can add functionality that ties in well with their server products (which I use now and can see already). Desktop-Browser-Backends. They will never own it all. They do have their eyes on a big piece of it however.
Netscape has always been the slower more buggy browser. Before IE, no one really knew any better. Way back when I used IE over Netscape simply because it was (and still is) the better browser. Netscape was still installed, just not used. Now IE 6 (nicely integrated with WinXP) is even better and faster. I certainly hope the DoJ doesn't f.uck it up. MS has every right to bundle and integrate IE with their OS.
If Apple built a stable, fast and integrated browser into OS X - would anyone mind or care? I know I'd be very happy about that and welcome it. Would people be outraged and demand that you use or at least try Netscape?
Netscape, AOL and REAL are a joke. If they want better market share they should have made better products. There was always a choice to use your own programs, always. The irony of AOL calling MS a monopoly who wants to take over the net is simply sidesplitting!
I would reccomend you read up on the anticompetive practices.
it wasn't nearly as basic as you make it out to be.
At the end of the day, this is just MHO.
<strong>I am also outraged by these companies wasting all their time and money suing MS when they should be pointing those efforts to making better products.
MHO.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Well actually, Company A only has to let the government know that they believe that Company B is a monopoly or is employing anti-competitive practices. the goverment takes over from there (including funding).
Also, it's M$'s OS, they can do whatever the hell they want with it.
This information is straight out of the Findings of Fact. That is the ~75 page document that was released during the trial. I am one of the only people I know that actually read it. If you do, I guarentee you will have a better perspective on this whole trial. You would learn about all the bad stuff MS did to Lotus ( Lotus Notes is also middleware ), Netscape, Java ( middleware again - write once run anywhere = very bad for MS ), and others including Apple. They threatened Apple to try to get them to abandon Quicktime ( middleware once again ).
<strong>masterzeus, got a link to "Findings of Fact"?</strong><hr></blockquote>
<a href="http://usvms.gpo.gov/findings_index.html"; target="_blank">http://usvms.gpo.gov/findings_index.html</a>;
Another neat thing in there: Intel tried to optimize the MS Windows compiler. The optimizations greatly increased the speed of windows programs on intel processors. MS did not like that and threatened to make Windows incompatible with pentiums ( damn thats arrogant ). Intel had no choice but said you have to put these optimizations in the windows compiler. MS said when we get to it and has still never done this.
<strong>Microsoft is a monopoly. So what! They played hardball with the competition. So what! The only difference between Mocrosoft and the competition is that Microsoft was succesful and its competition wasn't. So Microsoft bundles middleware with its OS. They wrote it! They developed it! It belongs to them! Why shouldn't they be able to use it in their OS. Their OS works much better since they started doing it and I hope they continue to integrate. If other companies want platforms for their middleware, they should spend the dollars and take the risk to create their own OS. Screw the competition! If they can't win in the marketplace, they should not have a chance to win in court. Besides, everyone of those hypacrites have played the same kind of hardball as Microsoft has. They just lost.</strong><hr></blockquote>
The whole episode with the DoJ also has a lot to do with flat out illegal activity.
back in the 19th century the railroad tycoons played "hardball" by vandalizing each other. That was not acceptable.
<strong>Microsoft is a monopoly. So what! They played hardball with the competition. So what! The only difference between Mocrosoft and the competition is that Microsoft was succesful and its competition wasn't. So Microsoft bundles middleware with its OS. They wrote it! They developed it! It belongs to them! Why shouldn't they be able to use it in their OS. Their OS works much better since they started doing it and I hope they continue to integrate. If other companies want platforms for their middleware, they should spend the dollars and take the risk to create their own OS. Screw the competition! If they can't win in the marketplace, they should not have a chance to win in court. Besides, everyone of those hypacrites have played the same kind of hardball as Microsoft has. They just lost.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Did you read the Findings of Fact? Until you do I wouldn't even try to get into an arguement. The trial is not about MS bundling its software, its about all the illegal things MS did to force other companies to use that software.
<strong>Microsoft is a monopoly. So what! They played hardball with the competition. So what! The only difference between Mocrosoft and the competition is that Microsoft was succesful and its competition wasn't. So Microsoft bundles middleware with its OS. They wrote it! They developed it! It belongs to them! Why shouldn't they be able to use it in their OS. Their OS works much better since they started doing it and I hope they continue to integrate. If other companies want platforms for their middleware, they should spend the dollars and take the risk to create their own OS. Screw the competition! If they can't win in the marketplace, they should not have a chance to win in court. Besides, everyone of those hypacrites have played the same kind of hardball as Microsoft has. They just lost.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Monopolies aren't illegal..it's the abuse of them that is. I think there is substantial evidence available that proves that Microshaft has competed unfairly. Winning in competition is fair but you still have to play by the rules.
A lot of people just don't realize all of the "hardships" of webdesign that multiple browsers, especially those with troubled pasts such as Netscape, have caused. Huge compatibility issues, downgrading of useful and beautiful designs and features and code, accessibility for everyone (including the disabled of any degree), and many wonderful innovations have not come to fruition, and may not ever come to fruition, because of browser-manufacturers' mistakes (yes, Microsoft is included). Think of all that people (web designers, developers, artists, coders) could have accomplished with all of the time they've spent with headaches working out browser support and weighing consequences and fixing issues and correcting problems and making up for huge bugs and crappy browsers that people are too dumb to upgrade from or are even forced to use.
If you know much about web standards or non-web standards or have done much cross-platform and cross-browser (not to mention cross-version) testing, you probably have at least a smattering of an idea ow much time and energy is wasted on these things. IMHO, Netscape 3.x->4.x set back the market years, and caused two whole numbers in HTML standards versions that were basically unnecessary and detrimental to the long-term development of REAL web standards. Mozilla isn't much better, it's proved that you can't really try to support standards well, and succeed (both financially or in market share) at the same time--so why should the browser makers even bother--it's also told the software industry at large that opensource is not a viable answer for those looking to make any kind of gains. And look, after years of the Mozilla project, it's still not even close to being able to compare to its competitors (too many cooks on the pot, perhaps?). IE has made mistakes too, but nothing that they aren't improving or rectifying all the time. They've supported standards (and non-standards, which can be either a good thing, or a bad thing) better than other browsers long before Mozilla even started trying, or Opera came about (but I won't even go there).
At times I wished that everybody used the same browser that had the same abilities and same features and same standard support and was always in sync and didn't have any stupid quirks and no new Microsoft or Netscape-invented standards and could be instantly upgraded to support all the new features (which would also be completely backwards-compatible just in case) and code could be clean and logical and accessible to anyone. And yes, I made that a huge runon sentence on purpose, because it's really an immature, juvenile pipe dream that's never going to happen. I'm afraid that even if Microsoft's very decent browser were a complete monopoly, they'd never be able to be trusted enough not to use it to their advantage and others' disadvantage. It's pretty sad. But I digress.