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Microsoft to Pay AOL $750M in Settlement
aoteoroa writes "Microsoft will pay $750 million to AOL Time Warner to settle an antitrust lawsuit filed by AOL on behalf of its subsidiary Netscape last year, the companies said Thursday.
At first blush the deal looks good, but I can't help but wonder how a deal that ties AOL to IE again will negatively impact my favorite web browser." Here's a news.com story that also covers it. Is the browser war over? If so, it sure was anticlimactic.
The browser wars are over? They are just starting to get interesting again. Safari for the Mac is one of the fastest and innovative browsers on the market. The Mozilla browsers continue to spawn lots of innovations and now seem focused on ease of use and performance. Things are just starting to get interesting again.
The big news in this article is that MSFT might be successfully pushing windows media player into the AOL empire. *shudder*
Also frightening, this deal gives AOL seven years to use IE royalty free - hopefully AOL continues to look towards a gecko based browser for their legions of users.
AOL will also be licensing Windows Media 9, which could affect WinAmp.
This deal could mean more AOL content will require MSIE and WMP9. Since AOL for Mac OS X uses Gecko and WMP9 isn't available yet, that would mean Mac AOL users wouldn't be able to access that content - exactly the way Microsoft likes it.
It seems AOL either has no idea what they're doing, or has decided they're no longer interested in Netscape or NullSoft. Is it possible both might soon be for sale? Clearly they no longer fit into the rest of the company's plans.
Of course, it would be ridiculously amusing if AOL suddenly announced that they were switching to Gecko anyway, even though they have a license to use MSIE for free. We can dream, can't we?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Money shifted from one giant corp to another, big deal. How will this help their customers?
Its too bad that there arn't any winners here. Satan can pay Satan all he wants.
See This Articla for how the lawsuit started.
The lawsuit is based on previous court findings that Microsoft's business practices amid the infamous browser wars of the 1990s violated two sections of the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act.
In April 2000 a federal judge ruled that Microsoft used anti-competitive means to thwart Netscape's browser, which once had a leading position in the market but now is a distant second to Microsoft's Explorer. In June 2001, a panel of seven appellate judges upheld eight separate antitrust counts against Microsoft.
Netscape, which was acquired by AOL in 1999, is seeking an injunction that could include forcing Microsoft to sell a stripped-down operating system that does not include a browser. In addition, AOL seeks monetary damages that could be tripled under federal law, although it did not specify an amount.
In some ways, the Netscape lawsuit is trying to achieve what the government failed to do so at trial, such as proving Microsoft tried to extend its Windows monopoly to the browser market.
"Netscape's lawsuit is a logical extension of the findings entered by the District Court and unanimously affirmed by the Court of Appeals that Microsoft thwarted competition, violated the antitrust laws, and illegally preserved its monopoly at Netscape's expense," Randall J. Boe, AOL's general counsel, said in a statement.
"There is no question that Microsoft's conduct violated the law and harmed competition and consumers," Boe continued. "Netscape's lawsuit seeks not only an award of damages, but for the court to provide injunctive relief that will help restore competition on the computer desktop."
Microsoft asserted that the lawsuit is more a competitive move by AOL Time Warner than a legitimate attempt to recover damages.
"AOL Time Warner has been using the political and legal system to compete against Microsoft for years," Microsoft spokesman Jim Desler said. "This is just the next tactic in their litigation plans. Microsoft is investing to build new products, while AOL invests in lawyers and lobbyists to put roadblocks in Microsoft's way."
Desler also accused AOL Time Warner of using the Netscape lawsuit to undermine the settlement that Microsoft reached in November with the Justice Department and nine states. That settlement is undergoing review pursuant to the Tunney Act. In December, nine other states that didn't join the settlement filed a remedy proposal asking that, among other items, Microsoft be compelled to give away the Internet Explorer source code to restore competition in the browser market.
