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AOL/Microsoft Talks Break Down
andres32a writes: "AOL-Time Warner and Microsoft talks over including AOL in the upcoming Windows XP have broke down. Get the scoop here." There's also a similar BBC article - this is a follow-up to this previous slashdot story, which reported that AOL and Microsoft had reached a deal. My guess: they're still going to reach a deal. AOL has too much to lose if their software isn't pre-installed, it was their key to success in the first place. And Microsoft has too much to lose if AOL moves over to a Netscape-based client.
What did you expect?
MS bought/built IE because MSN was a failure.
Plan A was always to use the OS monopoly to steal AOL's proprietary 'online' business. But that didn't work, because Netscape came along and changed the rules. And AOL was quicker to adapt to the change.
And all that talk of Netscape/Java/middleware really scared them.
So... Plan B. Kill Netscape and Java in the short term. Then use the OS monopoly to beat AOL at the internet game. So we got IE, bundling and the DOJ. They gave AOL desktop placement for one reaon only. To get the AOL minions converted over to IE.
Mission accomplished.
Netscape is no longer a threat to the desktop monopoly, and the Appeals Court looks ready to give them carte blanche on bundling of all sorts.
So there's no reason to offer AOL desktop placement any more. Whether they use IE or not. Now MS can get back to Plan A without the distraction of a threat to their monopoly. Bye-bye, AOL.
And for those of you who don't care because AOL's a big, bad corporation, well, nobody ever forced you to use AOL. But AOL's success is the best bet to preserve the last vestiges of the non-MS-dominated internet. I'd want them alive and healthy if I were you.
And before you start saying AOL got what it deserved for dealing with the devil, AOL needed that desktop placement. It's served them well, and there was no other way to get it. If the Appeals Court weren't so willfully blind (they're NOT stupid, just ideological), they'd have been able to stay on the desktop without IE. As it is, they're in trouble. But that doesn't mean they'd have been in any less trouble without the deal.
Judge Jackson was right, and the Court of Appeals is wrong, regardless of any interview Jackson gave. They and we all know it!
AOL didn't buy Netscape for the browser. They bought netscape for the Netscape.com portal and its users. AOL doesn't care about technology (as is immediately evident from their service) - all they care about is the number of users they have, and the number of those users that they can charge a monthly fee. Whether or not their stuff runs on Microsoft software, or Netscape sosftware or on Mrs. Jone's apple tarts, they don'e care...
"expected lackluster uptake of XP"
Would this be anything like the expected lackluster uptake of Win95 or Win98 which completely dominated after being released?
There is no expected lackluster uptake of Windows XP. The expectation is everyone will upgrade to it.
You are confusing Office XP with Windows XP. The two are not the same product.
"a good 1/3rd of my software doesn't run on it at all or well"
Now you are aware that Linux and OS/2 software is not designed to run under Windows?
Right?
I'd be willing to bet that AOL has been busy porting the entire AOL client software package to something based on XUL and Gecko. I had heard a rumor that this was happening, and that because of the "chinese finger trap" contract with Microsoft, that the one they had in the test lab actually used Mozilla for everything except web browsing -- how ironic! If negotiations have broken down, then they'll be able to go with an all-Mozilla solution. Look at the benefits:
- The popular AOL client software is now free of all that legacy crap they've been working with for the last decade -- it's now very dynamic and extensible.
- It's now portable. America Online users will now have the same online experience, whether they're on a Winbox, a Mac, a set-top box, a kiosk, or a portable tablet type of thing. And the work required to make it run on generic Linux machines is so trivial, that they just might say "what the hell" and release one.
- Let's not forget that you don't have to go through Microsoft anymore to get on the Windows desktop. AOL can make preload deals with the major manufacturers of home computers and get that icon on the desktop anyway.
I think that AOL is better off without Microsoft. And the computer using population is certainly better off with some real competition on the Internet.--
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
I use IE 5.5 at work all day long on my WinNT PIII 450 w/256MB RAM.
Among other things, I do some web development, so the browser is running pretty much all day long.
