Slashdot Mirror
Andreessen on the Browser Wars
Pauly writes "In this interview, Marc Andreessen dismisses the likelihood of a renewed browser war based on the release of Mozilla 1.0. He cites Microsoft's current monopolistic market share, and dares anyone to try and fight it."
Give it up IE.
Lets face it, Microsoft has a very firm foothold in the marketplace. The last time a massive monopoly of an industry was broken up was when the Bell telephone company split. There is really no way to make Microsoft lose that and the Mozilla project just isn't well known enough for the common, casual browser to download and implement it. So perhaps a new strategy should be made; or at least considered...
This is an interesting except:
... to get better terms. They could say, 'We own Netscape, and we're willing to use Internet Explorer, but if you don't give us distribution through the Windows desktop we're going to use Netscape and we're going to double its market share overnight and cause you guys lots of problems.' There's no internal goal at AOL, or at l! east when I was there, to go get browser market share.
Andreessen: Yeah, I think so. When they originally did the acquisition, the big motivation around it was to be able to have a bargaining chip
This would have never occurred to me, but it makes so much sense...
AOL hasn't been promoting Netscape the way they could have been, and they certainly seemed to have gone out of their way NOT to switch.
Now I know why...
This space left intentionally blank.
I agree Mozilla is the /.er's dream - the public hardly knows about it. Heck, I would venture to say that there is a HUGE group that doesn't even know about Netscape anymore. Look at Opera, which is a very sound browser in it's own right - it's user base is extremely limited, and it has been out for a good number of years.
Trust me, I want to see someone make a run at M$ crap, BUT I don't see it happening. Not without an act of God.
RonB
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
Let's see, Opera is open source and Andreessen joined Netscape early. The first is totally false, the second is of secondary importance. Andreessen co-wrote Mosaic. Guess IDG reporters don't remember that. What other stupid errors can you spot?
From experience as a web browser, I find that a majority of websites are created to support IE. The versions of Netscape that I am slightly familiar with have great difficulty adhering to CSS and HTML standards. For example, Netscape seems to have difficulty accepting that if a stylesheet specifies a black background and white text, the page should be displayed that way. Netscape in this very isolated example displays the background correctly, but the black text that should be white is unreadable. My website passes the W3C validation tests for CSS and HTML, but still doesnt display correctly on Netscape. Many windows users have both Netscape and IE installed, and my acquaintances that have Netscape usually revert to IE after ten pages don't display correctly. Until this is fixed, there will be customer dissatisfaction. Just my two cents.
Who really cares? We've got a great browser named Mozilla now, with great features, great standards support and a great feature. As long as people care about Mozilla it will continue.
"Winning" now isn't about who has the most market share. It's about making enough of a dent in it that "web developers" recognize they need to support web standards and not MS IE standards. The web is for everyone, not IE users on Windows. (And I can say that because IE on Windows and Mac have tons of differences often overlooked by IE Web developers.)
Go Go Mozilla!
I looked, and looked, and I didn't see the part where he said "I'm sorry I ever led anyone to believe that a piece of software that could be replicated by anyone* was worth billions of dollars in stock"
*in the sense of programmers willing to work together
Writers imply. Readers infer.
Clippy and the big red mozilla dinosaur going at it. It will be like a bad remake of Godzilla Versus Disco Lando...
And as long as that is true Mozilla has a shot at becoming the most dominant browser in use.
Romana: "How did you know?" Doctor Who: "Ah, well, knowing is easy. Everyone does THAT ad nauseum. I just sort of hope"
With AOL 8.0 using a Gecko derivative you never know. Of course it helps IE a lot that it comes with M$'s OS. If only Apple saw the light and made Mozilla their default browser. I thought they were into Open Source?
In the article it is stated that with a huge percentage of market share, would the end user really care whether or not it was open-source? It seems too many people who release software have some strange belief that being open source will make their program hundreds of times more popular or more effective for the end user. Sure, for the development phase it's great, and it gives the programming user a chance to fix what they don't like; but for the love of god, it doesn't do much for your average user.
Sorry for the rant, it seemed very related ^_^.
I like karma. Feed me.
My attitude is, everybody should try competing with Microsoft once in their life. Once.
Actually, my goal is to be able to sucessfully sue M$ for a lot of money someday...
One of the things that might give Mozilla a fighting change on corporate desktops would be .MSI installers. Yes, they can be built by your local friendly sysadmin, but ready-for-use packages would make rollouts quick and painless for many places. In a Windows 2000 environment, Mozilla can be deployed onto as many computers as desired with a right click, a left click, a double click, and an OK.
You know... I bet someone has already done this, but hasn't made it public.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Seems like a discussion between two people who are a bit out of it...
Andreesen is wrong about a few things. MS can be combated successfully. The trick is to not play their game of proprietary software on a platform they control. No one can succeed in that territory. The trick is not to succumb to their tactics, and to stay agile and ahead of them
Well, MS does not really have a way of combating Mozilla. How are they going to undermine a free product. As long as we keep fighting the battles we can beat the Beast. It's going to take patience and a few good victories to gain momentum.
It's already happening, Wal-Mart's loading Linux on their dirt-cheap PCs for the masses, Apple's making thier systems ever more Linux frindly, IBM has given Linux their papal blessing. Peru and a few other enlightened Nation-states are considering Linux. ILM and the CG market is shifting to Linux.
Mozilla already boast features that IE does not have: Tab browsing, ad disabling, cleaner javascript, multiple platform support. Let's build on this take the browser even further. By constantly improving the user experience Mozilla can win back users.
Ultimately, Linux and Mozilla will win the mindshare battle one step at a time. Let's continue to build kick ass, peer reviewed software one line at a time, and we will succeed in time. Give this time, in 3-5 years time, more victories will come.
Remember it is darkest before sun rise.
Mozilla?
Konqueror?
Dillo?
Opera?
I can't decide.
IE ? what's that? never heard of it.
Romana: "How did you know?" Doctor Who: "Ah, well, knowing is easy. Everyone does THAT ad nauseum. I just sort of hope"
Netscape didn't lose because Microsoft had a 'monoloplistic share of the market.' It lost because IE was:
1) A better browser than Netscape
2) Free as in beer
Amazing how some 'free software' advocates tend to side with the opposite on this argument. Netscape used to cost $50 a pop back in the day.
IE got its 'monopolistic market share' before Windows 98 integration. It simply won it over by being the best. I even remember running IE 3 on lil' old slowpoke Mac LC's back in the day... cause, seriously, who the fudge wanted to pay the Netscape license fee?
Netscape 4.x did them over. I'd rather stick pins though my eyes while simultaneously having my testicles placed into a Salad Shooter than use that browser. It would crash faster than I could type this sentence.
Mark is just a whiny little pansy, cause he lost the browser war. That cock Larry Ellison would be saying the same if tomorrow Microsoft decided to say "Well, hell, we're deciding to give SQL Server away for free now, just pay for support."
"But nooooo! It's not fair!"
-- Larry Ellison, 2003
Just to show how much of an idiot he is, this comes from the Oracle 9i site:
"Unbreakable
Can't break it. Oracle9i Database won't go down if your server fails and won't go down if your site fails."
Right. So the power supply on the server dies, and Milton from Office Space burns down the building, but Oracle keeps on running! Go Larry! Please, show me the car that keeps running when the f**king powertrain falls out of the hood. Puh-leeze.
Aw, fuck it. Let's go bowling. - The Big Lebowski
Both of which are based off of Mozilla and handle CSS better than IE.
I'd like an example of what you're stating.
Oh right - the original author of gopher.
Since this is Slashdot, I suspect I'm going to get modded down right quick, but...
Two seperate questions here, I think. For windows desktop users, IE is great (yeah, I know, security, but your average desktop user could care less). Microsoft isn't going to lose their marketshare without a seriously inferior product, and at the moment, it a hell of a lot better than Netscape's offering. I doubt Microsoft is worried about Opera either, and Opera makes a damn fine browser. But as much as some hate to admit it, the browser wars don't really matter. It's a sideshow, a commodity. Why should we really care? (And no, standard compliance isn't a good reason. We have that already.)
On the other hand, once you move to servers and/or *nix platforms, I don't see why anyone cares about Netscape or IE. You've got Opera, Lynx, Mozilla, and a half dozen others.
In fact, why are we using the release of Mozilla to talk about Netscape? To be absolutely blunt, Netscape deserves to die. Face it, their products have always been too little, too late - terminally behind the technology curve, and with horrible UI bugs (which might be better than security holes, but try telling Joe Sixpack that!).
Is there any coincidence between AOL's subscriber base and the fact that they have mailed out zillions of CD's to sign up for their 'service'?
IE is the default browser for 'commoners', because it's there when they turn on Windows. AOL got their software in everybody's hands via snail mail.
Maybe find some method of getting Mozilla to every person's mailbox, and you might have a shot.
Not that I'd bet my money on it, though.
Though Marc did make the hypothetical scenerio of AOL bundling Mozilla with AOL CD's (hence, the existing means of getting Mozilla to everybody), however states that AOL has no internal motive for getting browser market share.
Not that I think they should.... personally, the higher the percentage of the world using a single browser version, the further along advanced web-based development could progress, because gone is the issue of making everything compatible with the lowest common denomanator.
www.Beyond7.com Insane modern art water sculpture.
Andreessen has a point - the browser is, in probably 95% of cases, practically invisible to the user these days. The average user doesn't care enough to start another browser war. And really, what good would a browser war do at this point? It will be impossible to de-throne MS until someone comes up with a compelling new service or feature that MS doesn't and/or can't immediately offer. I don't know if that's even possible.
But the end of his article makes the most compelling argument to abandon Internet Explorer for Mozilla - form factor! I'm proud to proclaim that I, for one, love the Mozilla form factor. It beats IE hands down - skins, tabbed browsing... and the fact that it's open source doesn't hurt my opinion of it either. It's just more friendly - and that's where you really win users. It's not how you corner a market (MS never could have done it if they were friendly), but it's how you get a cult following. Props to the Mozilla team! And don't listen to the naysayers.
------------------------------------
Spiral out... keep going.
Andreessen doesn't seem to see the big picture. The browser wars on Windows may be over, but he fails to realize that on Linux, they are just beginning. With more and more people "seeing the light," Netscape, Mozilla, and Konqueror will become the dominant web browsers, as MSIE is left in the dust. Perhaps if Microsoft releases an IE for Linux they can retain some market share; otherwise, we can start to say so long to an IE-centric web and hello to uniform standards.
AOL 8.0 beta for windows that just came out does not use Gecko... it uses IE. BetaNews has a story about it. It's possible they could do it in the next beta, but you'd figure they'd want to get it out there as early as possible, especially now that v1.0 is official.
It's also always darkest before it goes pitch black.
:)
[o]_O
The possibility for this is great... but who will be in it? Already on my desktop it's Opera vs. Mozilla with speed and features duking it out. If it wasn't for Opera's stability over Mozilla, I'd use Mozilla for everything.
;))
The Wars may come back, but there will be more sides (Who knows, maybe even an iCab side
"Oh no, 3 horny women and only 2 condoms...Thank god I read slashdot"
Ummm, Opera may be the "fastest browser on earth" but it is news to me to find out that it is also OPEN SOURCE... Are either of these people (Marc or Matt) up on what is currently going on in the browser market??? Have either of these people ever even seen Opera?
And BTW, why are there so many exclamation points in that text? I am used to question marks thanks to documents converted from ms word to html, but exclamation marks are a new on to me..
Windows is not the answer.
Windows is the question.
The answer is "NO."
I've tried occasional milestone builds over the years, and not liked them. I can't deal with using Netscape, it bugs me for some odd reason.
But 1.0 has honestly taken over as a browser for me. I very rarely use any other browsers anymore, and it has taken over, at least on my desktop, as my main browser.
This isn't for some pseudo-religious reason, this isn't zealotry, I just really really like it.
It's fast, which matters on the older machines I have in the house, and the "open in new tab" thing...
It's such a simple thing, tabbing browser windows instead of opening them in new windows...
...but it makes all the difference for me. I can't use a browser without it anymore, and it hooked me within 5 minutes of firing it up.
Great feature. If only it would detect installed plugins and use them automatically instead of forcing me to either set up all of my helper applications manually or re-install all of the plugins, it would be the perfect newbie experience.
I didn't expect to like it. But I do.
The interview served Mr. Andreeseen's needs as was evident in the way he swung the conversation around to LoudCloud. What he had to say about browers was somewhat germane but really spoke more to his past experience than the existing market. Granted MS has a gigantic piece of the pie it's well to remember how quickly the market can turn itself inside out and come out reinvented yet again.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Frankly, it sounds like Andreesson's not really interested in browsers anymore. All that he seems to care about in that arena is marketshare. I think that he gave up the browser as dead and made a concious decision to move on with his life.
I can't really blame the guy. He put a lot of time and energy into creating Netscape, only to see his company get maliciously crushed by Microsoft. That's an emotionally grueling experience, and I'm not surprised that he's not as enthusiastic about browsers as he used to be. I'd much rather hear his take on the future of web services and what Loudcloud's doing these days.
This
While he was pretending Opera had 93% of the market, he was also pretending it was Open source.
Maybe the fact that Opera and Open Source both start with Ope confused him... or maybe he's just a dOpe?
Let me get this straight. You state that Andreesen, the guy primarily responsible for promulgating browser technology for the masses, is wrong based on....based on what ?!? You've submitted nothing more than typical anti-Microsoft opinions that have been heard over and over.
You might disagree with Andreesen but you certainly haven't proven that he's "wrong".
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
How to beat Microsoft: Just do what Bill Gates did, steal someone elses technology/ideas and sue anyone else that tries the same thing. What, didnt you see Pirates of Silicon Valley?
In college, really poor, need a flatscreen.
"BUT I don't see it happening. Not without an act of God."
In other news, an army of locusts rained down on Redmond today before being swallowed up in a sea of fire and brimstone.
Hey...you never know :-)
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
What are the chances people are going to be using IE 30 years from now versus something that originated from the Mozilla codebase?
As the Mozilla codebase improves in the light of public scrutiny and the IE codebase becomes older and more obscure, things will start to change. It will become cheaper and cheaper to produce a new browser implementation for a specific application based on Mozilla. At the same time, the bills for the continued development of IE will start to pile up for MS. IE will get less attention from coders. Mozilla will get more. In the long run, costs will dictate the outcome and IE will lose.
That's my prediction. Just look what happened to Linux, and look how long it took. Have patience.
Uh..Duh? How about undermining it by making their browser also free and also bundling it with the OS 95% of the world is using? How does MOZILLA combat THAT? Note: A download is NOT FREE. It costs time, and in many places of the world bandwidth is not flat-rate, so its not even "free" in that sense.
I won't even bother getting into the discussion of which is a better product from a Windows end-user perspective, since its an opinion. Suffice it to say, Mozilla is not demonstrably a better browser for everyone, even if it might render HTML more correctly according to the standard.
Lastly you seem to forget that Netscape was one the guy with 90%+ of the browser market, and it was, for all intents, free. Yes, they charged business customers but that's fairly insignificant as the vast majority of people (maybe 90% of the original 90%) were using it for free. So obviously Microsoft found away to combat that (see not-so-secret-strategy above).
if mighty Marc couldn't do it, no one can.
-pyrrho
I sometimes wonder why it is a big deal for M$ to divorce their browser from the OS. Everyone is just going to install IE anyway at this point. Why doesn't IE have 100% share? Well, there are some of us old farts around who have used the web since the early days. They had to pry mosaic out of our hands to get us to switch to this commercial netscape thingie and then none of us wanted to learn yet another browser developed by that shitty M$ company. Otherwise, it would be 99% market share (I am assuming that linux et al. make up 1% of the market). Can AOL make a diff? Naw. They are morons. They don't really have a browser strategy. The only people who push them are third party interests in mozilla. The only significant one of those is only rumored and that is Apple. Apple could perhaps brand their own gecko based browser much like iChat is going to be their AIM compatible chat client. Well, that saves 5% of the market for moz. Still not enough for anyone to bother to check to make sure their sites work with it over IE. Unless Apple suddenly becomes the thing...that's about the shape of things. Anyway, Apple could hold maybe 10% market share at most anyway. They could never keep up as the sole provider of their hardware beyond 10% share.