AOL Time Warner is using the Netscape suit "as an attempt to undermine the settlement between Microsoft, the DOJ and the bi-partisan group of attorneys general," Desler said. "Today's filing is timed to interfere with the efforts to bring that case to a conclusion."
Jury trial sought
Netscape is asking for a jury trial and is seeking damages but did not specify an amount in the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. However, the lawsuit does ask for triple damages based on the Clayton Act and the District of Columbia Code, as well as interest and attorneys fees.
Netscape also asked for an injunction against Microsoft's alleged antitrust violations, both current and future.
The judge in the case ultimately would decide the nature of the injunctive relief, which Netscape suggested could be derived from a remedy proposal filed last year by nine states and the District of Columbia. One option: forcing Microsoft to release a version of Windows without its own "middleware" products such as a Web browser, media player or instant messenger.
Bob Lande, a professor at the University of Baltimore Law School, sees the Netscape suit as unique in some ways.
"This is fundamentally different from the couple of hundred other private suits filed against Microsoft because it's not just arguing over money," La
I'm not Seth.
I still run Windows on a day-to-day basis for most of my activities, but boot up Linux a few times a week... The SCO has brought about some negative energy towards Linux and themselves, but it's nice to see that Microsoft still has a lot of its own. $750 million is a large chunk of money, but its too bad it really won't affect Microsoft... Maybe if more people started filing suits with them... Hmmm...
I have to agree with the poster on this. I'm really
disappointed by this development. I would rather have seen an
agreement that required Microsoft to bundle AOL and Netscape
with their operating systems for the next 7 years. As much as I
get bugged by AOL's marketing, I really detest the thought of
these two combining forces.
I hope some of the states stick it out, and take the Anti-Trust
suit to the Supreme court. I think it would be incredibly
beneficial for the industry as a whole if Microsoft got busted
into chunks.
Sadly this ruling is nothing to Microsoft. $750 million is
something they can afford to pay using some interest from their
massive cash reserves
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
The browser wars aren't over until IE and Netscape are but smoldering craters, and Mozilla is the victor.
When you don't have a leg to stand on, don't even get up.
Does this matter anymore? Netscape is dead. $750 million is a drop in the bucket for both AOL and Microsoft. hardly even newsworthy
"The companies will explore ways for AOL and MSN Messenger to interoperate, which Microsoft has sought for years."
:)
Isn't that a major concession from AOL? Weren't they the ones claiming that was "impossible"/"too expensive"/"too difficult"???
--Darren
p.s. "Microsoft will help distribute AOL CD-ROMs to PC builders around the world." Yay! More coasters!!
Foiled - but I'll get you next time, my pretty!!!
Believe with me, my saplings.
Why doesn't AOL use THEIR gecko browser, which they've put so much money into, in their AOL versions? With such a crappy relationship with microsoft, you think they would.
With $40+ Billion sitting in the bank (not including assets) this appears to be another slap on the wrist for Microsoft. I was hoping AOL might stick this one out longer. I guess when your company is struggling, $750 mil doesn't sound so bad after all.
AOL receives a long-term, nonexclusive license to use Microsoft's Windows Media 9 software, which offers playback, delivery and rights management for digital media.
AOL will receive a seven-year, royalty-free license to continue using Internet Explorer on its flagship online service. Microsoft will provide beta tests of future Windows versions and allow AOL to participate in tests of its upcoming "Longhorn" operating system at the same time and on the same terms as other software vendors.
The companies will explore ways for AOL and MSN Messenger to interoperate, which Microsoft has sought for years.
Sounds like Microsoft is getting everything they want...
The Internet is in need of standards. Connecting a standard for internet service to a standard for web browsing can only be a good thing for users, especially considering that those of us who don't use AOL can benefit from the added stability of using a free solution shared by and tested on 97 million users.
So the $8million to SCO must seem like peanuts. And talk about a great ROI.
