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

Re: The nonsense of removing IE

Author:Andrew Z
Posted:4/30/2000; 12:46:16 PM
Topic:scriptingNews outline for 4/29/2000
Msg #:16806 (In response to 16781)
Prev/Next:16805 / 16807

"The way for the IE company to make money is to tie the browser to network services. To build in features that make it work well with services that the company offers."

MS hasn't been too good at being a content provider. Its bled money. MSN is now in a huge promotion ($40million IIRC). I'm sceptical MS can do content alone.

"Of course it would do so in the Internet way, openly, so that others like Yahoo and eBay could benefit too."

This is a problem. MS fails to support Internet standards. It does go a long way more than Netscape 4, but in the very near term there will be other browsers that have superior standards support. Rather than move up support for known standards in IE5.5 they added a customized toolbar. That's odd because the Mac version of IE5 is now better than IE5.5 in standards support. That makes me question MS sincerity in their commitment to Internet standards.

As for the notion that MS OSs and IE are the dominant combo on a particular OS for a particular platform, come on. Not all computer systems have the same requirements or uses. With the proliferation of PDAs, webpads and other portables expected why not support open standards 100% and THEN do your proprietary stuff? Wouldn't it be better to spread access to information and computer based tools to as wide an audience as possible? As it stands now MS has, IMHO, a history of poor corporate behavior, and have been found a monoploy in a court of law.

Yes, MS on Intel is a vital market force. So that is why developers who want to support all the current Internet standards would like to use a stable Mozilla/Netscape/Opera/OmniWeb/whatever ASAP, but won't be able to. Unless MS shows 100% commitment to open standards these things will be delayed further. MS has a CORPORATE RESPONSIBILTY as a monopolist to support these standards.

Now what could MS net tech do? Leverage their abilities to support goods and services based on open Internet standards. I don't care of they add proprietary stuff on top as a competitive feature, but the bare minimum should be able to be accessed by anybody. In essence, MS net services becomes a cross between a web design firm, a backend network support service, and application developer. They then use their market skills to sell this capability as a custom based service for content delivery to any network based system. I see this is what AOL will eventually due with Mozilla no matter what MS does. AOL will likely go for the mass market (which will likely be based on open standards) and I expect MS to follow, but MS can, and should, also go after the corporate and "fringe" markets.

As for "The opportunities to sneak features into the browser that favor their own sites is one that so far they haven't done or haven't done visibly or effectively." I do recall the old Star Trek site on MSN. That was IE4 on Windows IIRC. That caused a flap. But I agree, MS hasn't moved as rapidly as AOL seems to be in merging content and browser, but I think they would if they could figure out how. But if they only provided the means for content to be pushed around, I would be happy.

In short, MS should quit trying to control content and delivery. They become a networked, service based company. Instead of Windows next generation services (IIRC) they make Internet Standards Next Generation Services?

I suspect this will all be repeated in 3-5 years as the gov't sues AOL for being a content and network provider monopoly. We shall see.

Sorry for the ramble. a zimmerman

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