Aside from the fact that Microsoft has 93% of the browser marketshare, many websites are designed to be viewed with Internet Explorer. As long as the majority of the operating system marketshare is owned by Microsoft, you can guarantee that the majority of the browser marketshare will be, too.
Too many people use IE, and since alot of people use IE, alot of websites are designed for it. When a user can't view a webpage correctly in Netscape/Mozilla, what do they do? Run IE! (Unless there's no better alternative, or the hardcore Slashdotter absoultely refuses to put his/her hands anywhere NEAR a MS product.
Off the topic of this post, those random exclamation (!) marks in that article were kind of annoying...
void women (int money, time_t time);
Andreesen is wrong about a few things. MS can be combated successfully. The trick is to not play their game of proprietary software on a platform they control. No one can succeed in that territory. The trick is not to succumb to their tactics, and to stay agile and ahead of them.
This has been tried, and it failed. You're assuming that the average consumer/user out there actually CARES about technological superiority. They don't. IE is "good enough", and it already comes installed on everything known to man, including damned internet-ready refrigerators. For your AVERAGE consumer something has to be exponentially better before they will eschew it in favor of the bundled item. Netscape fought against this and look what happened to them. I'm not going to debate the legality of what MS did to Netscape because that's not the topic here, but suffice to say that I don't think there's ANYTHING Mozilla could possibly bring to the table that would reverse the current trend, unless they found a way to have it read minds and present holographic interactive representations of supermodels for your pleasure.
"Don't fight with MS on their turf/by their rules" has been tried before, and it just does not work. MS either has their turf too well covered or they change the rules (FUD, vaporware, strongarm) to destroy the competition. With but few exceptions no one has stood up to MS and won (for long). Linux is a relative exception, but only (IMHO) because there is no corporate entity behind Linux that MS can attack. Unfortunately, that very lack is what's keeping Linux from making inroads beyond the server room, at least in the minds of the executives, VP's, and Director's who sign the big checks for software purchases.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Mozilla 1.0 got installed on my machine for one reason: they've got the best mail client this side of pine. I've always enjoyed NSmail, and Mozilla has continued the fine tradition, even improving it with the multiple POP accounts (although I've switched to IMAP exclusively).
:/
Although, to tell you the truth, I found myself browsing with Mozilla for quite a while yesterday without realizing I wasn't in IE. It's a remarkable effort from the Mozilla.org team. Now if only Ctrl-N would pop open a cloned window, instead of a new one that loads he homepage.
I would like to direct your attention to an answer Marc gave to a question about the MS Antitrust proceedings. For those who didn't RTFA, Loudcloud is Marc's new business...
Andreessen: Generally, Microsoft is a partner of Loudcloud, and we work really well with them at Loudcloud because we support their technology and we have a bunch of customers running on Windows. So we don't take formal positions on remedies or lawsuits.
(Bold emphasis mine)
Can you say S-E-L-L-O-U-T?
nuclear presidential echelon assassination encryption virulent strain
Whizzmo
The truth is linux users will use mozilla and most windows users will always use IE, whats the point in downloading a new browser when you got a fine working one bundeld with your OS ?
But i do believe linux will eventually overtake windows, maybe in 10-30 years.
Why?
Well I still use win98 SE.
XP has nothing to offer me that win98 can't.
And windows will probably only have minor improvements in future releases, there simply isn't much more users need(unless a revolution takes place as with thefirst GUI, but we can't foresee that).
I like to call that point the saturation point, win98 has reached that point, any newer versions have little improvements(win98 SE is very stable when configured properly).
And linux will eventually also reach that point, then windows simply won't have more to offer.
And linux will be attractive.
Users save $$$, and system admins will think:
"Sure it's the companies money, not mine, but do i want to hassle with windows licenses or be free to install and remove whenever i want to?"
And when linux/BSD grow in user base mozilla will too.
Realistically, the only way Mozilla is going to have a significant impact on the average user is if a major company injects it into an already established user base. For example, AOL shipping a Mozilla browser with their next version instead of Internet Explorer. Or Apple taking Chimera over and making their own browser -- "iBrowse"? It's been speculated before.
I am not sure if I agree with all of his comments about the browser war being dead. Specifically, since IE4 was released, the quality of the browser has been decreasing fast. IE5.5 was a good release, thanks to the throwing out the WIN32 code base and backporting the Mac version of IE. IE 5.0 was rubbish, and I use Mozilla on my Win 2000 box instead of IE6 because it is more stable.
Microsoft focused on the target with IE4, hit a grand slam out of the park, and hasn't really been focusing on the game since. If the browser war is to return, I believe it will be due to quality problems in IE.
BTW - I wish Microsoft would fix the png bugs which have existed for a couple versions. Makes image creation a major pain in the butt.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
I D!dn!t Cee aN!y pr0b!lem w!th th?e eddtinge!!
1.) Before Mozilla 1.0 (1.1 now), mozilla just plain utterly sucked.
2.) Before Mozilla 1.0, I refused to use it and used IE exclusively (Yes, I run windoze as much as I run Linux because I work in the real world). When not in 'doze, I would run Konquerer about 80% of the time because it was so much faster and more reliable than mozilla.
3.) Mozilla 1.0 is out. It's much faster. It doesn't crash. I love the tabbed option. and last but not least:
4.) NO MORE JAVASCRIPT POPUP WINDOWS!!!! > IE can kiss my ass. No more buggy crappy virus-back-door IE funkage on my desktop. This reason alone killed IE on my desktop.
IE is out, mozilla is in. People will change just because it works and is written for the users instead of for the dot.bomb marketplace.
Hellz yeah.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
From the Article:
Andreessen: Generally, Microsoft is a partner of Loudcloud, and we work really well with them at Loudcloud because we support their technology and we have a bunch of customers running on Windows. So we don't take formal positions on remedies or lawsuits.
Do did you expect him to tell you after this?
How so? Opera's market share of the total browser market is pitifully tiny compared to the IE juggernaut. It may be "huge" in the sense of it being a very popular alternative to IE, but since IE has about 95% of the market, even if Opera were THE ONLY alternative, they'd only have 5% of the market. That's TINY, practically INSIGNIFICANT in the grand scheme of things.
Please note I'm no IE flag waiver, nor am I an Opera defender/accuser, I'm just making an observation here.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The interviewer definitely didn't know what he was talking about...
But if you give Andreesen the benefit of the doubt, you can read Andreesen's response as a rhetorical question. That is, I think he was ignoring the (mistaken) open source aspect of the question, and simply dismissing the interviewer's question as irrelevant because no browser has a share of the market that can touch Microsoft's share. He seemed pretty focused on that point.
Or, yes, maybe he really isn't paying attention to the browser alternatives out there and is no longer in a position to say anything authoritative. That's certainly a valid reading of his remarks. I don't know. I was rather disappointed in the interview's brevity and lack of depth.
For your AVERAGE consumer something has to be exponentially better before they will eschew it in favor of the bundled item.
Killing popups *is* exponentially better than IE.
Having actually talked to quite a few "average users" who don't care about technological superiority, when I say "Mozilla kills popups dead" their eyes bug out and they immediately want it.
Being as he hasn't worked at netscape for about 3 years, and since then has started a startup with little to nothing going for it other than "OOH!! IT'S MARCA FROM NETSCAPE!!!" I personally think it's complete bunk.
I bet a lot of the people who didn't quit, and still work at netscape feel the same way. I really don't have much of a view on the subject, as I joined the company almost 1 year to the day after they got bought by AOL.
On top of that, I seem to have become the unofficial netscape-flag holding troll on here.
Christ, I dunno, I take a lot of pride in my work at the company, and when he goes and says shit like this, it honestly feels like a kick in the balls to me, and to everyone who is still working on the browser. Fuck, I work with 5 people on my team (out of 9) who were around back before AOL bought the company. he just pretty much slapped them in the face.
Anyhow, fuck it, I'm outta here.
Huh? What do you mean? Other people have implemented X on MacOS X and ported Linux apps to MacOS X. But what has Apple itself done with respect to Linux? I use both Linux and MacOS X, and I haven't seen Apple do anything at all to make their system more "Linux friendly." (Considering that Apple's desktop market share is about 5%, whereas Linux's is about 0.5%, it's hard to see why Apple would care about Linux either way.)
Mozilla already boast features that IE does not have: Tab browsing, ad disabling, cleaner javascript, multiple platform support. Let's build on this take the browser even further. By constantly improving the user experience Mozilla can win back users.
Your average IE use doesn't know these features exist. If it became an issue, MS could easily incorporate them into IE.
Wal-Mart's loading Linux on their dirt-cheap PCs for the masses
Uh, they're loading up Lindows for the masses. And I suspect most of the masses are either going to return the machine when they find out it doesn't run their favorite Windows apps, or else reformat the hard disk and install Windows on it.
Find free books.
I suppose it's been just long enough for slashdot readers to have forgotten, but my project continues offline where the monopoly culture can't see the work being done.
This is perhaps for the best because there is a strong amount of dependance on the monopoly game that is making the economy very inefficient.
There is another way, but I just can't leak it into the orwell's internet.
Please stand by for the next few months.
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
From the interview:
IDG: How about just the idea of having an open source browser, the Opera Web browser for instance.!
Doh!
Debian: GNU/Linux done the Linux way
The 1.2.5 release of Galeon is awesome - lots of teething pains gone, just smooth, fast, accurate ergonomic browsing.
Micro$oft would have reason to fear if Galeon's devs were to cut some layers making Galeon capable of piggybacking Mozilla in a Windows environment.
Would take a ton of effort, but with Galeon's vastly superior UI, coupled with its strengths inherited from Mozilla, it'd be worth it a zillion times over.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
or maybe he's using dope (or opium)
An image comes to mind when I hear people lamenting the fact that microsoft has a monopolistic share of the browser market, and that is of Baby Huey.
You are all Baby Huey.
"My attitude is, everybody should try competing with Microsoft once in their life. Once."
The cool thing is that Microsoft has tried competing with Sony and Nintendo, and they are losing like crazy to Sony. Nintendo will ultimately beat Microsoft as well, giving them a little piece of long-overdue humble pie to digest for a while...
http://www.walkingtaco.com
The article refers to Opera as an open source browser.. last time I checked Opera wasn't open source.. am I wrong? I guess they mean cross platform.
But today I have converted another user to Mozilla. How sweet is that?
(open source) is clearly not compelling yet or (Opera)
Sigh; Opera's not open source. Of all the reasons to discount open source right now, the success or failure of Opera doesn't seem to be one of them.
I thought the term "open source" was supposed to help us eliminate the confusion between software-gratis and software-with-freedoms-included.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
This has been tried, and it failed. You're assuming that the average consumer/user out there actually CARES about technological superiority. They don't. IE is "good enough", and it already comes installed on everything known to man, including damned internet-ready refrigerators. For your AVERAGE consumer something has to be exponentially better before they will eschew it in favor of the bundled item. Netscape fought against this and look what happened to them. I'm not going to debate the legality of what MS did to Netscape because that's not the topic here, but suffice to say that I don't think there's ANYTHING Mozilla could possibly bring to the table that would reverse the current trend, unless they found a way to have it read minds and present holographic interactive representations of supermodels for your pleasure.
The problem is, even the NON-average computer users don't really see the point. I work for an ISP, and of about 25 people in my office (which is all tech support people, sys admins, etc) 2 use mozilla (I am one of them), 1 uses Netscape 4.x, and all the rest use IE as their primary browsers. The fact is, even a lot of computer savvy people (88% where I work) just don't see the need to use anything but IE (and outlook, for that matter).
So, Andreessen is saying: we are partners of M$, we have to kiss M$'s ass. Can we trust his opinion on browser wars ?.
I have to try to start converting my friends. I think they'll be amenable to the idea. I actually just showed Mozilla to my dad... he said, "Where do I download that from?"
My work here is done.
------------------------------------
Spiral out... keep going.
Don't forget Apple's recent campaign:
Switch!
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
It always surprises me that people treat Marc Andreessen as a "visionary". As I see it, he's a programmer of some talent who happened to be in the right place at the right time to be tapped by Jim Clark (the REAL visionary) to take his browser (which he did not invent, but merely polished the creation of Tim Berners-Lee) and try and make a new industry with it. Without Jim Clark (not just his money, but his business sense and entrepreneurial spirit), nobody would know Marc Andreessen today. So far as I can see, he's no more deserving of that kind of respect than any of a number of folks at Netscape. The ARE kudos that the folks at Netscape deserve, as the people at Netscape did an enormous amount to develop many of the technologies that have made the WWW what it is today -- but I don't see that Mr Andreessen deserves any more credit than anyone else.
Unfortunately,I have no knowledge of Netscape that anyone else couldn't get through the media, so these are merely the opinions of someone willing to question the popular perceptions.
I'm not trying to disparage the man, but IMHO, he's shown no particular managerial skills or any aspects of a true visionary. I expect Loudcloud to quietly burn through its VC financing, and slip beneath the waves, just another dot-com bomb.
The fact that he's so willing to accept that just because Microsoft owns the market today, they will always and forever do so, should discredit him as a man of imagination.
Just for a second, image the consequences of a hypothetical event like Homeland Security deciding to hold individual (and corporate) computer users responsible for the viruses their systems propagate, in an attempt to wake people up to responsible operation of their computers. In such a scenario, it wouldn't take more than a few highly-publicized cases of clueless PC users whose systems launch DOS attacks being prosecuted to change the dynamics of the marketplace significantly.
Change Happens -- All the Time.
No visionary expects the future to be anything like the present.
it's the corporate market that shapes the consumer markets. people will use the same products at home that they're use to at work. once some large corporations make moz/nn once again the browser of choice in their environment, ie will start to loose it's market share.
m$ originally combatted NN with bundling the browser. win 95 came with ie 3.0. at the time, people were willing to install NN because it was better. but when win started being included with IE 4.0 that changed. people saw that it was a fairly good browser, and gave up NN like last week's girlfriend. no phone call, nothing. when ie 5.x was getting started, and NN released their pathetic 6.0 browser it was just to keep a minute amount of people happy (it probably didn't really do that) and to kinda let hte public know they were still alive. again moz will change that. it's a better browser and once users (and corporate environments) see it's features and functionality, i see them flocking. IE's time is limited. when moz is able to replace win's file explorer all around, it will gain more share. it's still too easy to be browsing local files in M$ windows and just decide you want to bring up a web page, and type it in the address bar there. tabbed browsing and no pop-ups are an excellent start, now it's on to level 2...
Opera is open source? (Mentioned near the end of the article)
My email addy? should be easy enough.
He cites Microsoft's current monopolistic market share, and dares anyone to try and fight it."
I'll take that dare. I fight against Microsoft on a daily basis by never buying or using any of their products.
In your face space coyote!
The defender has the advantage. He is dug in, fortified, armed and expecting an attack. Microsoft is that defender. What does Mozilla have that will compel the average user to actually switch? Like AOL, IE may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but it's within easy reach and user friendly, where as everything else either has to be dug around for or is not as intuitive for AOL Joe to use. Yep, Mozilla may slice atoms, but would AOL Joe be comfortable using it? Say it with me-- "No". And as long as that situation exists, Mozilla and it's friends are SOL. I would think Netscape probably has the best chance (yes, I know. "Mo") at this game, but it needs something vital that IE doesn't have. Something everybody else wants. Until then? The guy is right. It's all MS+IE.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Large and bloated... It takes forever to load compared to IE
Pages take longer to load
Has annoying little UI bugs that keep popping up (ex. Typing in a new URL on the address bar occasionally causes the current page to reload, instead of going to the new page; focus doesn't always move to a field when you click on it, etc...)
Doesn't consistantly display pages correctly-I have pages that will display on my copy of Mozilla that my coworker can't get to display on his.
The average user doesn't have the slightest dea what open source means, or care about it at all unless they have been brainwashed into being as anti-Microsoft as a lot of the people on here are.