Every so often IE goes "funny" and sucks up 100% of the CPU. At this point I have to kill iexplorer.exe. Then, because it does other thing to my taskbar etc., I have to restart Windows.
That's th astiest. More often, it GPF's when browsing or relaoding. I'd say it does this about 3 times a day, and that it does the CPU trick once or twice a week. If I'm using IE heavily I have to reboot several times a day just to keep the machine running nicely.
Now, Mozilla still isn't quite as stable as IE 5.5 for me, but I NEVER have to reboot the OS when it goes down, and it isn't _that_ much slower than IE 5 when up and runnning. I'll admit that IE 5.5 is a better browser _now_, but it is by no means perfect. Given how much Mozilla has improved WRT speed and stability on both Lnux and Win in the last month or two I'm no longer so sure that IE will remain the undisputed champ even on Windows.
And then there's non-MS platforms. Yeah, well Mozilla ought to take over on those systems pretty quickly..
Anyway, it ain't prefect, but neither's IE. I don't like either AOL or MS much, but at least we get the code with Mozilla...
Hey, whatever happedned to the attempt to GPL Mozilla?
Ben
I'm not so sure that AOL really needs MS to preinstall AOL in XP. AOL has, what, 30 million subscribers, by now?
I think that the market for "newbie Internet surfer" is at, or near, the saturation point anyway, so I don't think it's that important for AOL to be preloaded on XP, any more.
Also, take into account slowing PC sales; the expected lackluster uptake of XP; constant rumors of AOL coming out with a standalone AOL network appliance, and suddenly the Win desktop doesn't look as important to AOL as it once did before.
I think MS is being stupid for haggling over the Media Player issue. Suddenly having 30 million desktops running Mozilla doesn't really do much good for the "embrace and extend" project...
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I think that the market for "newbie Internet surfer" is at, or near, the saturation point anyway,
The market is no where near the "newbie internet surfer" saturation point. There are hundreds of millions of North Americans without Internet access. However, in the context of Windows XP this means nothing, because the bulk of the people currently without Internet access would never use anything as unreliable and complicated as a PC to access information resource and services.
AOL will someday break the remainder of the market, probably when they starting giving away wireless information access devices for free or cheap when they charge for their service. M$ can't break into the remainder of the "newbie" market because their executives are too scared to do anything that might not promote the desktop bloatware model that has been so rewarding to their investors.
I read the first line of this story and thought: This reminds me exactly of the sort of news you'd see on CNN, describing peace efforts between two conflicting nations. Does that frighten the shit out of anyone else?
Luckily, AOL and Microsoft aren't nuclear powers. Yet.
I'd say that both Microsoft and AOL used the 'negotiations' at the very least as an opportunity to get inside information on the other company. What better way to find out what the competition is doing than doing it in the name of 'joining forces' with them?
FWIW, I view the term "coopetition" the same way I view "frenemies". They're still out to screw you, and a short-term boost isn't worth it in the long run.
Stability of NT? You haven't tried it, have you? Ugh... a good 1/3rd of my software doesn't run on it at all or well...
Because it's more strategic to them to attempt to subvert the web to IE standards (under the agreement AOL would use IE vs their own Netscape), than to try to make a few bucks off MSN which isn't very popular anyway.
Given that it's Time Warner-AOL who have stopped the talks, not Microsoft, it seems apparent that everyone knows who has the upper hand. Time Warner is obviously a formidable competitor even for Microsoft, and with ICQ/AIM they already own instant messaging and have a HUGE base of AOL users whose switch from IE to Netscape would be a major defeat for Microsoft who are continuing to struggle to have any kind of success in the internet arena other than IE's popularity.
I'm guessing Microsoft are going to back down.
Considering that IE has a market share of over 75% and Mozilla and Netscape 6 *COMBINED* have less than 0.5%, I think maybe you should wait a little before you announce Mozilla as "the new king".
"Besides, MSN is already running specials to sign up people who are pissed that AOL raised its rates."
