I was reading feedback on commentary about the Microsoft decision. I came across this comment that I believes explains as clearly as I have ever seen, what and how Microsoft did to Netscape.

I liked her before she started bleeding all over the place.

It is HER fault she is dying. She steadfastly refuses to stop bleeding.

I like the gunman. He wont disappear from the market place.

I am very tired of Microsoft apologists saying that Netscape lost the browser wars because its product is poorer than Microsofts. That point is completely irrelevant.

Netscape made its money on corporate licences and on OEM pre-loads. Netscape was an innovative and wildly popular product that people were eager to have. In fact having it pre-loaded on a machine would help sales of that machine, as the OEMs well knew.

Microsoft cut off Netscapes income by bullying the OEMs into not pre-loading Netscape and giving away IE bundled with the OS. As clearly stated in MS emails, they knew that this would cut off Netscapes revenue stream while the cost of developing IE could be recouped from OS sales. With their income, dropping to a trickle Netscape was forced to lay off all of its software engineers.

Microsoft had succeeded. At that point, Netscape could not keep up with MS development of IE. AoL bought out the Netscape shell, in order to get a business presence. They have done nothing to hire back the engineers laid off, or to aggressively compete with Microsoft. (Lets get OSS engineers improve Netscape for FREE! Wont cost us a penny!)

I think that AoL has picked up Netscape in part to have leverage on MS, (If you push us too hard we WILL start promoting Netscape again, or have our Netscape subsidiary sue you for illegal business practices.) But for now, AoL is cozied up to MS promoting IE with every new account they set up.

Browsers are big business. But how many companies are PAYING engineers to compete against IE?

Sure Netscape has fallen behind IE. What do you honestly expect?

Any thoughts?

-- Cherri (sams@brigadoon.com), June 11, 2000

Answers

cpr still thinks gas prices are falling, when was the last time he stepped outside?

-- lemmy (motorhead@still.rocks), June 11, 2000.

Cherri, I agree with you, MS tried to shutdown Netscape by manipulation of the OEM market and by "giving" their browser away - in fact, it was subsidized by the OS they sold. Netscape was doing a good business selling their browser software prior to that.

A very good reason to separate the OS from the apps.

-- FactFinder (FactFinder@bzn.com), June 12, 2000.

That was a key part of the lawsuit. The internal email in which Microsoft admitted that they were going after Netscape was the "smoking gun."

Microsoft has always vigorously protected its turf on OEM installs, even back in the days when DOS was king.

Remember, this is by no means the first lawsuit against MS and they have NOT won all of them by any means. In fact, speaking GENERALLY, in those cases where someone with RESOURCES has been able to press the case to the extent needed, Microsoft has almost uniformly LOST.

The Stacker case is a good example. Stacker demonstrated that Microsoft had ripped off their compression code. But the problem was, Stacker ran out of resources near the end of that case and had to accept a bizarre settlement that didn't give them anything (and, of course, now they're gone, part of a software graveyard that includes DR-DOS and a dozen others).

It's hard to take on a company with Microsoft's assets. The government succeeded because it had the resources. Most of the little software companies that Microsoft has betrayed, smished and discarded over the years did NOT have the resources needed and failed.

Microsoft went after OEM installs on applications after their market research uncovered that most consumers didn't ugrade software -- they'd run their PC with whatever happened to be on it when it was purchased.

(This little fact has escaped many a software vendor. The average user might install NEW software -- particularly games -- but won't, say, upgrade his/her version of Word or delete EMM386 and HIMEM in favor of QEMM. So ... if you're not in the machine when it leaves the factory, you're already at a serious disadvantage.)

(*THIS* is why Microsoft has *ALWAYS* defended its OEM install turf fanatically.)

Netscape represented a multi-level threat. MS realized late in the game that the Internet was going to be far more than a passing fancy; by that time, Netscape was already well-positioned in OEM installs. Plus, Java was a very real threat to Windows itself. Plus-plus, Microsoft wanted to get into e-commerce and especially e-banking; for that, they needed to control the desktop, especially the icons and links.

People like me who program down in the guts of the system have known for years about some of the extreme measures that Microsoft has taken to guarantee their dominance. The infamous "AARD" code, which would bring up a window warning of "lack of support" and possible "warranty" problems under DR-DOS, is one excellent example (see Andy Schulman's "Undocumented DOS" for the details on that one). How do you explain that to a jury? The government tried in the first anti-trust case, but gave up. It was just too technical; they feared it would go over everyone's head.

This, and each case like it, served only to embolden Microsoft. They were convinced that, when it got down to the details of HOW their OS and apps interacted, no jury would be able to understand the arcane technical issues involved. But this case was well-handled and given the government's resources (already mentioned), they government was able to make it stick this time.

But even now, Microsoft thinks that they can smokescreen and snow their way out of this one; that's why they're going to the "court of public opinion" with a big media blitz.

People talk about what's best for computing. The best thing that could happen would be for Open Source (or the equivalent) to become standard. Look at the way Linux has grown from a propeller-head curiosity to a respected and "serious" OS, lacking ONLY Microsoft's ease of install and hardware support to be a more serious threat in the home market. The key reason for this is Open Source and the GNU Public License.

THAT'S the future of computing, not One Giant, Sluggish, Unresponsive Monster Company that controls 95% of the software market and who makes all of my decisions for me.

-- Stephen M. Poole, CET (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), June 12, 2000.