Mozilla definately has promise, and I love some of the developer tools that come with it, but I don't think the average user will put up with the many little annoyances I've found in it. It still has a LOT of work before I think it will be any sort of a threat to IE.
Your average IE use doesn't know these features exist. If it became an issue, MS could easily incorporate them into IE.
Yup - just like they have no idea what XML, XSL, SMIL, SVG, VML, XUL, etc. etc. is.
Do you realize if the mass of the public right now went to mozilla overnight, the moz. frontdoor would be the most popular site (because ppl on a whole don't know how to change their start pages)
Sigh, we're doomed as a race.
IDG's confusion was on whether Opera is open source, not on its marketshare.
Well, I didn't bother reading the article (because hey, this is slashdot), but I must say that I've actually had really good success convincing my intermediately-computer-skilled friends to use Mozilla. They don't have any sort of browser loyalty. I just showed them tabbed browsing with middle click, ad blocking, the sidebar, and they decided that it was better than IE.
That, and, I hear AOL is switching to NS6?
Anyway, why does it matter? Mozilla has enough users and developers now to support it as an open source project, so winning or losing the browser "war" doesn't mean much to those of us who just want a good browser to use..
Opera is one the of few companies who haven't spammed me yet.
I've been using Opera for the better part of two years, the last half year as a paying member. The only email I've ever seen from them is a thank-you for buying their product and the occasional update notice (which I gave them permission to do.)
Moz is a great browser - I'm using it now for pages that Opera has trouble with (only found two so far: a few Jobopolis postings and my bank's secure site).
In all my time using Opera, the only thing I've seen from them is an advertising banner in the top-right corner of the window. I'm even allowed to "recommend" which ads I want - and those preferences are NOT tied to any personal info. How do I know? I never gave them any, not even an email address.
Moz is great, but Opera is faster, leaner, light-years ahead of Moz's standard tabbed browsing... but given another few years, Moz will catch up and I'll gladly switch over.
Hmmm - maybe I should toss my resume in there, I seem to be advertising enough for them already...
We need to make sure people have the link to Mozilla as their signature. It should be part of their e-mail too.
photosMy Photostream
For me the browser war ended a long time ago. I chose Opera (mostly because I could set it to disallow pop-up windows and tabbed browsing). Now, Mozilla does all the things I like about Opera and it's free. What more can you ask for. Opera still opens all the things your were last looking at when you reopen it. I wish Mozilla did that (maybe it does. I don't know).
Oh, and to all those who claim IE is free, it's not. It has to run on Windows which costs you money.
Microsoft is like that Slurm Willy Wonka epsidoe of Futurama. Everyone knows the product is worm excrement, but they keep coming back to ingest more.
And you base this assertion on what ?!? Something you read in Time Magazine or Wired? Perhaps you should read up a bit from knowledgable sources before you jump down someones throat.
Marc was a poster boy. Nothing more, nothing less.
This has been tried, and it failed. You're assuming that the average consumer/user out there actually CARES about technological superiority. They don't. IE is "good enough", and it already comes installed on everything known to man, including damned internet-ready refrigerators. For your AVERAGE consumer something has to be exponentially better before they will eschew it in favor of the bundled item. Netscape fought against this and look what happened to them. I'm not going to debate the legality of what MS did to Netscape because that's not the topic here, but suffice to say that I don't think there's ANYTHING Mozilla could possibly bring to the table that would reverse the current trend, unless they found a way to have it read minds and present holographic interactive representations of supermodels for your pleasure.
While I see where you are coming from, I have to disagree. Look at Quicken, for instance. Microsoft fought that piece of software with MS Money for quite a long time, tooth & nail on several occasions. And on certain fronts, MS Money was as good as Quicken. However, Quicken still maintains almost 80% of the home finance market. Despite MS's attempts at bundling MS Money with MS Works, despite their discounts on it with purchases of MS office. Quicken does one thing, and it does it extremely well, and consumers know that. They really do care if it Quicken or not.
By that same token, I think consumers will really care about their browsers. I honestly think that IE won a lot of the market share because NS4 and especially NS6 were slow & buggy. (Of course, having the browser built inot the OS helps too). MS did have the better product, but they don't anymore. If AOL goes to a Netscape browser, and the consumers find the new features, the tabbed browsing, etc., I think there is a good chance of them not wanting to go back to IE. I was just speaking to a friend of mine who uses AOL earlier tonight, and she, albeit a textbook case of an AOL user, was asking me about other browsers because she had heard about some recent security holes in IE (e.g. Gopher hole).
There is a movement growing out there, and believe it not, AOL could be the best chance we geeks have to get an Open-Source browser back into the market.
Wal-Mart's loading Linux on their dirt-cheap PCs for the masses
Replacing their no-OS computers...
Apple's making thier systems ever more Linux frindly
So you can install Linux on an Apple system. So what? I can do that on any Wintel system...
IBM has given Linux their papal blessing
In the server market, which they previously used Unix in.
Peru and a few other enlightened Nation-states are considering Linux
Who's combined tech budget probably equals the budget for the Clippy development team at Microsoft, and who most likely weren't using Windows widely (older systems, most likely)...
ILM and the CG market is shifting to Linux
From mainly Unix and some Mac systems...
In short - none of the "victories" you've mentioned are really victories at all - they've had zero effect on Windows' market share. "Yay, Linux is beating Microsoft because some Unix users switched to Linux" doesn't make logical sense.
Why would a large company (other than AOL) make Netscape/Mozilla its default browser? Too much money to spend, so thus wants to increase IT costs?
Penultimate is an OS described by Graham Watkins
for one, they can have a product that implements the spec. in the past that hasn't gone a long way in the browser world, but it will. retrofitting websites isn't going to be that bad, most sites get or should have a lift every 6 months anyway. it's going to take a few months, but i suspect by end of year the corporate world will take heed.
secondly, it's the features. the marketdroids will need to have the kewl features, and will put it on their desktop. then they'll test the web changes using it. and then the development team will have to have it. it will slowly spread all around.
With all due respect, I believe Marc Andreessen is being intentionally short-sighted here.
First, he engaged Microsoft head-to-head and lost in a rather public manner. Second, the only way for a man of his stature to save face is to acknowledge that the battle could not be won. Third, Microsoft is a partner of Loudcloud, his new company, and they rely on Microsoft for their web-based application development business.
Call me cynical, but typical American business practices consider 18 months to be a long-term business horizon. I am not impressed by the estimates of people who live, work, fight, and lose in this environment, particularly regarding the impact of something as immense and subtle as an open source browser.
The fact is, open source impacts everyone in varying degrees, and in all cases, the magnitude of that degree is ever increasing, however slowly. Anyone familiar with the time value of money should be aware of the incredible power of the cummulative effect of time over an exponential rate. The issue is only whether the rate exceeds that of Microsoft's ability to respond. I contend that it does, but I am far too happy with the present situation to bother arguing the point. Microsoft is competing against human nature. It won't work for the RIAA or MPAA, so why should Microsoft be any more successful? Money in the bank cannot buy goodwill or customer loyalty.
-Hope
After Version 4.7, Netscape turned to solid crap. Yeah, it began to look better but it was slower than molassus and buggier than Aliens. Parent is right in that respect. All IE did was endure. Netscape killed itself and the other browsers were just crawling from under the rocks, still evolving into something actually worth competing with. IE won by defalt then fortified it's position by integrating it into Windows, which, contrary to popular belief is not monopolistic practice. It's their OS, their program. MS has the right to do whatever the hell they want to it; Even make it hostile to other applications. Their external business practices on the other hand...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
1 uses Netscape 4.x
The 4.x people not switching over is what keeps surprising me. I could see if someone had an older computer, but I keep hearing about 4.x users who refuse to use anything other than netscape 4 even when their computer could easily handle mozilla. I could see not using IE, but when you've got a product built off the continuation of the source, which won't croak on the things netscape 4 does, and which by default even looks like netscape 4 you'd think that'd be enough.
Somedays I think that we'll be seeing people browsing with their mentally controlled holographic browsers and the great grandchildren of these users will be still happily clicking along in Netscape 4.
Everything will be taken away from you.
Well I did my part of showing off Mozilla by starting with my Dad...
So recently, that lovely klez virus ran right through my dad's computer without him even knowing it. Thanks for his email client of choice, Outlook Express (Without any patches at all) he got a whole bunch of errors when trying to send mail. People with virus scanners were sending automated messages back to my Dad informing him of klez.
As usual my Dad calls me over to fix it. I explain to him just how flawed and insecure Outlook is. How that even with all these patches you can download and install, there will be exploits popping up in no time at all. My Dad didn't like the sound of that so he asked me what his alternatives where.
I layed out the few for him, Eudora, TheBat, and Mozilla. Perfectly timed, this whole klez incident happened a few days after Mozilla 1.0 was released. I eagerly told him about this browser+email client that after 4 years of amazing development, has finally reached 1.0 status. Him not being too fazed by all this asked me what I should pick for him. I went on to explain that Mozilla was pretty much no where near open to exploition as Internet Explorer or Outlook. Right away he said show me.
I installed it for him and showed him his way around. He has a large address book which he was worried would be lost, but Mozilla imported it perfectly. Within 5 minutes he was all up to speed on how to make it work.
So at least he's using the email part of Mozilla, but I'm sure with enough time and effort I can convert him to use the browser instead of IE. He mostly cares about his bookmarks since he has about 1000 of them organized. So I showed him that Mozilla already imports them. His mini-preview of the browser has been positive so far. Now I only need to take the step further to show him that it's also safer to surf the web with Mozilla.
Do your part, tell people how much better Mozilla is at web and email.
----------
Check out my blackbox styles
Not for dominance of being "THE" browser, but now it's for being "THE" OS. The article spoke about the many reasons corps. are moving to web based apps. As this infiltrates more and more, the need for a windows pc becomes less and less. This is the bus. I'm in and I can report from the front lines that over the past 3 years demand for VB C/S has dropped significantly and has been taken over by database web apps. Sorry for the rambling, but one last item...when is MS releasing IE for gnu/Linux or BSD?
Gizmos Gagets For Ninjas
Not in browser share, but something more subtle and important: Mozilla has destroyed permanently Microsoft's monopolistic control of the browser.
Without Mozilla, it was only a matter of time before Microsoft leveraged the power of its browser share to make more money. In a pre-Mozilla world, Microsoft could've made IE v.9.0 have a permanent default home page of MSN.com. Not anymore. Switching is too easy.
Even if Mozilla's browser share never makes it to double digits, it will always loom in the background, casting a long shadow, threatening to overtake IE should Microsoft fumble the ball. I call that a victory any day.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Imposter Boy
by Alan Deutschman, Gentleman's Quarterly, January 1997
The media and Wall Street believed Marc Andreessen was "the next Bill Gates" -- the singular genius behind the big high-tech breakthrough of the '90s. But his tale really was too good to be true.
His leg is twitching conspicuously--he seems impatient, unbearably bored, resentful that he has to try to sit still in the confinement of this windowless conference room, in Mountain View, California, and subject himself to the banal duty of yet another interview. Only 25 and already he's like a retired quarterback, forced to live in his storied past, condemned to retell his timeworn tales of collegiate glory to all the rabid hangers-on and sycophants and hero-worshipers at the tacky restaurant-bar where he's the front man. For that's what it was, collegiate glory, but not on the gridiron: As a senior at his Big Ten school, Marc Andreessen pulled off the geeky equivalent of a last-minute touchdown pass by writing an arcane computer program that would lead to a $174 million payday. At least, that's the legend.
So here he is, milking the boredom act, but it's not as if the interrogation is keeping him from attending to any weighty and urgent responsibilities, like actually running the computer he cofounded -- there's a hardened guy more than twice his age who does that. Andreessen's official title is vice president of technology, and he's nearly the most famous computer programmer who's ever lived (eclipsed only by Bill Gates). But it's not as if he needs to sit down in front of his screen and busy himself with the notoriously arduous task of hacking out a few lines of software, which, astonishingly, is something he has never done in the short but spectacular history of Netscape Communications Corporation, his closest colleagues have told me. Not a single line of computer code. Never. What Andreessen does, largely, is talk with reporters and make personal appearances at conferences and such. His real job is being the Living Legend, putting on a white Ralph Lauren polo shirt and new-looking blue jeans and hauling his six-four presence in front of his fans. And he's intolerably bored because he's told his story before, so many times that surely he knows is by rote, but he has to show that this is an unspeakably grating role for a man of such supreme intelligence, such technological sophistication, such worldly success. He's inured to the headiness of a reporter's rapt attention and the promise of spilled ink. His iconography is already replete: He's been photographed -- barefoot! -- for the cover of Time, canonized in a Newsweek cover store and in the big-city dailies, glorified by Business Week, treated like a Gen X hero by Rolling Stone and Details. He has achieved just about ever triumph of media overexposure outside of modeling khakis for the Gap.
This time around, though, the report doesn't want the Legend to retell the rote tale, providing the fawning article with the obligator quotes from the Great Man himself. Rather, I've been looking into his past. I have already visited the school in the boondocks where the story begins, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I have already talked with the people who worked closely with Andreessen in that remote locale. By now I know that he is more than a little like the Anne Baxter character in All About Eve, someone who was willing to massage the details of his past -- and in certain cases even to lie outright -- to make his story more compelling. Someone who was willing to let himself be the puppet of a powerful older man as part of the bargain in his fast rise to stardom.
I tell Andreessen that I want to reconstruct his role in the creation of Mosaic, the software program that led to his fame. "That story has been told before," he sniffs. So I say that I've talked with Dave Thompson, who worked with Andreessen when the future legend was a lowly college senior making $6.85 and hour in his part-time gig as a programmer for a research center on campus. Thompson said he was the guy who first proposed that the center write a so-called Web browser, not Andreessen. This point, which was confirmed for me by other people, directly contradicted the Newsweek cover story, which said that Andreessen came up with the inspired idea for Mosaic while enjoying a pastry at the Espresso Royale Caffe.
As I confront him with the discrepancy, Andreessen remain unfazed. Well, he says quickly and dismissively and stonily, in his characteristic low-volume bass intonations, since you already know the whole story, you don't need to talk to me. His tone betrays no anger, no emotion at all, but the response is blatantly sarcastic, and there's an outsize arrogance in his unwillingness to cooperate, as if he need not dignify any accusations by arguing on his own behalf, by expending the least bit energy.
It could be that, by this late date, Andreessen has repeated his story so often that he's come to think it's true -- that old trap of believing your own PR. Or perhaps he still grasps that the facts don't underpin the mythology and still has a conscience, and has gut gnaws him every time he has to retell the tale. For even among the greatest egotists, self-delusion goes only so far, and Andreessen of all people has to know that he's not the singular genius of the '90s technological vogue. He's its poster boy, straight from central casting, the obliging raw material for a media that yearned for a new, young hero in a field that had come to be dominated so thoroughly by one invincible corporation and one man -- Microsoft and Bill Gates. Alas, his true genius was taking credit for the work of others; his brilliant insight, that he could profit mightily from the ideas and achievements of a number of naive idealists in his academic field.
The myths promulgated by a lazy and gullible news media concerning the Andreessen story are numerous.
Myth Number One: Andreessen's Mosaic was the first Web browser.
Even as responsible and usually well researched a publication as Business Week has made this claim. Here are the facts: Before Andreessen began work on Mosaic in November 1992, there were already several Web browsers in circulation. The first, designed for NeXT computers, was written in 1992 by Tim Berners-Lee, the Oxford-educated Englishman who single-handedly invented the World Wide Web, that ingenious system for linking computers so they could more easily share information. (The browser is an important element of the overall system -- a software program that runs on a personal computer and connects it to this international network.) At the time, Berners-Lee was a stagger at CERN, the French acronym for a research lab in Geneva. Several of his colleagues there wrote other browsers that ran on different computer systems. And research around the world -- at Stanford, Berkeley, the Helsinki University of Technology and elsewhere -- all published their own browsers before Andreessen came into contact with the Web.
Myth Number Two: The Mosaic project was Andreessen's idea.