All the more reason it would be suicide for AOL to sign any deal with MS. MS is a monopoly competitor with unlimited funds. They can (and will) crush AOL and any deal AOL cuts with MS will only hasten that day. I say go out fighting and don't lay down and let them kill you easy.
War is necrophilia.
They have what amounts to an unlimited funds. That is to say they have more money then you and more money then AOL.
Having absolute control over the internet is not being stupid. Once MS convinces AOL to stick with IE and use MS media then MS will have locked up the internet. Nobody will be able to do anything if they don't have MS software. I think that is a goal worth spending your cash on and so does MS.
War is necrophilia.
Ever get the feeling that Microsoft was that kid who knew the only way to win at Monopoly was to refuse to deal with any of the other players? Tis ironic really, my great grandpappy got gypped by the Parker brothers precisely because he didn't want to deal with them gits.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Microsoft would never stoop so low as to hurt the technological medium with underhanded tactics.
Why just look how netscape...
Hrm...
What about their excellent mail client that is virtually bu...
Hrm....
Still we see an excellent server platform that will bring the internet to much broader horiz...
Well, shit, there goes the planet.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
I find this really bizarre - Microsoft took *more* than three years to produce IE5, and considering mozilla will be more of a technical accomplishment than IE6, I think the speed of development is really quite impressive.
/won't/ use Netscape, and they won't use Mozilla - they'll embed Gecko (which has been working very nicely for over a year) into their own client.
Secondly, AOL
No, Mozilla doesn't 'try to do everything IE5 does' - it tries to do a LOT more. And it's getting to the stage where it can do this. All I'm saying is that on pure technical achievement Moz is impressive, not that it's super-stable IN ITS PRE-RELEASE STATE.
And no, IE *ISN'T* portable. A browser called 'IE' has been written for a number of different platforms. The Unix version is basically no longer being developed, and the Mac version, which is much nicer than the Windows version (but slower, according to some sources), but very different, has basically only just arrived. There is a very big difference between someone writing an application for a number of different platforms, and actually creating it almost totally cross-platform. The most important evidence you'll see of this is that when Moz 2.0 come out, it will be quickly ported to about 20 platforms. Why? Because the foundations will already be there, and you have to do very little to get it to work on one platform if it already works on another. The same is NOT true of IE.
What does Mozilla do that IE can't? Let's see. *FULL* standards compliance. It is a full email client. It has a nice WYSIWYG / HTML editor. It has an IRC chat client. It should soon have crash protection, which will resurrect what you were doing in case of a crash. It has very easily customised and created versatile sidebars. It will apparently soon have stop and resume buttons for downloads. It is very easily themeable, and there is a theming engine built upon it. There is an entire perl / python development environment built on it. Etc. Etc.
Fine, some of these may sound tiny, but many are only possible because of the way it has been written. And that is what I mean by technical accomplishment - to build something so versatile and powerful is very impressive, IMHO...
Whether it is execute as well is simply a different question, but it certainly is an IE5 level product - i.e. they're the same generation.
It's a little rich to argue that Netscape abandoned the users that they had built up by practically inventing the popular, easy browser. It's a lot easier for someone to jump on the bandwagon than to invent a whole new paradigm.
How is Mozilla more of a technical accomplishment? It'll have full standards support, it is cross-platform and very portable, and this is down to the fact that it is an entire platform (like it or loathe it), rather than just a browser, it is very modular, e.g. the rendering engine can be embedded into tiny devices, showing things just as on any other, and I personally think it's very intelligently designed, from the ground up. Regardless of whether you like it or not, most criticism is that Mozilla isn't just doing what IE does, but doing a great deal more - and I'm not convinced you can deny that this ambitious foray won't produce somehting more technically accomplished than IE...
I for one hope that they don't come to an agreement. That way we'll see Mozilla on a lot of desktops. Even if they were to include an crappy release like Netscape 6, they're AOL users, they wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Right?
Seriously though, it would be nice to see Mozilla get some marketspace this way and it is getting good enough (especially speed-wise on Windows, Linux needs tuning) that most people would be happy with it. XP is not going to be running on your P166, so the requirements are going to be fine and I doubt most AOL users upgrade all that often. From what I've heard from some Mozilla developers, the AOL folks hate Microsoft with passion, so don't be suprised if they stick with their horse rather than ally with the evil empire.
