Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: Hidden failure of MSIE

Author:Jeff A. Campbell
Posted:6/24/1999; 8:52:28 AM
Topic:Hidden failure of Win2k
Msg #:7779 (In response to 7696)
Prev/Next:7778 / 7780

Indeed. Microsoft only does things for the love of stock options. All decisions seem to be based on that motive, really.

It's sad, too, as they are in the position to make a change. Little companies that sincerely want to make a change can't.

It's hard to call it a failure when IE is the #1 browser (based on marketshare at least). It'd hard to imagine how many other browsers may have lived if IE had never existed. Other, more impressive spinoffs from the Mosaic family tree. In my opinion, Microsoft's efforts are at the crux of what is wrong with traditional development models. With an OS and web browser designed by committee (and not the 'right' committee), they're not too high on my list.

Then again, some good may have come from it - Mozilla. Sure, it's not quite done yet, but it is potentially something groundbreaking. Although much of the project has been started from scratch, I can't see any other open source project getting such attention so quickly. In fact, we may have something to thank Microsoft for in provoking the Mozilla project. I'd love to see a standards-compliant, ground breaking set of browsers emerge from the ashes of Netscape.




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