Essential to the mythology but untrue. The credit belongs to Dave Thompson, who was one of Andreessen's colleagues at the National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA), a research institute at the University of Illinois. In Number 1992, Thompson was a full-time career professional at the prestigious center, not a student. He came across a piece of junk mail from O'Reilly Associates, a publisher of technical books. (O'Reilly is to computer hackers what Knopf is to the literati.) The mailing was a sales pitch for a pamphlet about Internet technologies, including something called the World Wide Web.
Thompson was curious, so he went to his computer and ran Archie, a program that could search the Internet to see what information was out there on a specific topic. He wanted to find out what he could about this World Wide Web. Soon he was connected to the computers at CERN, which had two browsers available free to anyone who wanted to make copies. One had been created at CERN, the other by a former Berkeley student named Pei Wei. Thompson studied the programs. Both were "buggy," he recalls, and there were few Web sites in existence that he could visit using browsers. Still, he thought "it was really cool technology," and he was intrigued. Maybe the staffers at NCSA, whose mission was publishing software for scientists and researchers, could write a new, improved browser.
Thompson showed the browsers to Joseph Hardin, who ran the center's software group, a collection of a few dozen staffers. Hardin's reaction was, Wow, look into this. Which leads us to...
The Hidden Story Behind the Myth. Andreessen essentially snatched the Mosaic project away from the guy who'd had the idea. Soon after meeting with Hardin, Thompson made what would turn out to be a big mistake: He showed the browsers to his colleague Andreessen. Then Thompson went off to an out-of-town conference. Another bad move.
Andreessen acted swiftly. In one sleepless weekend, he hacked out a crude prototype for a new Web browser. (Andreessen's peers didn't consider him a great programmer, but he was known for being a remarkably fast one.) Then Andreessen used the prototype as a ploy for recruiting a colleague named Eric Bina to team up with him. Like Thompson, Bina was a full-time career professional at the center. Bina was a legend among his compatriots, the object of much awe and reverence -- a god of software. For one thing, he was tireless, reputedly capable of toiling for forty-eight to seventy-two hours straight, then sleeping for a mere two or three hours before he returned to work. Andreessen once called this "Eric's kamikaze work ethic."
Hardin, their boss, had to decide what to do with Mar. Andreessen had been difficult to manage. Hardin had assigned the student to report to Ping Fu, a brilliant full-time professional who had emigrated from mainland China, but Hardin know that things weren't working out between them. "Marc is no fun to work with," Hardin recalls. "He tries very had to make sure anything he touches he gets credit for. Ping doesn't stand for any of that shit."
Fu wanted Andreessen off her project, and he wanted off, too but that mean that he needed another assignment. And now he wanted to team up with Bina and write a Web browser. Hardin knew that somehow Bina worked well with the student. What's more, Hardin considered Bina a "knockout programmer," one of the best he had ever seen and thus a good choice for such a promising project. But then Thompson returned to Champaign and found that Andreessen had hacked out the prototype and gotten Bina on his side. Hey, Thompson said to Hardin, I thought I was going to work on this.
The colleagues gathered in a circular meeting room called the Fishbowl, and Hardin decided to let Bina the software god and the rambunctious Andreessen work on the browser. Of course, Thompson could be part of the team, too. But Hardin would later recall that it seemed as if Thompson felt "frozen out" and didn't want to work with the pair who had attached themselves to his project while he was away. Thompson passed up the assignment. "That was my fatal mistake," he now recalls with a sigh. He could have been the legend, the hero, the centimillionare. He could have been...Marc Andreessen!
Myth Number Three: Andreessen "wrote" Mosaic or "created" Mosaic or is the "author" of Mosaic.
To a large extent, the original programming was done by Eric Bina. And a big chunk of the computer code in the first version of Mosaic wasn't even Bina's own handicraft but consisted of lines that he freely borrowed or lifted from a kind of public-access library of software written by Tim Berners-Lee and his associates in Geneva and made available free of charge and in the spirit of sharing and academic cooperation.
Myth Number Four: Mosaic was an unprecedented breakthrough.
In reality, the initial version of Mosaic drew on the innovations of earlier browsers, which already included many features aimed at making the software easy and appealing for nongeeks, features that would later become staples of the genre, such as icon buttons (back, forward, home), bookmarks (for tracking the addresses of favorite Web sites) and a variety of attractive fonts and typefaces.
To be sure, Mosaic deserves credit for tackling two problems. First, earlier browsers were troublesome to get up and running, while Mosaic was a lot easier, thanks largely to Bina's programming skill. Second, Mosaic was the first published browser that automatically displayed pictures along with text, as in the pages of a magazine layout or an illustrated book. That was important because later on it would be the proliferation of pretty pictures that transformed the Web from the domain of scientists and hackers to a cultural phenomenon that captured the interest of the masses. Tim Berners-Lee, an intellectual in the grand European tradition, had preferred plain text on the screen, free of graphics, "because it forced people to be literate," he would later say. Although Berners-Lee's original 1990 browser could show pictures, too, any particular graphic would pop up on the screen only if the individual user clicked an icon with his mouse. Otherwise, the images remained hidden, unobtrusive.
By late 1992, the leading players in the Web community knew that integration pictures and text was the next important step in the evolution of browser software. (In Berkeley Pei Wei was working to add this feature to his browser, for instance.) Ideas and innovations spread quickly because the players remained in close contact. Back in 1991, Tim Berners-Lee had set up and E-mail forum, WWW-Talk, that served as a common source of news, gossip, information, collaboration, technical problem solving and intramural debate for the far-flung pioneers of the World Wide Web (who, typically, were researchers at universities and high-tech corporate labs). WWW-Talk was the town hall for this fledgling virtual community, which was spread across two distant continents but remained just as small and communal as a nineteenth-century New England village. Using the computer screen to mimic the look of a magazine page wasn't Andreessen's original idea -- that idea was out there on Talk.
On Monday, November 16, 1992, Andreessen made his first, inconspicuous appearance on WWW-Talk, announcing briefly and a bit cryptically that he was "hacking something up," referring to his new browser. That day he also sent a private E-mail message to Berners-Lee, introducing himself and mentioning that he had been surfing the Net and checking out the Web browsers that had already been published. "Seems to be very impressive," Andreessen wrote (in what appears to be an uncharacteristic but utterly appropriate bout of humility). In his search, Andreessen would have found not only Pei Wei's browser, called Viola, but also the one from CERN and another from Finland. And that same Monday, he surely would have noticed Tony Johnson from Stanford Linear Accelerator Center proclaiming on WWW-Talk that he was making public his own browser, Midas, which had been in use at Stanford University for a couple of months. Midas introduced an innovative feature that would become standard in future browsers: After you clicked on an underlined word or phrase (which sent you to a related Webs site), the color of that text changed, to serve as a gentle reminder that you had already checked out that particular "hyperlink."
The next day, Andreessen wrote again to Berners-Lee. "I'm starting the game late," he acknowledged. It was true: Much of the hardest work in the creation of browsers had already been accomplished by others working together in a collegial way. A week later, Dave Raggett at Hewlett-Packard's research lab in Bristol, England, posted a thoughtful WWW-Talk message about the need for making Web pages look more like the pages of an illustrated book, with pictures that are "part of the document." The following week, Berners-Lee informed the subscribers that Raggett was "writing a completely new browser."
It was only a matter of time before a Dave Raggett or a Pei Wei realized the next crucial advance: text with pictures. Andreessen and Bina would have to race madly to beat them -- and that's what they did. They deserve credit for speed, yes, but not for brilliant inspiration or an original idea that revolutionized the field.
Myth Number Five: Andreessen hatched Mosaic as an unsanctioned project that he worked on instead of his "real" assignments, without the knowledge of his unenlightened, bureaucratic bosses, who only much later would find out about the program and who reluctantly endorsed the software once it was already a hit.
The Newsweek cover story dutifully reported that for Andreessen and Bina, writing Mosaic "sure beat the work they were supposed to be doing," a colorful piece of folklore that has been repeated widely in the press. The truth is that their boss, Joseph Hardin, endorsed the effort from the very start, in November 1992, when Dave Thompson first shoed him the browsers he had found on the Geneva computers. And Hardin was clearly a strong supporter of Mosaic: He took Bina off his earlier project, which was one of the center's highest-priority efforts at the time, and reassigned the software god to work on Mosaic instead. He reassigned Andreessen too and followed up by putting more and more staffers on the team. And Hardin instructed Andreessen to show Mosaic to Hardin's boss, Larry Smarr, who runs the entire 500-person research center, in February 1993, when the software was still undergoing trials, testing and debugging, some two months before its official release (as "version 1.0") on April 21, way before it became such a hit that it attracted media attention.
Although it's far more romantic to portray Mosaic as a renegade, guerrilla effort, that's not what it was. Tellingly, there's only one thing that Andreessen did that he wasn't "supposed to": spending a weekend hacking up a crude prototype as part of what appears to be a maneuver for taking the project away from Thompson.
Myth Number Six: Andreessen put together the team and ran the Mosaic project.
Actually, Hardin was in charge all along. Not only wasn't Andreessen the official leader but he opposed forming the team and expanding the project. The first version of Mosaic was geared especially for expensive computers made by companies such as Sun Microsystems and used mainly by scientists, engineers and computer hackers. (Side note to technology buffs: We're talking about Unix machines running X Windows software.) Mosaic was an instant hit amongst this small but elite population. In keeping with a long-standing practice at the research center, Hardin wanted to create versions of the software for the kinds of computers owned by everyday people -- PCs and Macs, which together accounted for some 95 percent of the consumer market. Hardin says that Andreessen was strongly opposed to his plan, afraid that Mosaic's graphics wouldn't look nearly so impressive on the less costly computers, that his achievement wouldn't seem to grand. Hardin went ahead anyway, assigning a bunch of his other staffers to work on the new version. Eric Bina disputes this, saying the mass-market browsers were really Andreessen's idea.
The Hidden Story Behind the Myth.
Andreessen was the "leader" of the Mosaic team only insofar as he incited dissension and resentment within the ranks. In the fall of 1993, he was looking to make himself the de facto leader of Mosaic rather than just one of the many programmers working on what was becoming a very large, visible and important project. After Hardin went home, Andreessen typically remained in the office building's basement with the midnight hackers, the guys who, like himself, had no lives. They would be his constituency.
All along, the hackers had thought that the research center was the place to be. If you were a computer-science student at the university, you had to be smart enough and lucky enough, one of the chosen, to land apart-time job at this prestigious center, which would set you up with your own office and a computer. NCSA had the best machines on campus -- Andreessen, for instance, had a Silicon Graphics Indigo in his basement office, and expensive machine, far better than a Mac or a PC, and he had it hooked up to a cable-TV line, so he could watch the Cable News Network in a little window on his computer monitor. As a student, you couldn't beat that, recalls Andreessen's colleague Aleksandar Totic, who wrote the Mac version of Mosaic and now works at Netscape. So what if you earned only a few bucks an hour? Most hard-core computer-science students would have interned there without any pay at all, Thompson recalls.
But now, in the fall of 1993, the hackers were under Andreessen's charismatic influence, and he was trying to convince them that the center's managers -- especially Joe Hardin -- were petty government bureaucrats who were using the hapless students to promote their won agendas rather than championing the hacker heroes in the noble, pure quest to create the coolest software around. (For his part, Hardin thought of himself as an idealist, too, an "old hippie who came out of the '60s," in his own words.)
Andreessen needed a big issue, and he decided to organize a resistance to the academic research that Hardin was supporting. Hardin wanted to conduct a study on what people actually did when they ran Mosaic and explored the Web. The center would gear up some special software to keep precise records: What documents did an individual look at and for how long? What features of the software did he use most frequently? and related questions. This sort of research is fascinating to social scientists. It's also a terrific source of insight for software developers looking to improve their programs, which is why companies such as Microsoft invest heavily in such pursuits.
But Andreessen rallied the opposition of the midnight hackers, claiming that Hardin's research represented an invasion of privacy (hackers tend to have fiercely libertarian political beliefs). The argument was nonsense, since the study would use only volunteers and guarantee their anonymity. No participants had to fear that spouses would discover they were checking out some Web site plastered with pornographic images, for example.
Andreessen's ploy seems especially mean-spirited, self-serving and manipulative because only months earlier he had helped promote Hardin's ideas, even co-authoring Hardin's proposal. On February 23, 1993, he posted a message on WWW-Talk announcing that the center was interested in "gather and analyzing sociological data" in the name of "real academic research." He explained that "this would be entirely voluntary" and that "all information would be held in the strictest confidence." And he told his fellow Web enthusiasts that their cooperation in this study would help the center build better software, making the project "a particularly exciting concept for us."
But now, months later, Andreessen was looking to assert his leadership, to rally the troops, to undermine the authority of the group's real manager. In response Hardin assembled the programmers in the Fishbowl. "I think you're missing something huge," he told them. But the dissent was so strong that Hardin acquiesced and abandoned the user study. Andreessen had won. Soon afterward Andreessen had the temerity to approach a deputy director of the center, who ranked above Hardin in the organization's hierarchy: I should be the one running Mosaic, he said, not Hardin. Andreessen was rebuffed.
Andreessen's efforts to create discord among members of the Mosaic team had its apotheosis in the New York Times episode. In late 1993, few reporters on the technology beat at major newspapers and magazines were hooked up to the Internet, a word that rarely surfaced even in the longest articles about the beat's mainstays, such as Microsoft, IBM and Apple. But John Markoff of The New York Times' San Francisco bureau was deeply immersed in the culture of the Net, gleaning insights from its posting and cultivating sources among its denizens. Markoff viewed the Internet as his "personal research library," and that was one of the reason he was arguably the top technology report in the country, quick to see news and trends.
A Silicon Valley hand told Markoff that Mosaic was a "revelatory experience," so the Times man pursued the story. He called Larry Smarr, whom he had known and respected for years. The two men talked frequently, and Markoff considered the NCSA director a helpful source. Smarr referred the reporter to Joe Hardin, who in turn led him to Marc Andreessen. Markoff interviewed Andreessen by phone, but he made no mention of the student in the draft of his article, instead drawing quotes from people like Smarr and Tim Berners-Lee.
Soon the Times dispatched a photographer, Steve Kagan, to the Illinois campus. Following instructions from New York, Kagan shot portraits of Smarr along and Smarr together with Hardin. Hardin assembled the Mosaic team, the guys who actually wrote the software, and insisted that Kagan take a group picture, too. The photographer obliged. Then Hardin encouraged him to publish the team portrait. "It's not my call," Kagan said.
On December 8, 1993, Markoff's big feature on Mosaic led off the Times' business section. "think of it as a map to the buried treasures of the Information Age, " he wrote. "A new software program available free to companies and individuals is helping even novice computer users find their way around the global Internet, the network of networks that is rich in information but can be baffling to navigate." Then, prophetically, he reported that Mosaic's fans believe the software was "so different and obviously useful that it can create a whole new industry from scratch." Alongside the text was a photo of Larry Smarr and Joe Hardin.
The hackers felt betrayed. Management wasn't on their side, just as Andreessen had been saying all along. The government bureaucrats were trying to steal the credit for their achievement. the tension that Andreessen had been stirring was at an all-time high. the center's offices were filled with resentment. And Andreessen had established himself as the hackers' leader, their champion. That month he graduated and left for northern California, where he met a guy named Jim Clark.
Aftermath: The Rise of the Myth.
It's burdensome for many people to try to grasp the arcana of computer technology, but it's easy to understand a simple human story, and that's exactly what they had: Jim Clark, the fatherly 50-year-old Silicon Valley legend, discovering and mentoring Marc Andreessen, the 22-year-old prodigy in the mold of Bill Gates, the next impossible young, crude, sloppy, boyish, sleepless, burger-devouring techno-wizard who would rock the computer industry. Together they cofounded Mosaic Communications (renamed Netscape in November 1994), hiring away five of the programmers from the Mosaic team in Illinois, guys who were bitter about how things had turned out at the research center. Their mission: Create a new version of Mosaic and sell it. For three years, academics in Europe and the Untied States had worked together, not seeking any profit, freely sharing their work and ideas, creating something really interesting, inspired by ideals. Now it was time for someone to cash in, and Andreessen and his cohorts were aiming to be the ones to do it.