So if the negotiations break down, IE won't be the browser-of-choice on AOL software, and AOL will use Netscape 6.
However, even though Mozilla 0.9 is pretty decent, Netscape 6 is still pretty hideous. I know someone's going to reply with "butbutbut I downloaded the Nightly Builds, and they ROCK", but from my user perspective, both Mozilla and Netscape need work.
And from reading the previous Mozilla article "Mozilla 1.0 Delayed Again", some people think that Mozilla needs more resources (People to do more QA, documentation, programming, etc) to reach it's quarterly deadline. AOL can supply some of this labor.
This could be a boon for the Mozilla project, right?
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
You bring up an interesting point. Just what the hell has the acquisition of Netscape gotten for AOL? Was it so they would have a bargaining position when Microsoft saw that they had an alternative to IE? That seems an expensive price to pay, to me.
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python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
It just seems a damn shame to me that the success of products is not determined by their quality but instead by bundling deals such as this. If Mozilla/Real is better suited for AOL's needs and it's customers, why should they have to deal with this kind of strong-arming? A real world example of why monopolies are bad for everyone (except the monopoly).
A damn shame, really... I guess that's how the whole world works though, not just this industry.
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python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
AOL is the perfect example of a company that can be successful despite Microsoft. Say what you will about AOL, but the secret to their success was the fact that any idiot could plop a floppy into the drive and it "just worked". In fact, for a long time it was totally self contained -- it found the modem and used it's own communication software. No Internet setup, no TCP/IP setting, no nothing. Boom! You're connected.
You are right. For the nationwide ISP business, getting a user connected easily the first time is incredibly important.
Now think about how important it was to have an AOL icon on the first boot screen for every user of every flavor of Windows. Combine that with their streamlined sign up process, and you have a major reason for their success.
Clearly the market is changing, and having that icon is not worth what it once was. People have name-brand recognition of ISPs, and there are other ways to reach users. But, in marketing, you never want to cut off an advantage, especially one as prominent as being featured on every Windows machine.
And, in exchange, Microsoft is asking AOL to kill REAL. What is that called - when you give something to a competitor in order for them to hurt another competitor ?? Collusion ???
MS wants access to AIM...AOL says no...for now
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
AOL may still be "#1", but as more people become Web-savvy, many will inevitably dump AOL for cheaper, more reliable ISPs. This is a pattern which many, many Slashdotters have followed -- you get a new PC, sign up for AOL, eventually learn what the hell you're doing and realize that AOL is crap, and get a regular ole' ISP account which, while crap, is an improvement in service for less money. Maybe I'm an idealist, but I can't believe that any business whose mission statement is "find morons and newbies and bill monthly them until they get a clue" will succeed in the long run. I hope that people eventually realize that AOL is just like Apple -- while some of their customers are professionals with legitamate reasons for needing the company's services, most are pre-teen girls and grandmas who are looking for the LCD path to computing.
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I like to watch.
Microsoft is a software company. Though they do hardware and internet access, they still have their power and revenues mostly from software. Microsoft has MSN, has Hotmail, MSN messenger, all of that stuff, so that even if they don't eventually dominate in those areas, they have chips to bargain with.
AOL was an ISP, together with Time Warner, a media company. Yes, they bought Netscape, a software company. But their revenue certainly don't derive from selling software. They give their software away. Why did they buy Netscape? so they have something to bargain with, this includes AOL Instant Messenger.
I suspect that they both would continue investing in all those things, but it makes so much more sense for them to combine forces - Microsoft provides the software and platform, AOL provides the service. Neither one of them really need the non-core business that they got into. If they wanted, they could sell of their own portions of the non-core business to the other and still maintain some of the advantages, if they join forces. Is this likely to happen? Probably not. But if Microsoft has their way, joining forces with AOL will benefit both of them tremendously. Mozilla? Netscape? It doesn't matter. Who are the potential losers? us.
We will have less choices in things. Without AOL's support in Netscape and to a significant degree, Mozilla, the very likely scenario is that most future PCs will come bundled with Windows XP, AOL, IE, etc. That will become the "norm". If these two companies join forces with one of the baby bells, or if they figure out some other way to get to the broadband access user base as well, then they will be unbeatable.
Which should make you really glad that there has been so much work done on Linux and the Open Source front, as well as the technological advancements that is slowly but surely making the PC disappear.
Well, to be Devil's Advocate, why in the world should they know what OS they are operating? Do you know what brand of motor is pumping coolant in your fridge? It shouldn't be necessary for a consumer to have be a tech wizard to use a browser, tho of course it is.
:) Someday we won't need tech wizards to get the car moving, and then what happens to all the arrogant tech people? Who will they be calling ugly dates then? I think they might be the ugly dates at that point... careful where you point that metaphorical gun, it might be pointing the wrong way...
It's sort of like the early decades of autos, when everyone had to be a mechanic to get home from a field trip across town.
Well, enjoy the wizardhood
Yeah, right. If they wanted to use Netscape, wouldn't they just go out and buy Netscape, then promise to continue development even though they're reaching exclusive deals with MS?
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Oh, yeah.... Tried that once. heh.
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I read the first line of this story and thought: This reminds me exactly of the sort of news you'd see on CNN, describing peace efforts between two conflicting nations. Does that frighten the shit out of anyone else?
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Jake
Dating: while( 1 ){ call_girl(); get_rejected(); drink_40(); } return 0;
Excuse me, my Carl Segan Mark-7 baloney detector just blew a fuse, so you'll have to enligten me. (Yes, the Mark-12 is the latest one, but the Mark-7 has worked well till now. :) )
Do you mean;
Pick any if they apply...or offer one that you think is more appropriate.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Where we differ is that I think Microsoft has;
...a trivially easy way to distribute these destabilizing binaries in the future through Windows Update (soon to not require user intervention by default).
...motivation to do it (see other threads).
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Here's what to me seems damn obvious. Contrary opinions are welcome;
AOL is simply the latest in a long line of victims both from before and after Lotus. Sometime between XP's release and the next major revision of Windows, MS will...
The only reason they aren't doing this now is that they had/have contracts, and the DOJ case hasn't completely gone away -- though I expect that the good people at Microsoft are betting on it.
Does anyone honestly think it would be any different?
^ - There were different competitive word processors in 123's hayday. 123 dominated spreadsheets. True that Lotus didn't help itself, and had a poor transition to GUI versions of 123, and the failed attempt at getting people excited about Improv (a great program btw).
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
AOL was succesful long before it was pre-installed on any OS, and MSN was pre-installed on an OS before AOL, yet it doesn't have 25 million subscribers... I'm not saying preloading hasn't helped them, but to give it all the credit for their success is going too far. No, for that we have to give credit to the limitless stupidity of the public at large...
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
It would only be natural for Microsoft to be yanking AOL's chain right about now. They have just spent I believe $20 million in a campaign to steal AOL's customers. Why should they put AOL on their desktop?
And as someone who has done support for ISP customers, I've personally experienced the pain of trying to remove both AOL and MSN from a users system. And the sad truth is that removing AOL is like cutting butter with a warm knife compared to removing MSN.
Once you have MSN on your system it floods your registry with all sorts of keys and don't even get me started on the DLL's it installs. Personally, as much as I don't care for AOL, I hope they are able to keep themselves bundled with Windows and keep MSN a minor player in the ISP field.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
AOL has little to lose in the deal -- if they want their software on systems, they can just pay OEMs to put it there. And Microsoft doesn't have a ton to lose either -- they can't use AOL as a marketshare crutch forever; all Microsoft cares about is ensuring that Netscape doesn't get a monopoly on browsers which would create a viable middleware platform.
AOL has too much to lose if their software isn't pre-installed, it was their key to success in the first place.
Huh? Michael, AOL's success owes nothing to being pre-installed on Windows. Or didn't you receive one of the endless AOL floppies/CD-ROMs?