The media would be their greatest allies. Clark was about as media-savvy as they come. As the founder and chairman of Silicon Graphics, which was one of the hottest growth companies of the '80s, he was interviewed frequently and had appeared on the cover of Fortune, no less. In 1994, before it had created a software product, the nascent Netscape launched a shrewd PR campaign, spreading the Andreessen mythology. Looking back, it's hard to discern to what extent the company's executives manipulated or misdirected reports through careful omissions and inclusions (no crime, that) as opposed to outright lies, although both clearly played some role. But the media were complicit in creating and promoting the myths -- failing to dig into Andreessen's past, not taking the time to understand the technology and the issues involved and, most of all, composing oversimplifications (this tech stuff is complicated!) that morphed into falsities that turned up on countless Nexis searches to be repeated over and over by those harried souls on deadline. Overwhelmingly, reports and their editors wanted, needed, to believe the mythology. Technology was and remains the hottest topic in business journalism -- the tech stocks have been prime movers in the extraordinary bull market. But the software industry is utterly dominated by Microsoft and Bill Gates, who by the mid-'90s had crushed or humbled almost all the colorful individuals who once dared to challenge him, even in isolated niches. The press needed someone else to write about, for God's sake!
The media and Wall Street loved the Andreessen myths. On July 11, 1994, Fortune featured Mosaic Communications as the lead in its feature on twenty-five cool technology companies, writing that Andreessen had "put together a team" to create Mosaic (see Myth Number Six). On October 28, the San Francisco Chronicle wrote, "At age 23, Marc Andreessen is being talked about as if he were the next Steve Jobs or even another Bill Gates" and said that he had "created" Mosaic (Myth Number Three). Jim Clark called his protege "the smartest person I can ever remember knowing." On November 13, the Los Angeles Times called Andreessen a "boy wonder," a "cyberspace star" and the "author" of Mosaic (Myth Number Three). On July 23, 1995, The Washington Post wrote that Andreessen "is already being classed with some of the visionary pioneers of the industry, such as David Packard and Bill Hewlett."
On August 9, 1995, Netscape sold its first shares of stock to the public, and when trading closed, Andreessen was worth $58 million. Jim Clark made $565 million on the deal. All of the guys who had abandoned the NCSA were millionaires, too. And Jim Barksdale, 52, who had previously been the number-two executive at Federal Express and McCaw Cellular and who was now the guy who ran Netscape, held stock worth $245 million.
The killings on august 9 marked the fastest ascent of a business prodigy ever. Even Bill Gates ran Microsoft for eleven years before he took the company public in 1986 and really made his fortune, and he was on the verge of turning 30 by then. But this new kid was only 24, and his startup had been in business for little more than a year. The Wall Street Journal proclaimed, "Mr. Andreessen is Silicon Valley's newest start and some say its next Bill Gates," and The New York Times said, "Mr. Andreessen...is seen as a Wunderkind in the same mold as William H. Gates."
The papers seized on Andreessen's personality quirks that fit the Gatesian image, as if being a slovenly hacker proves that you're a great computer mogul, too. "He doesn't own a suit and traipses around in baggy shorts, shirttails aflutter," wrote the Journal. "He works so late into the night that he often oversleeps and misses appointments. He eats -- usually ketchup-drenched burgers -- 'like a horse, both in quantity and mannerisms,' Mr. Barksdale recalled." USA Today duly reported that Andreessen "never bothers to decorate his apartment" and "wears shorts to work, sometimes with a tie."
By December 1995, the value of Andreessen's stock had risen to $174 million. Around Christmastime, Dave Thompson read in the Newsweek "Year of the Internet" cover story that Andreessen had thought up Mosaic while hanging out at the Espresso Royale Caffe. "It started not with a cosmic plan, but with a pastry," proclaimed the authors. To Thompson that hurt. He knew that it had all started with a piece of junk mail and his own curiosity and enterprise, not Andreessen's. Meanwhile, in Berkeley, Pei Wei's friends showed him an article in Business Week that described Mosaic as "the first Web browser," when in reality Wei had created his own browser beforehand, and the Mosaic guys had studied it. "I'd get pretty annoyed," Wei recalls. "It really annoys me that the popular press makes it look like Marc did this single-handedly."
And one day at Netscape's headquarters in Mountain View, a bunch of University of Illinois alumni jokingly made Andreessen sit in front of a computer and pretend to write a few lines of software code "for PR reasons," recalls his Netscape colleague Jon Mittelhauser. "Marc never wrote code at Netscape," he explains. "We'd all agree that he's not that good a programmer." Mittelhauser also says that when Jim Clark recruited the Mosaic team to join his startup, he assured them that Andreessen would not be their manager, such was the young man's reputation.
Nor was Andreessen anyone's manager during Netscape's rise. There was no one who directly reported to him (aside from his secretary). Bill Gates and Steve Jobs provided the archetypes for the precocious computer entrepreneur, but Andreessen assumed the requisite iconic image without wielding the power, without accepting the hair risks of running his own show. All along, he was a willing prop for an older Silicon Valley wise man, who saw the PR value of a youthful figurehead in an industry that equates youthfulness with innovation and inspiration. These days PR and image making, not scientific genius, are the key to wealth creation in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street.
-----
PGP Key ID 0xCB8FF658
Im have felling to that am have the slasksfot the person! Ihave first port mother fucjker!
I'm where I say something at end of the lineComentes?
As far as I remember, Andreessen was a competent programmer who was able to make a big buck by transfering intelectual property from an open source/freeware inniciative (Mosaic) to a privately owned enterprise more or less exactly at the right moment. All "vision" he might have had was poured upon (into?) his head by "whatwashisname", Netscape founder and first CEO.
Where MR mmmmmmm I thank for him to say I can have the fisrt podt muthr fucher shalshdot person I hAVE IT! OK? FISSRT PORSTOST FIRSTP POST FIRST POST FIRST POST FIRST POST Im like the salshldot name! im have the first post. Imhvase just like the slashdots! poeple!
I'm where I say something at end of the lineComentes?
If MS gives me IE to destroy netscape, thats illegal
Um, and how's that? Microsoft made the OS. It's theirs. THEIR OS. They OWN it. They can do whatever the hell they want to it because THEY MADE IT. Oh, did I mention they created IE too? It's THERE'S. They MADE it.
Now that we've firmly established that MS owns both the OS and Browser, HOW THE FUCKING HELL IS IT ILLEGLE FOR MS TO INTEGRATE THE TWO!??!? HUH!? Honestly, I'm so sick of this crap! Does that mean it's illegle for Adobe to add filters to it's Photoshop Product? No!!! Nor would it be illegle if they made it so the only filters that worked were 1st party ones! MS created and owns the Windows fucking OS and they have the RIGHT to do whatever the hell they want to it you ass-monkies! YES! THEY EVEN HAVE THE RIGHT TO MAKE IT HOSTILE TO OTHER APPLICATIONS!!! If you don't like it, if it oppresses your sensibilities, if you can't stand MS's iron curtain, VOTE WITH YOUR WALLET. Download something else!!! IT'S NOT ILLEGAL FOR MS TO GIVE YOU IE WITH WINDOWS TO DESTROY NETSCAPE!!! Just like Mcfucking Donalds doesn't have to offer you a Wopper with your value meal, but they sure as hell will throw in some McDonalds Fries!!! Stop being a mindless media drone and think for yourself for a change. I'm not saying MS doesn't play dirty, but for cryin out loud, what you're protesting is a fair business practice that occures everyday on a large scale across the world. I know it's a rant and I really don't care about anybodies reply on how the crusade for Netscape and against MS must continue. Save the whales and all that. Don't waste your time.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
some one make Iam the Offtipoc that is good? I have the slashdot nmame also i make the slaslhldot person also?
I'm where I say something at end of the lineComentes?
Lastly, it is in his best interest to believe and promote that Microsoft is impossible to fight against becuase he did and lost. If he were to allow himself to believe it is possible to win against Microsoft, he'd have to admit he's a failure. Just like the Spurs rooting for the Lakers to win--if the Lakers are unbeatable, it makes them feel better for losing. Imagine how the Celtics feel after Wednesday night...that's Marc Androgenous after AOL & Mozilla kick MS' ass in the new browser war, baby!
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
My God, Andreessen's battles with MS not only took the fight out of him--they took his balls, too. I get tired of his monotonous "bend over and submit" stance regarding competition with MS. I think in his fall from the heights of his previous success, his head hit the concrete a little too hard. I mean, big things are happening in the world of MS alternatives, and it seems to be picking up. I think disgust with MS practices in the eyes of people--and important people, no less--has reached critical mass, and there's no turning back. Since's Andreessen's become one of Ballmer's Biyotches, he's gonna behave like one. It's sad to see a man lose his manhood that way. Really sad.
Personally I'm finding Andreessen to be very pessimistic and trollish in vision. This is the man that once had a very ambitious vision, but it looks like the failure of his company against the Goliath of all companies has quelled his visionary persona just a tad.
"The bad news is the browser is kind of done" he says, well I hardly think so. Personally I feel the way the Internet works currently is irksome and could use a ton of tweaking. Indeed, there is only so much one can do to comply with standards, but it's taking those standards and actually doing something with it. Tabbed browsing, advanced print control, faster load times, better download support, built in anti-pop up, meta refresh notification and so much more! We must being taking the browsers beyond displaying a web page and actually providing useful information or helping the user browse more efficiently.
Ford didn't say "alright guys, you know, this car is certainly going forward, backward, left and right well enough, I don't think there's too much more we can really do...", no, he and his predecessors kept thinking up new ideas, making their cars safer, easier to handle, more fuel efficient, quieter, sleeker and so much more. He went beyond the basics of forward, backward, left and right and built a company on innovation. If Andreessen doesn't realize this then I don't think he's someone that should be heading the project to take on Microsoft.
There are many more advancements a browser could be made to do or support, we're only entering the knee of the bend here, we're starting to look up high, this isn't the time to be afraid of heights.
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
Its nice to read a sensible perspective that actually believes the big beast can be slain, and that it can, and is happening right now. Also, it livers me to read these comments in the article that MS have 93% of browser market share. This is bollocks and is not what server stats report from around the globe. Hearing quotes like that, seem to come straight out of the marketing department of MS, and need to be seriously challenged. Mozilla is one of the most significant developments on the web for ages, and it is the web that will promote it, just like linux in the early days. Enlightenment is on the way.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
But the key point here is that this is Wal*Mart we are talking about, and what this move really means is that Wal*Mart might be doing something to Microsoft that they do to every other supplier in their supply chain: squeezing every dollar out of them they can. Seriously, Wal*Mart has (I believe) quarterly meetings with all of their suppliers whose sole real purpose is to find ways to get Wal*Mart the product they want to sell more cheaply. When the product is PCs, however, the discussion pretty quickly hits the brick wall of MS licensing fees, which I don't think can ever be made cheap enough for the Behemoth from Bentonville.
It is pretty clear (to me, anyway) that Wal*Mart is exactly the kind of company that could really do serious damage to Microsoft if their market share in PCs through Wal*Mart and Sam's Club stores turns it up a notch. At some point, you will see then *insisting* that (say) HP ditch Windows on the systems they sell, and use some cheap combination of Linux, StarOffice, and a browser like Mozilla to squeeze out an extra $50 or $100 on the cost. Grandma will then fire up the PC she got from Sam's, and the browser will work just fine as will the email and the simple word processor thingie. And that should be the moment when MS first knows genuine fear.
Anti-trust violations are *nothing* compared to the pain you can suffer at the hands of Wal*Mart. If Ballmer and company are lucky, they will have by that time retreated to the role of permanent leech on the corporate desktop and cable broadcaster. Not horrible businesses, but world domination will not be in the cards.
Babar
It's also always darkest before it goes pitch black.
actually, it's darker after it goes pitch black.
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
"Note: A download is NOT FREE. It costs time, and in many places of the world bandwidth is not flat-rate, so its not even "free" in that sense."
Take a gander at your EULAs. For IE, you're only allowed to make a backup copy of the download. For Mozilla, it's do as you please. This means in countries or places where it's not flat rate, they can make as many images from one download and spread it everywhere for a low, low cost!
Praise digital, praise free software, and boo towards trolls. Thank you, have a nice day.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
No, after version 3.x. Version 4 was much, much slower on any computer at the time. It felt as slow then as something like M13 feels now if you compare it to "real" browsers. Version 4 would often have to "reread" IMAP spools, reindex things, lose settings, try to support CSS and fail, had a broken proprietary DHTML model, loved to crash, had memory leaks... need I go on?
The big 4.x push in Netscape is something that was mainly a product of the marktetting department, not properly designed code. To say that it went to shit after the worst went by is just insanity. The Netscape 6.x stuff, while not super-duper polished like a complete browser (remember: it branched from around M18), at least functioned better than Netscape 4. It did CSS, CSS2, it didn't leak memory as much, and it certainly never crashed as often as NS4 (8 times in 4 hours is my record).
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Because! I've never! seen! so many! exclaimation marks! in an article! before! for no apparent! reason!
He didn't even plug Loudcloud, except for mentioning the name.
I'd like to know where that 93% figure comes from as well. Looking at the stats for my domain, IE comes in at 65% (including all versions of IE and AOL). I think the beast will eventually die, and to a large extent by its own hand. It does a lot of things which many find unappealing. Given the lack of publicity $$ of open source, it may take time for the unenthused to learn that they even have alternatives on the PC. Some may switch to Mac OS/X, but unless Apple seriously competes price wise with commodity PC hardware, the revolution (evolution?) is unlikely to come from it alone. It may take some time, however. MS has nowhere to go from here but down.
... but wasn't there a time when both IE and Netscape charged for the install CDs? However, if memory serves, both were available to DOWNLOAD for free. I distinctly recall downloading Netscape, at least, back in the day. And for a long time in the beginning, IE wasn't nearly the best - it only really started eating into the Netscape market AFTER it got more stable and faster than the Netscape code... not to mention being bundled with Windoze. At first, it was neither more stable nor faster than Netscape.
IE outpaced Netscape merely because MS utilized their monopoly position to kill the company - not only by the whole bundling issue, but because they had an enormous amount of resources to throw at the problem, compared to Netscape. Those are the perks of cornering one market - you can use the capital gained therein to corner whatever other markets you want to. Call me crazy, but I think that's why we have anti-trust laws.
------------------------------------
Spiral out... keep going.
I don't know how reliable the user ratings are at www.download.com are but it is interesting to note that Mozilla 1.0 has a rating of 87% whilst IE 6.0 is at 54%.
While Mozilla may never come out on top it can reduce Internet Explorers browser share, and always competition is a good thing with software because it will encourage Microsoft to make IE more secure.
aus.music.scrapbook
HTML-based browsers are fine for e-brochures and content, but overall lousy for B-to-B and intranet business forms.
What is sorely needed is a remote GUI browser standard similar to HTML, but for good ol' fashioned GUI's (the kind you make with VB, Delphi, or PowerBuilder). HTML+DOM+JS is too clunky and unnaturally suited for biz forms.
Please don't say XWindows. It runs poorly over HTTP, and other xfer protocols/ports confuse firewalls.
There are several draft proposals and protocols for such floating around, most based on XML. It just needs some big-name company or person to push it/them.
Table-ized A.I.
Nice soap box speech.
Now, here's a dose of reality. How many people here can get their mothers to switch to Linux and Mozilla.
I thought so.
I just wanted to say that IE6 is the very reason I now use mozilla... IE6 SUCKS! It can't even open Favorites properly without opening them in the first open browser window!
What the hell is up with all of the exclaimation marks in that article? Did they have too much happy soap?
Remember it is darkest before sun rise.
Actually, it's fairly light before sunrise. The sky is blue and you can see quite well. You should wake up a little eariler and you could see for yourself.
I too was excited when I saw this earlier today... until I read the comment that pointed out the ugly truth:
Those Lindows-based machines are sold on the web only, not in the retail stores. Very few among "the masses" will buy their PC on-line... generally that's the realm of tech-savvy folks who already own a computer and are buying another one.
It'll be a different story when a linux-based PC is sitting right next to a windows-based PC in the retail store, with a $99 difference in price. I hope those days are coming soon. Someone mentioned that Fry's is planning a $300 PC. Fry's doesn't really have a web store, so maybe they'll be the ones to truely break the ice??
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Your comments about how Wal-Mart is loading Linux, Apple doing this and IBM doing that and some countries are considering ... etc. reminded me of the old days when i used to use OS/2 and how excited we would get on some irc #os/2 channel with such stories when a new bank would announce they were loading OS/2 on their ATMs ;-)
Ha...such memories.
Keep in mind that what we are doing in these type of discussion threads is little more than what would be considered "self-patting on the back".
--sidster
Play lotto? Try http://www.alottofun.com/
But I dont think the desktop will become the battlefield, to fight explorer on "the desktop"(windows/mac) would be very VERY lame(imagine M$ fighting Apache by creating a *nixport of iis).
:)
;) OS, gecko is actually the only choise here.
No Mozilla/Geckos secret weapon MUST be embedded devices, because here M$ simply doesnt stand a chance. Because:
A. to quote mozilla.org: "It is Open Source. Unlike other embedding choices, all of Gecko's source code is freely available and fully customizable. You can tinker and tweak as much as you need. Yet, depending on the license chosen, it is quite possible to use Gecko as a component in what is otherwise a fully proprietary commercial product"
B. Gecko is designed to leave as small as possible fingerprint on the memory. This will help in wrist mounted browsers etc
C. Almost ALL embedded applications run some sort of custom(ized
In 5-7 years time, i think most people will use gecko on a daily basic. But, i think the usage will be transparent. Etc. when browsing the net on their new television or what ever.
Take an example, this year the Geckobased browser will arrive for the PS2. As i understand the first 500,000 units that are being manufactured of the netkit (modem, networkcard(for broadband) and a netscape browski) is alread spokenfor in japan. This is more new Netscape users than netscape have been able to lure in the last ##??## years, and its just the tip of the iceberg. I dont have the imagination visualize what theyll end up putting browsers in. But im positive that a shiteload of new gecko users will be created through embedded devices, and knowing how anal most webmasters are. This will mean a LOT less sites will render incorrectly in our favorite interpreter.
I dont think mozilla will challenge on the desktop though, BUT i think when gecko finds its way out into various telephones, televisions , satelite recivers consoles etc etc. This will help ernormusly with getting M$ to follow the w3c guidelines for HTML/XML/WHATEVER-ML implentations.Because nomatter how arrogant they are, they want to give the customer an illusion of being satisfied. Meaning if a customer watch a webpage on his television(through his sons ps2) and on his new Palm2004 and they look fine in both, hell be mad @microsoft if they look kinkay in exploder.
>Oh, and to all those who claim IE is free, it's
>not. It has to run on Windows which costs you
>money.
.....Please shutup....
Browser wars this browser wars that. The browser wars were not real, they existed in the minds of a handful of pundits trying to fill up a magazine column or Linux users harkening back to the good old days which they scarcely remember. OEMs went from bundling Netscape to not bundling Netscape at Microsoft's request. This was more of a "Microsoft shot a cruise missle up Netscape's ass" than a browser war. Microsoft improved IE and bundled it with Windows at the same time as Netscape bloated the hell out of "Communicator" and turned it into a piece of shit that took an hour to open. There will not ever be another so-called browser war because even with broadband internet connections (among only 5% of American internet users and even less elsewhere) why would they download a different browser if the one they have works? While you can praise Mozilla's features all you want (and I've tried to do before) most people don't care enough to go through the hassle. Better is entirely subjective.
However Mozilla doesn't face a bleak future by any means. Netscape is 0wned by AOL who is in constant need of a web client for their software. Netscape, through Mozilla can reliably and effectively provide that. AOL has dropped IE and turned to Netscape for their browsing needs. I wouldn't be at all suprised if AOL rewrote their client to use Mozilla's core libraries. The AOL client would run with little modification on set-top boxes, Macs, and PCs. Mozilla technologies I believe are going to end up a very important part of future AOL software. Who needs another "browser war". AOL can easily pull off a browser coup by switching umpteen million AOL users from Microsoft to Netscape in the course of a week. Not to mention the millions of Macs shipping with Netscape as of 10.2 with the other millions of 10.1 users upgrading. Users will switch not because Netscape/Mozilla is better but because they are fucking handed the software. That is why they started using IE anyways.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Alot of you are forgeting that browser integration was a good idea! It was the next logical step and I happen to love being able to type a web address just about anywhere in my OS and be able to goto a website. There is no more browser war because, to the average user, there is no such thing as a seperate browser. MS has deleted the idea of a non integrated browser from the common users brain 4 years ago with the release of win98. Let's face the facts here guys. The end result will be a MS vs. Linux war, not a IE vs. Mozilla war. Linux has been copying MS ideas since it's birth, Browser integration should be the next idea it copys.
Oh yeah, that's gonna happen. If most of the masses were at that level of knowledge, ability, and comfortability with computers, Wal-Mart could have just kept on selling "naked" PCs and let the buyer both decide what to install and do the installation.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
You didn't catch all that, did you? Granted, I wouldn't mind seeing what you are talking about happen, but it will be a long time coming. Like it or not, Microsoft IS the standard right now. Most developers MAY want to code to a standard and not a browser, but when one browser owns the market, you better make damn sure that your web page looks and works good in that browser. Even if you have to break the "standards" to make it that way.
I don't know how to point this out to you guys, but the purpose of Mozilla is NOT to attempt to unseat any browser king.
Mozilla exists to provide developers (that's us) with cross-platform web technology.
Sure, on a Windows platform you can just grab the IE ActiveX control and slam it into your program. No problem. That's what gets done. But what if your application has to run for Mac as well? Unix? (not likely there)
The purpose of the Mozilla web browser is to TEST and DEBUG the LIBRARY. Mozilla technology is intended to be used by NETSCAPE and OTHER COMPANIES that need to bundle it.
Oh hell, here's the URL
If you actually bother to explorer Mozilla.org a bit more, you'll find all kinds of USEFUL RESOURCES for DEVELOPERS and VERY LITTLE RESOURCES FOR END USERS. This is BY DESIGN
To close, Mozilla isn't here to fight a browser war. Netscape isn't here to fight a browser war either, they're here to enable AOL to provide a browser for it's users. Galeon and Konqueror, likewise, aren't here to fight a browser war. They're here to provide a browser-based interface to your desktop. Opera? Maybe they're here to fight a browser war.
Microsoft defeated not just Netscape in the browser wars, but also the idea that we could just lay a window manager on top of windows. They went after Netscape (as you recall) not because they wanted to control the web, but because they thought Netscape could be turned into an OE. Same with Java. Same, same.
That brought the "fight" to the next level, the kernel. I believe Linux will win in the end, but I don't personally think the fight is worth it. I gave up being a visionary years ago.
test
The point was, that with IE you don't even have to spread it around or use time installing it. It's just always there.
You may be able to copy Mozilla all you want, but you still have to use time to get that copy (whether it's downloading it from the 'net, from the internal LAN or walking over to the head geek and getting it on a CD) and then use time to install it.
You obviously never saw the HP-UX version of IE.
#exclude <ms/windows.h>
Mozilla already boast features that IE does not have: Tab browsing, ad disabling, cleaner javascript, multiple platform support. Let's build on this take the browser even further. By constantly improving the user experience Mozilla can win back users.
So true. Microsoft now has catching up to do on these features. The problem is that, while MS can keep devoting manpower to a project, os only keeps devoting manpower as long as it stays interesting. I expect the development of Mozilla to slow down soon, now 1.0 has been released.
That said, I do not expect MS to implement certain features into their browser that make mozilla so pleasant to use: the turning off of popup/under windows and the ad blocking features. I do not believe MS will hamper advertisers.
the pun is mightier than the sword
Sure, IE has 93% penetration, but it got there not only because it was bundled, but because developers wrote code for it.
I was not interested at all in scripting web pages during the time of two separate object models (Netscape and IE). Too much headache and pain, not enough return. Now, looking at Mozilla's support of the W3C DOM, I'm really interested in writing browser-based applications. Part of it is that MS sits on the W3C and at least nominally is committed to supporting those standards.
Another part is that I know, regardless of platform, I can deploy a thin application with one code base. Even my boneheaded MCSE-heavy IS&T department recognizes this value, and if I said "we can do this on *any* platform now and it'll be really easy," there would be little resistance to installing a free browser.
Developers have a lot of leverage, and Mozilla is an attractive platform in its own right:
Microsoft's standards support is just enough that we can start coding in the direction of the recommendations without disrupting IE users (too much) while making the case for broader standards support.
Ultimately, it's up to developers to be vocal and support the platforms that enable them to do the most good.
So it is misleading to say that IE is always "just there" whereas Mozilla always has to be downloaded or borrowed from a friend. Also, I'd hope to see this situation changing in the near future as OEMs are freed from MS' illegal monopoly agreements.
Female Prison Rape in NY
We can only hope he is trying to get more costumers.
MS 91%, Others 9%. Remember where people are next time, please...
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
The thing is Mozilla and Linux and OSS is not making Microsoft lose market. It's making them lose MONEY. Because the had everyone by the balls, and they where ready for serious PROFIT harvesting...
And now they can't, and people blame their bugs, hungs and they get bad press. They are still doing pretty well with 40B in cash. But the industry/countries are starting to discover those 40B could have been in their pockets if they have adopted OSS earlier, or promoted competition.
I am all for trying to kill Microsoft revenues at all costs than to see Linux installed in 99% of the computers. Even a low number of Linux boxes can affect MS's price-choosing abilities: they don't want to lose market share.
Sorry, the post is a bit repetitive (it's late here).
unfinished: (adj.)
I use Moz at home, and almost all of us at work use it too. Office lady saw it the other day (modern theme) and wanted it on her machine. Last nite I installed it on a friends machine.
running ie and there are many exclamation marks all over the place as well
The interview posed the question hypothetically. First he mentioned Opera as an obscure example (rather than Mozilla), and then he wanted to context Open Source as a selling feature vs the market champ, IE. You will notice the parens around certain words in Andressen's responses; it means the editor inserted words that Andressen never actually said, supposedly to give the response a clearer context.
Its possible that you are dead-on in your interpretation. But based on the presentation, you can't in fairness conclusively determine the interviewer was a dolt.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
I think you're living in the idealistic world where the winner is the product that does the basic job better. I (and most people) don't live in that world.
If you think that there's a correlation between MSIE's quality and its popularity increasing over time, you're deluding yourself. MSIE got popular because MS said "Make everything we do exist in the context of the Internet." Shortly thereafter, a TCP/IP stack was shoehorned into an operating system, some Spyglass code was licensed, Word could save HTML docs, Outlook could send mail, FrontPage was cabbaged together, and PWS/IIS was foisted upon an unsuspecting public.
As the number of people getting computers rose, so did the number of MSIE users. They saw an icon that said "Internet", they clicked, the modem dialed and they were placing orders in Beanie Baby auctions and finding naked pictures of David Hasselhoff in short order. But quality had nothing to do with it. They could have been running batch files which were telnetting to port 80 and piping to more for all their web browsing -- most of them wouldn't have known any better nor cared one way or the other.
MSIE was a truly horrible browser for a long time. In many ways it still is (holy wars aside, I doubt that merely viewing web pages with a browser besides MSIE will get you infected with the trojan du mois). It could have been the zenith or the nadir of browser technology and it still would have been just as popular.
Anyway, long story short: Don't attribute to thoughtful engineering and careful testing that which can be adequately explained by anti-competitive acts of market aggression in search of an abusive monopoly.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Slowing?! Now Mozilla.org has a stable base to build on, they can add features and improve performance at a much faster rate than they could before 1.0. Now the API is stable, apps can be built with it, instead of having, say, Jabberzilla break when a new milestone comes out.
Actually, there's no need for any act of God — Microsoft has much more serious financial problems than every technical problem with all of their products combined. Read the Microsoft Financial Pyramid Summary and other articles from the Research and Press Release Archive of Bill Parish. All we need is a critical mass of people who have read it — especially among the current and potential MSFT shareholders — and they're boned.
Krótko: kady Erotomek
W pimiennictwie ma swój domek.
"Don't fight with MS on their turf/by their rules" has been tried before, and it just does not work.
Oh come on. That is just rubbish. Methinks you wouldn't make a great strategist.
Linux is a relative exception, but only (IMHO) because there is no corporate entity behind Linux that MS can attack.
You see? You've said it yourself. Linux is having outstanding success in server space, and part of the reason is because it does not play be MS's rules. It is developed and supported by multiple companies/individuals which makes it a nightmare for MS. Strategically it's fantastic because not only is it successful but there is no effective strategic response for MS to counter the attack.
If your enemy starts using weapons you haven't got which are more effective than yours, then the normal response is to try to develop equivalent or better weapons. With the GLP, it's next to impossible for MS to do that. Now that's what I call good strategy.
There's a great old article called "The Browser is Dead" about how bloated browsers have become nowadays ... though I've grown to love all the bells-and-whistles built into IE.
There's doodads like font-embedding (via Microsoft WEFT), Vector Markup Language support (an SVG rip-off), and TIME (an animation language, a SMIL rip-off) which virtually no one ever uses, but are there, apparently for shits-and-giggles.
The bottom line is that Netscape gives me no incentive to switch.
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
He couldn't care less about extra security, tabs and whatnot. Really, convincing people to switch browsers will be pretty hard now, IE is too entrenched. However, Linux is a different story - people are unhappy with Windows, users and retailers, and I think this recent WalMart deal with Lindows (which btw doesn't seem to be as bad a distro as some claim) shows this. And what is the premier browser on Linux? That'd be Mozilla.
One way to gain market share would be for a P2P Mozilla project(Sharezilla) to be started. Good file sharing software catches on quickly.
Opera 6.x has sod-all usable DHTML support. I don't know where you got this strange idea of yours, but Opera's engine is still pretty much a static one, whereas the other graphical ones are damn near all dynamic.
You state that Andreesen, the guy primarily responsible for promulgating browser technology for the masses, is wrong based on....based on what ?!?
Andreesen just wants to justify his failure and switching into the enemy's camp -- the only thing he can do to make himself look as a less of a moron is to claim that enemy is invincible.
In fact his contribution to anything other than Mosaic is negligible, and no one cares what he thinks.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Interesting how Mozilla 1.0 failed to correctly render the interview... I'll have to go back and check the page source. BTW, Andreesen is quite right, in business terms: the browser wars are over, and J. Random computer user really doesn't give a damn as long as it seems to work. Emphasis on the word "seems". _That_ is where the proprietary software vendors get away with all sorts of shades of gray.
C|N>K
i agree it will take time for linux to take over but linux will outlast. this coming from a microsoft person, MS will get to the point their licensing fees will drive people to find alternatives. I see that and all though some of the linux world doesn't match ms for ease of use on some things for the masses in the end its functional and free or reduced costs.
21% of the users in my market segment (medical education) still use Navigator 4.7x. Shudder.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
He cites Microsoft's current monopolistic market share, and dares anyone to try and fight it.
Okay, sure. The simple fact is, Mozilla is open and free and it's not going away. It's simply going to improve and the longer it's around the more people are going to realize how much better it is. Every revolution starts small.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
I remember back in 1999, some time after Netscape had OS'ed the code to Gecko, reading about the state of things at Netscape in the years 1996 to 1997. I remember one netscape engineer on a forum responding that the morale of the employees was in fact extremely low and a lot of people there had this fatalistic feeling about their browser and the company. he also claimed that management had basically already given up.
This last bit is interesting because I have the feeling that while Andreessen might be a good coder(although that is debatable as well considering the desaster that NS4 turned out to be), I think he has a habit of going in the wrong direction. He says that he works with MS as a partner and we all remember what happened to Realnames. It's a dicey business and not entirely risk free.
I think Mozilla has shown that in spite of the long development time OSS can provide a truly good , uptodate, standards compliant, 100% crossplatform browser, something that even MS with their IE on the Mac has not been able to achieve.