In fact, Slashdot's mocking of AOL to the contrary, AOL is the perfect example of a company that can be successful despite Microsoft. Say what you will about AOL, but the secret to their success was the fact that any idiot could plop a floppy into the drive and it "just worked". In fact, for a long time it was totally self contained -- it found the modem and used it's own communication software. No Internet setup, no TCP/IP setting, no nothing. Boom! You're connected.
In fact, this should be a lesson to the Linux-on-the-desktop crowd about how to beat Microsoft. Make it simple enough, and the world will beat a path to your door. The other example is Apple, whose simplicity has kept them alive despite high prices, incredible arrogance, crapping on their developers, decade-behind-the-times software (up until recently), poor selection, on and on. The only thing they had going was simplicity, and it has kept them alive this long.
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I don't understand why MS would preload AOL on XP when they are just starting to kick-off their new aggresive ad campaign for MSN.
However, I also think that every large company which offers such support for competing OSs on the desktop will make Linux work well on the desktop. (In the long run, it could undermine AOL's monopolistic tendencies as well if Jinx market share begins to equal Jabber developer share.)
I say, Hooray!!! One more possible attempt at collusion has failed!
And, BTW, I think that Linux IS ready for the desktop...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
"AOL has too much to lose if their software isn't pre-installed, it was their key to success in the first place. And Microsoft has too much to lose if AOL moves over to a Netscape-based client. "
But those who want to see an open-standards-based, platform-independent Internet have much to gain if this deal permanently falls through. If AOL starts using Mozilla as its browser, that instantly creates a large user base for a non-Microsoft browser, reversing the strong trend towards Microsoft hegemony in that area. Meanwhile, if Microsoft stops bundling AOL in its operating system, fewer of the newbies will automatically sign up with them and fail to ever discover that AOL != The Internet. So AOL's and Microsoft's losses are gains for fans of a non-proprietary Internet.
--Dan
--Dan
Web Tips
IE's market share is close to > 86%
However, if AOL moves 30 Million customers to Mozilla, that *instantly* wipe out the MS-only extentions in web sites.
We would get back to the good old days of the browsers wars.
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Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
You got it wrong.
AOL [ we contron the infromation resources]
MS [ we control the software ]
Intel [ we control the hardware ]
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Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
You mean like:
Marquee, document.all, vbscript?
To be fair, vbscript license cost *way* less than JavaScript license.
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Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Beside a really cool UI and the stability of NT.
Users don't care about the latter, but they sure do care about the former.
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Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
IIRC, there was a time when both NS & MS offered licenses, MS' license was much cheaper.
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Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
Well, they didn't wait to have a 90% market share.
They did it when they have less than 50% market share.
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Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
DR-DOS, that was a beta version that poped an error message, wasn't it?
"Error 4463: Please call support." -- Number made up, I don't have *that* good a memory.
That wasn't present in the final, FWIW.
Blue mountian, no comment, I agree that it was wrong on MS side.
Breaking Felten's program is probably a side-consecques of the design of Windows.
Check Lotus & Sp6 for something similar.
Win2K & Kerebros, the protocol has a field for vendor spesific data, MS didn't extend it, the protocol's specification is flawed.
I understand that SP2 change it to the "normal" implementation.
Actually, I'm not arguing about whatever or not MS has shoddy bussiness tactics, I argue that they *can't* break Mozilla's compatability without breaking havoc on a lot of applications, including their own.
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Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
I'm sure AOL can come up with another way to get AOL to every human being in the world... How about this? Send installation discs through the mail to everybody with a mailing address. And then leave huge racks full of discs in stores and the sorts for the homeless! Sounds like a brilliant plan to me!
Parish & Co. would tell you that AOL and MS won't work together because they are mortal enemies, since MS is killing AOL.
He may be viciously biased, but I like this guy. There's a refreshing purity to his sincere hatred. He's not promoting anything, just attacking MS, and he comes up with some good ammunition.
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Hmm... AOL loses, Microsoft loses... why, that's good news for everyone! =^)
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Mmm... delicious white marbles...