I somehow can't get rid of the feeling that he is upset that Mozilla got where it is without him.
It always surprises me that people treat Marc Andreessen as a "visionary". As I see it, he's a programmer of some talent who happened to be in the right place at the right time to be tapped by Jim Clark (the REAL visionary) to take his browser (which he did not invent, but merely polished the creation of Tim Berners-Lee) and try and make a new industry with it. Without Jim Clark (not just his money, but his business sense and entrepreneurial spirit), nobody would know Marc Andreessen today.
Out of curiosity, were you around on the Internet in 1993-1994? Marc was the lead developer who came up with this incredibly addictive toy whose usage was doubling every month and generating a huge stir. I avoided it for six months in late 1993 and early 1994 having heard how cool and addictive it was, lest I further neglect my studies. It was really the first piece of software that blended three elements: hypertext information retrieval, GUI ease-of-use, and layering that on the worldwide Internet infrastructure. (A decent account of what he did, and which elements were new, can be found at MIT's Inventor's Dimension.) Don't underestimate that GUI component, which was Marc's main contribution; it's what made the Internet accessible to the masses.
Clark was a techie turned capitalist who, having failed to figure out how to take the 3D graphics technology he had pioneered at SGI and make money in the upcoming PC 3D graphics revolution (which he foresaw, but ducked: full 3D on a chip costing $20 and selling on PCs for $30-200) was looking for some new arena where he could 'win' and turned his attention to how to make a buck on this new "Mosaic" thing. He succeeded brilliantly, but as with SGI, he never figured out how to take a technology he had pioneered and turn it into a business with a defensible end-game. Clark has some business sense but I think his virtues are a lot more a shrewd sense of timing and trends than an ability to build a sustainable business. This might be too harsh on him; perhaps it was an impossible task given his "competition": the leverage of Microsoft. But the failures at SGI and Netscape were failures of business vision and strategy, his responsibility, not failures of the technology guys, Mark Andreesen (or, say, Kurt Akeley).
I'd agree with you that Jim Clark was responsible for giving Marc the name recognition that he has today... Clark did this I presume since he recognized that anyone could go build a browser, but only one company would have the "inventor of the browser" on their staff and the insight, marketing, and recruiting advantages that would bring. Without that, Marc would only be as famous as, say, Tim Berners-Lee. You've heard of him, I notice. And I'd agree that Marc Andreesen noticed the missing pieces in part because he was at the right place at the right time, developing software at a university that was a supercomputing center hooked into the physics community of Tim Berners Lee, etc. But it was Marc who saw how to turn a hypertext system for publishing physics papers and linking footnotes into a mass medium.
Marc's vision was innovative and technical and it succeeded. Jim Clark's vision was business-oriented and capitalistic (which is no crime) and it failed after making a few rich. Now who deserves accolades as the visionary?
--LinuxParanoid, who didn't have enough vision to accept that offer to attend University of Illinois in the early 90s...
And what would be the point of asking whether it is possible to gain browser market share from MS, when the person being asked the question was in no small part responsible for the loss of the very same market share for Netscape ?
>With the GLP, it's next to impossible for MS to do that. Now that's what I call good strategy.
Hah! Don't forget that on all previous occasions, MS has proven to be *considerably* smarter that a bunch of semi-retarded, social misfit loons. So what price your precious 'GLP'?
The 'browser wars' were over a *long* time ago, and MS won hands down.
It's really rude to misquote people this way. Your editing makes it sound like I was saying something I wasn't.
Wal-Mart could have just kept on selling "naked" PCs and let the buyer both decide what to install and do the installation.
It costs them zero to put Lindows on it, so it doesn't matter if they expect any significant number of customers to use it. It's a feature they could add for free, so they did.
Find free books.
I'll counter your point by saying that Quicken was an established brand with a dedicated, loyal following in an emerging market. MS had to fight an uphill battle to try and take over Quicken, and it failed.
One could argue that Netscape was also an established brand, which they were, and MS fought an uphill battle. You will recall that they were LOSING that battle as well until IE started coming bundled with the OS. A browser is not something as "critical" as a personal finance app. So long as it works, most people are happy with whatever they're given. If it's free, so much the better.
I'll go out on a limb and say that if MS offered Windows XP and Office XP for free, Linux would be having a MUCH harder time being accepted, and may not have ever gotten to where it is today. Yes, yes, I know, I'm preaching blasphemy in the church of Linux here, but one must consider how non-interested the vast majority of consumers are in technological superiority. Unlike us tech-head, they just don't seem to give two damns. How else can you explain the existence of AOL?
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
That's not a problem, it's the solution. The next computer they get has Red Hat on it with KDE desktio default. As long as they can read their old work, surf, email and isntant message, they will be as happy as they ever were. As Andersen pointed out, the biggest factor is what browser comes with the computer.
The problem comes when you have people who have spent way too much time with Word docs and other little endless mazes M$ makes. Their work will be next to impossible to get out of their current computer, even into the latest and greatest M$ cruft. These people also resent it when all of their little shortcuts and lefthand clicks are replaced and they have to learn something different. These people can be helpful once they've lived through one or two M$ upgrades with all the loss of work. They learn, slowly, but they learn just like the rest of us have. Still, you have to get all thier junk out. Macros, VB, shudder.
People will be much easier to move in the future. Remember that it's only been a few years since PCs took everything over. What is it, 60% of PCs still have Windows 98 on them? What this means is that most people have never suffered a real M$ upgrade. After one of those, you can swap out everthing and make them just as happy as anyone.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
>Microsoft is like that Slurm Willy Wonka epsidoe of Futurama. Everyone knows the product is worm excrement, but they keep coming back to ingest more.
I think your brain must be mostly worm excrement.
It would be nice if opera was open source.
Then someone would fix those annoying javascript bugs and it would be the perfect browser.
I know you are serious and I don't mean to belittle you but its not that big of a deal for society at large, really. Whether someone uses Outlook Express or Eudora, IE or Mozilla, Windows or Linux, the world will survive regardless. None of this is going to matter diddly squat for their "children's future".
Maybe you could take a day's break away from the computer. Just hang out with some friends or go see a few movies, eat out, do something. But you're in way too deep in the whole "computer" thing.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
here he distracts the reader's amusment from M$ including actual viruses on their CDs with a swipe at BIND.
here he tells us Lindows is second rate.
here is a real gem, where he calls free software advocates stupid, retarded and pubic hairless. Nice.
here we have a pure flame that was moderated well.
Well, there you have it, a typical M$ loudmouth. The man must mod himself.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Oh come on. That is just rubbish. Methinks you wouldn't make a great strategist.
Really? Why? Because I choose a practical, realistic view of things instead of an incredibly overblown, hyped-up, Linux-will-rule-the-world view of things? Try being a pragmatist sometime. You'll find you're disappointed much less often.
You see? You've said it yourself. Linux is having outstanding success in server space, and part of the reason is because it does not play be MS's rules. It is developed and supported by multiple companies/individuals which makes it a nightmare for MS. Strategically it's fantastic because not only is it successful but there is no effective strategic response for MS to counter the attack.
If your enemy starts using weapons you haven't got which are more effective than yours, then the normal response is to try to develop equivalent or better weapons. With the GLP, it's next to impossible for MS to do that. Now that's what I call good strategy.
Rubbish? Methinks not. Linux may be having "outstanding success" by YOUR standards, and perhaps even by the standards of peer competitors, but not by MS, and certainly not in the mass corporate workspace.
Sure, polls indicate that Linux/Apache is the most popular OS/webserver combo there is -- how many of those are business sites versus personal sites? Quite a lot, actually. If you check Linux penetration into the Fortune 500 market you'd find it good, but absolutely steamrollered by MS and/or Sun no matter what yardstick you use. Linux is gaining, but to call it a success means you must qualify your statements. Apple thinks THEY'RE a success because they have 4% of the market. While they may call that a success, I call it a niche. Linux occupies a very good, very successful, somewhat-large-for-the-definition niche right now, but they are not a runaway success. Linux MAY become a runaway success, and I think it has good chances of becoming MS's only successful competitor, but not quite yet.
As to Linux not fighting on MS's turf, you're right, they're not fighting on MS's turf -- yet. But in order to enjoy the success level that MS currently resides at, Linux will have to change. It will consolidate, it will unify, and it will become less technical, more GUI, and more standardized. It will, in short, almost have to BECOME Windows to take over the server room AND the desktop. I will argue that perhaps Linux SHOULDN'T try to do this, that it should be happy with the server market and concentrate there. Unfortunately large swaths of the Linux population (especially here) seem to want to own the world, why I can't imagine.
MS owns the I.T. world right now and look what they've had to do in order to get there -- bloatware, bugs, holes, etc. Do not fool yourself into thinking Linux can somehow transcend these pitfalls because it's open source. There is nothing magical about open source that exempts it from these failings. If anything, the discontinous nature of open source development can even work against it by preventing close collaboration (yes, I know, it CAN also work the other way, but it depends on disparate parties working together for the common good, and that doesn't always work either). And don't throw the old "you've got the source so you can fix it yourself" ploy out there. Programmers, as a percentage of users, are small in number. Most of them have other jobs to do besides delving into SOMEONE ELSE'S poorly documented, poorly written, poorly understood code, trying to fix a bug somewhere. It may be neat now, but it's anything but neat when you've got a project to finish and a deadline to meet.
The truth is not pretty, but it is reality.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
>the marketdroids will need to have the kewl features, and will put it on their desktop. then they'll test the web changes using it. and then the development team will have to have it. it will slowly spread all around.
You clearly have *no* fucking idea of how the world actually works, do you?
>The thing is Mozilla and Linux and OSS is not making Microsoft lose market.I am all for trying to kill Microsoft revenues at all costs than to see Linux installed in 99% of the computers...
Why?
Oh boy. Not you again!
Shaaaadddup you little know-nothing prick.
As much as I cringe saying this, two words, America Online. AOL/TimeWarner has already started testing a Mozilla based browser for their Compuserve division. If Mozilla pans out as a competitive browser (which it looks to me like it is) I could see AOL/TimeWarner deciding to switch the rest of their user base over. They are in a tizzy with M$ right now and considering they, and this would be a way for them to poke M$ in the eye. Considering they are the largest internet provider in the US that would make a big impact.
Oh, and you should probably say with the OS's 95% of the world is using. Windows alone has closer to, or less than, 90%, it is only when you add Mac OS do you get to that 95% mark.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
[Read before moderating, this is not a flamebait]
Guess what, the interviwer's question was *what if* Opera was Open source and had a huge market share, would it make a difference?
He was using Opera as an example because Andreseen told the guy that he wouldn't comment on MS's antitrust lawsuit because MS is a partner to hir company. If it's any consolation, you're obviously not the only dolt around bacause all the people who answered you and moderated you up didn't get it either.
Like Americans even know what 'food' is! I mean beyond a big-mac and a huge, tasteless steak that is?
This won't work at all until linux becomes truly user friendly.
Sure Mandrake takes a step in the right direction, and maybe in a few years it will reach that point.
The average home user doesn't want to:
- Know what a kernel is, or ever have to compile one. They should be able to click on 'System Update' and have their system automatically updated without any hassle, much like Windows Update. They don't want to wait long, so the kernel better be sent precompiled.
- Ever have to type ANYTHING in a terminal window. Everything should be modifyable from a simply control panel. This is not yet the case on linux, but perhaps it will get to that point someday.
- No editing of text files EVER. Sure it is easy to install new drivers for your video card, but when you have to RTFM to get it working it pisses people off.
If any company started shipping Mandrake computers to the linux crowd the support costs would be HUGE. Users would be calling every 5 minutes, trying to understand how the hell to get their computer working.
Nobody cares HOW a damn computer works, they just want to click on 'Internet' to browse the internet, and have everything handed to them. Computers are supposed to be a tool, not a hassle.
Given yesterday's bit about Lindows boxes at Wally World, can we forsee the Army Of Lemmings (AOL) coming out with a Lindows version that is way beyond groovy, and set about evening the market?
I doubt that they could offer enough to coax me back, and Andreeson's remarks make me wonder if they're forward thinking enough to do that, but it would be cool, particularly if they used the bully pulpit of market share to drive in the direction of W3C standards...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Click in address bar. The entire URL gets highlighted as a result (same as IE).
Now with the entire URL highlighted in this way, try to use the mouse to highlight only part of the URL. You can't do it!
You must set the focus in the address bar WITHOUT highlighting anything before you can highlight a subset of the existing URL.
It's the little things that kill you.
Also, the wheel mouse doesn't work on Mozilla.
My wife has, and she's about as un PC savvy as they come. As long as she can shop online with it and send & receive e-mail (using evolution) then she is happy. Both applications work as well as their MS counterparts.
I think it is easier for app developers to use Moz. This way their app can easily be ported to other platforms like Linux, BSD et al. You CANNOT do that with IE. This is a major selling point for Moz.
Doesn't this sound a bit like Russia saying the US could never challenge Afganistan during the early stages of the war on terrorism.
Why do people who get their ass kicked always talk trash when another person steps to the plate?
Pride?
Let's keep something in mind here, folks: Marc Andreessen is not a neutral party when observing the next-generation browser war. The current Netscape is based on Mozilla -- it's no longer "his" Netscape. This, I think, is the same line of thinking that got JWZ so upset about the Mozilla project. Netscape, while employing people like Andreessen and Zawinski, produced a first-generation browser that swept across the market because it was the only one there, but quickly got taken down by a company with monopoly power in the desktop market. This time around, Netscape has a better browser than Microsoft, but it's not the one they helped build. Sounds like a recipe for sour grapes to me -- or at least an apathetic attitude.
In the end, though, Microsoft didn't win the browser war -- open standards did.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Really? I was under the impression that IE was given away. It doesn't have any market share. Rather, it is just preveneting a market from developing - standard operational procedure from the repugnant Redmond company.
Micro$haft is a doomed company. IBM tried the same tactics in the past: tying customers into one platform by using proprietary hardware and software. It almost destroyed them. M$ is doing the same things. With the explosion of the internet and large, diverse data systems interoprability is the watch word. It is well known that M$ stuff will not play nice with anything else. This is their cheesy attempt to lock their customers into a monoculture. And then there is the exorbinate price you must pay to use the Windoze virus distribution system, Software assurance anyone, and don't forget to factor shakedowns by the BSA into your total cost of ownership (TCO)! Enterprise customers are begining to to ask for Linux by name, its only a matter of time before they start outfitting their desktops. I know its not perfect yet but between Gnome, KDE, Star Office etc its at least as functional as WinBlows. The cost in productivity of working around a couple of the real nice thing MS has built into their software (product integration) will be recupped by not having to reboot everyday (BSOD) and having your entire network infected by some skript-kiddie's cookie cutter virus. M$ is starting to hemerage market share, and itl die by a thousand small cuts. Remember, Rome wasn't looted in a day!
Stupid kills
Isn't he the inventor of the tag? Now, if the tag is his idea of the future of web browsers, why should I care about his views?
Three reasons why Mozilla, (not Netscape) will gain market share.
1. Security (MS could theoretically compete on this point)
2. Ability to turn off popups.
3. right-ckick "block images from this server"
In other words, Mozilla gives back control of the user's computer to that user. I am betting that once people see this they will choose Mozilla every time.
> How many people here can get their mothers to
> switch to Linux and Mozilla.
>
Alright, not my mother but my wife. Get all Linux applications that are available also for Windows and install them. That's where cross-platform applications like Mozilla truly shine. It's awesome that it's possible to use the exact same app in several different Operating Systems and you'll be amazed how appealing the argument "Learn once, use anywhere" is to many people, even if they're using Windows as main OS.
After they get used to the applications, switching the underlying OS becomes *much* easier because you don't have to relearn everything.
Take a look at the document "Findings of Fact", avaliable here.
Google Zeitgeist reports "Top 10 Gaining Queries" for the week ending June 10, 2002. Number 5 = mozilla
So there!
As slashdotters noticed, the author of the interview admites that the Opera browser reference was a bone-head manuever. Never realized that it wasn't open sourece, it's on my Zaurus so I just assumed!
It isn't. The story was erroneous
IDG: How about just the idea of having an open source browser, the Opera Web browser for instance...
:p
Anyone have the tarball handy?
NGWave - Fast Sound Editor for Windows
Andreesen was irrelevant when he was at Netscape and he's still irrelevant today. Why the media pays him any attention is a mystery.
I've always admired Jim Clark, the founder of SiliconGraphics and Netscape. I bought his book "Netscape Time: The Making of the Billion-Dollar Start-Up That Took on Microsoft", but I haven't started reading it yet. Should I? It seems relevant to this discussion.
1.ability to block popups
2.ability to block ads
3.ability to turn off javascript
MSIE used to have the ability to turn off javascript. Why was this feature removed?
Answer: The same reason MSIE will never contain the other two features. Because it would destroy the financial basis of the MS internet properties, MSN, Hotmail, etc. which are all ad based.
Just because MSIE is "given" to the consumer, doesn't mean that it is free.
Mozilla, on the other hand, is free, free from a commercial adjenda, in addition to free of cost, and free to use, distribute, modify, all the goodies of Gnu. It gives the user the ultimate freedom the decision of which internet properties to support, which ads to view.
My prediction is that, if Linux every gets going on the desktop, MS will give away their OS. They will do this because they know that they will make more money by controlling the users computer, where a user shops, how they pay, etc. than they will make if they sell the product and lose market share. The only reason they are still selling the OS is because people are still willing pay for the priviledge of letting MS dictate their online and general computer xperience.
So does Ford now have to make their cars compliant with Toyota parts or aftermarket modifications? Are they required to include some small third parties speedometer in a addition to their own when you buy the car? Do they have to give "Ace Speedometers" a chance to represent? No, No and No. And guess what? Neither does MS. Does Sony have to make their PS2 compatible with Nintendo media? Are they about to? These are the real life examples I'm refering to.
Your right, MS doesn't have the right to do whatever the hell they want in the broadest sense of business, they do have a right to tailor their product anyway they see fit. BTW, their are alternatives to Windows, remember? And why did Netscape suffer in light of this? You tell me; Pertaining to the OS, of course.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
It's darkest in the middle of the night. It's coldest just before the dawn. Don't know how that got confused in popular speach.
Long, long, ago, I used Netscape (well, a little longer ago it was Mosaic, but I digress). IE was usually slower and dumber. Things changed. I stayed with Netscape for quite a while - until I needed Hebrew webpages. The cludgy integration of non-Latin fonts into Netscape made me want to kill it. So, I switched to IE in version four - and it was wonderful - full support for many wacky charsets (and their damned variants) I sometimes need. I used to use IE with Opera, using IE only for sites that needed it, but recently, I stopped using Opera (though it remains installed) because 6.x has been buggy on my machine.
:-).
:-).
It will probably stay that way, because the advantages mentioned with regards to Mozilla (rather, specific features - there remains the advantage of non-MS products) can be had with a couple of small addons - such as Crazy Browser and more importantly, The Proximitron which allow pretty sophisticated control over what gets displayed. For me, IE with add on adkillers is the best solution - and before you suggest that I am a unique case, keep in mind there are a lot of odd languages out there. For example, Farsi, Syriac, and of course, Arabic are not only RTL, but use contextual fonts.
I think there is a shortsightedness that MS actually avoided here. For example, I was on the Syrcom mailing list for a while. Microsoft worked with the list's moderator and other interested developers to make ISO adhereing contextual RTL fonts. In W2K, they would show up as an Arabic font, but in WinXP, Syriac is an independant language, with the user developed fonts available on the standard release CD (at least on Pro, I dunno about Home). A quick check of Sourceforge says Ayuta for Linux (Ayuta=letter in Syriac) is in development stage 1. Huzzah.
To add support for a foriegn language in W2K/XP is both trivial and well integrated from notepad on up - instead of using Hebrew word processors, MS Word works quite nicely - and spell checks in Arabic and Hebrew. This may be another element of Microsoft's monopoly, but many monopoly's are built in areas that no one thought to care about. Multilanguage support for bilingual users is something that microsoft spent a considerable time on and it is reaping the benefits - everyone using "strange" fonts plus Latin chars is using 2K or XP. This is not altruistic on MS's part - having an OS where the only regional component is the text in the help files and GUI is handy for MS - but more so for developers, and users.
Sorry for the rant, but this has bugged me about both Netscape and Linux in the past - ultimately *functionality* weaned me off both. When I build a firewall, using Linux is a no brainer. But for anyone who might need other languages in addition to those which use the Latin set, anything but 2K/XP is kludgy, non-standard or only supports some of the standards.
I hope this is rectified at some point in the future, because it does limit one's options. And if something else, be it Mac, Linux or whatever has managed to rival this level of integration without me noticing, please let me know - without flaming - I am interested only in using a computer as best suits my needs, not to advance a platform... though maybe to advance a social platform too
P.S. To the curious or confused, in simple terms, Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic primarily used for religious purposes in the various Syrian churches. Rather important for academics in Relgious Studies, Comparative Linguistics, and sometimes Classics and historical Philosophy - when Greek philosophy was banned by the Church, it was available in Arabic editions which had been translated from Syriac editions, which in turn, were done from the Greek. The old Estrangela style of font is my favorite, it looks like it came out of Star Trek or something
Leben Sie jetzt die Fragen.
AOL (Netscape) has filed their private law suit against Microsoft.
And, unlike the current action by the States, the AOL law suit does charge Microsoft will attempted monpolization and tying of the browser to the OS.
In the States' action, those two issues were either not resolved (remanded) or pre-mature (only 50% market share achieved). That will not be the case for the AOL law suit.
Now, no doubt that AOL wants a hefty damage award and that could reach over 10 billion dollars. But, they are also asking for injunctive relief and could require Microsoft to sell the browser separately.
Keep in mind that the States' proposed remedy would only require Microsoft to either unbind the browser or sell two versions (one bound, one not bound). The proposal currently before the court does not require the OS to be sold separately.
The AOL (Netscape) law suit will be significant. Not only could AOl pick up some spare change, but injunctive relief could require the browser to be sold separately. Or, in the alternative require Microsoft to offer an OS sans browser so that Netscape or Opera could be packaged with the OS going out the door. That is not necessarily the case in the currently proposed remedies.
Microsoft (even under the remedies proposed by the States) could just unbind them, permit OEMs or end users to delete IE but still force all consumers to buy it. And, in all likelihood that is what Microsoft will do.
After all, forcing consumers to buy key products is the primary objective anyway. Integrating it or claiming it is integrated was just a legal excuse. Besides, integration does not require the bundling of the sale of the products anyway. Excell and MS Word are integated. But, you do not have to buy both of them.
NexuSys - Linux support by the best
No, I think the advice of a complete idiot is not worth following.
The thoughts of an imbicile such as yourself are hardly worth my time, but since your retorts are childish and foolish I just thought I'd take a moment to point that out to you so hopefully you can get better at it.
IE sucks they can't even get their stupid browser to work the same on different platforms. I am a MAC web developer it seems every time i make a page it is always IE that has a problem displaying it correctly. It is always Microsofts crap that make my life very painful. If they could make a good program maybe, But they can't they won't and they suck. GO MOZILLA Standards are everything!
Best regards
one pist off IE hater
IE is not free when you pay cash for it as part of the bundle.
KDE is not free either when you buy a boxed linux distro.
Not knowing the price is not the same as free. Not knowing how much you pay is only that. Unknown.
And, the quality of IE does not matter.
If 100% of all consumer OS buyers were forced to buy Opera, Opera would have the lion's share of use on the internet. And, everyone would have a copy.
IE has a monopoly now because it was illegally bundled with the OS. Any other reason simply does not matter much.
Do not worry. The AOL (Netscape) law suit will take up both the attempted monopolization of the browser market and product tying. At the time of the DOJ case, IE only had about a 50% share of the market. It is fair to conclude that is not sufficent for an attempted monopolization charge. And, it clear is not a monopoly product. But, 95%+ is.
And, those are the facts that will be handled by a jury in the AOL case.
Once IE is unbundled from the OS, then like almost any other product, competition can resurface and most likely will. And, that is particularly true when linux establishes itself on the desktop.
Just today or yesterday, Wal-mart began to sell PCs preloaded with Lindows. And, Xandros will be releasing its distro before much longer. Both will do wonders for linux on the desktop. And, that will help open the competition for browsers too.
NexuSys - Linux support by the best
Well, MS does not really have a way of combating Mozilla. How are they going to undermine a free product
Actually, Mozilla is currently very dependent on AOL/TimeWarner/Netscape's funding. Maybe it could survive a Microsoft/AOL "deal" to drop development. I'm not convinced.
Wal-Mart's loading Linux on their dirt-cheap PCs for the masses
Uh, they're loading up Lindows for the masses.
Are you saying that there's some sense in which Lindows isn't Linux? If so, please elaborate.
nobody with a secretary is reading slashdot. they have to make do with something else instead: it's called a life.
I guess the billion dollars IBM made back running linux on mainframes was monopoly money. mainframes I might add hold over 70 % of corporate data and they dont sell to small business LANS. Compared to MS this is a "runaway success". MS ha virtually ZERO prescence in this high end market.
Hey all,
My take on all of this is that Mozilla and the other related browsers have a chance. They are free and they can be made better than IE. For instance, I hated all of the pop-ups on IE so much that I downloaded Mozilla when it was released. I also hated the annoying message that popped up whenever when I deactivated ActiveX on IE and every site that I visited that used ActiveX would cause a message to pop up stating that I had ActiveX turned off. Extremely annoying that I couldn't turn off this message and I really have started to HATE IE.
Mozilla is now my number one browser. I don't really like the e-mail/newsgroup client, it needs some more work. For instance a few things that I think would make the e-mail/newsgroup client better.
1) allow seperate rules to be applied to newsgroup messages and e-mail messages. For instance I get e-mails that a filter for the newsgroup would junk on me if I set up a filter for them.
2) allow the combine and decode of messages. And especially make it able to handle more than 256 messages for combining and decoding.
3) allow filter rules and other option to be saved so that I can restore my setting very easily.
These three options added would greatly enhance the e-mail/newsgroup client program.
with everything you said, except in a few sentences you seem to admire bill gates. he is no different form mark in ripping off other peoples work. he was just better at it.
Mozilla is important if enough users ( thank you
,very soon, (?) AOL ) surf with it that web page
authors are forced to code for something more standards driven than MS perversion of standards.
Anything, on any platform be it Moz or Opera that
holds back complete IE hegemonyu is a good thing.
The more lInux gets used , the mor there is a good chance Moz gets used.
In short , the situation is not as hopeless as it
seems.
Everyone help get a freind " off the Microsoft".
first the browser, then the mail program, then
the OS.
May we all live to Dance on Softy's Grave.
1) A better browser than Netscape
2) Free as in beer
IE was integrated with win95B against court order and vendors were prevented from installing Netscape at that time. So technically, it's true, IE's rise started before 98. That is was because of anti-competitive practices has not only been proven in court, it's intuitively obvious.
He claims that Netscape 4.x was and is slow and unstable. My experience is different.
There's more, but it's not really worth digging into. Anyone who's used Mozilla, even a Win32 impared version, and IE knows which one is easier to use and better for the user. I'm happy to point out the other silly things that Verizon Guy has said before. It just goes to show the kind of person who posts IE is great trash every time a story mentions the Netscape. Roads should have signposts, dangerous materials, warning lables, but trolls leave their own posts as warnings.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Cheer up, there are plenty of services and features that M$ will never offer. As their current marketing model requires them to be root on your machine, security and privacy and all the best practices to achieve them will never be implemented on an M$ encumbered computer. Witness the lack of real user accounts, embeded file premisions and the XP EULA which gives M$ the right to "upgrade" components at will and inspect for copyright infringing material. My my my, what can you do?
As Anderson pointed out, the browser wars were won when M$ made their browser the default and forbade their vendors from including Netscape. Predatory behavior, there is no doubt that the computing industry as a whole has suffered tremendous losses and we are all much poorer from it. Today slashdot has an article about VOIP phones. Six years ago I saw things like that run under windows 3.1, used by a fellow LSU graduate student who used a simple microphone and speaker set up to talk to his family in Finland. Why is it that such things are not common today? Could it be because M$ was bussy denying such services while they got together their goofey NetMeeting program which leaves the micrphone and camera on by default? Way to to!
If the downsides of M$ software are not enough to switch you over to free software, free software's performance will be. That's the good news. There's a whole universe of great software out there that can be had for little or no cost that beats the crap out of M$ junk.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
this is a website only product, at least in my area...
Mozilla already boast features that IE does not have: Tab browsing, ad disabling, cleaner javascript, multiple platform support
Microsoft, if they want to, can implement tabbed browsing and disabling of javascript pop-ups. And if they really wanted to, they can become a W3C compliant browser. After all, M$ has shown they can flex their muscles, throw $$$, and do such shit(which is not difficult).
On the otherhand, M$ will have a hard time to beat multiplatform support. Yes, IE runs on Mac and Solaris, but doesn't run as good as the Windows counterpart. IE was ugly and slow on Solaris...
Personally I believe that when AOL starts bundling Mozilla/Netscape 7 with their software, only then will we see the fall of the behemoth.(Anyone know how well is the Compuserve test going with the new Netscape?)
That's because Wal*Mart is the larger part of an oligopoly); for many people in America, it is the only store within 50+ miles. If K-Mart follows Wal*Mart's lead, MS will have to deal with an arguably stronger trust than itself.
However, superstores like Wal*Mart and K-Mart are not sigificant resellers of computers (especially in these days of mail-order --Dell and Gateway for example-- and online shopping). In less populated areas, the superstores may suceed in spreading GNU/Linux over Windows, but that won't change the American market much (and I don't think we'll see any sucess even in those remote areas).
I believe MS products will be defeated by three factors in the next ten years:
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
another possible factor:
The embedding of non-MS operating systems into devices (other than desktops), coupled with
The End of the Desktop Computing Era (many believe that in a few years we will see specialized devices replace desktop computers).
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Mozilla rules.
Oh, I agree they're guilty.. Just not in the arena of OS manipulation. ^__^
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Netscape crumbled into a dismal failure under the Andreessen leadership, then later he went off to form another wobbly dotcom spawn. Why does anybody think this guy has a clue what is happening and is going to happen on the browser front? I'm not saying I do, but wouldn't it make more sense to discuss the browser war with somebody who has demonstrated real compentence? Is there such a person or group?
Tabbed browsing? How did MDI become a feature again? Even Windows users and developers figured out years ago that it sucks. Even if the undocumented tab-switch keystrokes worked reliably, it's still a poor excuse for a window manager, especially considering I already had one.
Apple is also the evil empire. They just aren't as good at it as Microsoft.
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
Close enough? It's not clippy, and Mozilla's green, but it's real.
Mozilla stomps IE
it wasn't as much his work on Mozilla, but he had lots of tutorials and kept the "new sites" list, which back then was the primary source of information about the web (it was before indexes and search engines).
Basically, he did a lot of competent "advocacy" work.
Apparently there will be an election this year and who knows what may happen, there's the usual level of controversy that goes around.
Let's just say that my project is something that has been severely interfered and interrupted with the orwell's service.
I'd rather do exactly what I believe is possible than accept blind fate or accept a political message as being as fixed as an actor's position.
On my resume, it would appear that I am extremely loyal, but I think it's just residual aspects of my personal and family life that doesn't happen to be entirely my life online.
I'm just a young scientist doing exactly what I've always believed in, with a real life that is being followed about by the media and misread because I make a lot of flippant remarks when I'm supposed to be off the record.
I'm just a well-prepared individual and I'm certainly not an actor or a politician who has no better thing to do than come with the usual economic games.
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
I agree that the Netscape 4.x people make no sense. One of the people who works next to me in tech support refuses to use Mozilla and stays with Netscape 4.x even though I've installed Mozilla on his machine for him and imported all his netscape stuff! I also showed him how he can set up Mozilla to block popups, etc, so you'd think that people would see the obvious, especially those working in the computer industry...