-- Free software on every PC on every desk
Well, it's official Netscape is dead, I guess.
And its sad, with so many other great alternatives out there based on their original source, Mozilla, Safari, etc.
But I think what bugs me most of all is that despite having some passable alternatives to IE, none of them will ever overtake IE.
Why? Because it takes the backing of a major corporation to build a browser that will appeal to non-slashdotters. Unfortunately, in terms of usability, the Mozilla and its derivatives fall WAY short. And if the history of open-source is any indication, they'll never catch up.
. Sad day for those of us wanting to use something other than IE.
No. IE hasn't done anything innovatve in years. Mozilla, Firebird, Camino and Safari on the other hand keep pushing the envelope.
.com) bubble burst, M$ moved on.
Microsoft's browser is in the dark ages. I'm not sure they care anymore. When the internet (aka
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
Okay, now I know I should be flaming Microsoft and everything, but wasn't this purely a case of better product? I seem to remember IE being the big pretender, only to constantly revise it's software into something that was actually better than Netscape's. Anyone who actually tried to design for 4.7 and its ilk was faced with probably one of the more buggy products. IE(before Mozilla) was one of the products I gave Microsoft credit for.
Who should have the right to say a company can't bundle its software together. Who should be able to say that other than the company? I mean really, why can the gov dictate how they distribute any of their software.
I really want to know what makes other people able to play god.
By doing this Microsoft makes it look like they almost did something bad. (which they didn't)
Well, let's see... The world's largest media company teaming up (formally or informally) voltron-style with the world's largest software company? I think not. They should be in competition with each other, not buddying up their buddy lists so there will be some sort of interoperability between MSN Messenger and AIM. Any level of collusion across markets, specifically AOL and Microsoft, sounds like a rainy day to me.
It should make us nervous whenever companies of this size adopt a cooperative, rather than a competitive, stance towards each other. Why was this case really settled? Probably because they both were able to agree to cooperate in the future on new DRM. Caveat Emptor!
sig my booty, check my website
How much did AOL pay for Netscape? It certainly wasn't $750,000,000. Talk about a good return on an investment. Seems to be also that maybe AOL never wanted Netscape for the technology, but merely for the ability to win lawsuits against Microsoft.
Nothing from nowhere I'm no one at all
WTF ?
When asked for comment on whether Safari was at risk, Apple CEO Steve Jobs replied, "Nah, we offered them a free, unlimited iTunes account in exchange for a perpetual license. They snapped it up."
All your code are belong to us.
--- SCO Group
More info about the settlement deal on the MS site. The biggest coup for MS in this deal might be the collaboration with AOL on DRM. Where does that leave Apple and Real? And the Instant Messenger portion of the deal might also turn out to be a big win for MS.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
"Is the browser war over? If so, it sure was anticlimactic."
a lot of people say the second war in europe ended with the fall of berlin. that sure wasn't true for poland.
Is Mozilla already independent enough from Netscape so it will survive Netscape's demise?
For Microsoft, the $750 million payment is not exactly a significant dent in its cash hoard of more than $46 billion.
Do you realize how much money that is? So how did this work? Microsoft use's its monopoly to establish another one in web browsers through unfair business practices (which they were because Microsoft is a monopoly) and years later just pays $750 million to make it go away.
Essentially Microsoft just bought the browser wars . Thats a scary thought... and makes me wonder, has the US ever seen a company quite like Microsoft? Someone that expands and conquerors so easily. Someone who in a few years could hold a monopoly on 3 or more different industries. This is nuts. I doubt Standard Oil was ever this big. Maybe AT&T but even thats streching it. Hell, Microsoft even won its anti-trust case.
This is getting kind of scary *crawls into hole*.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
$750M is nothing to Microsoft - they make more than that during coffee break. This is no victory for AOL, it's simply MS getting tired of dealing with the case.
Let me just point out that this links to money.cnn.com, and CNN is owned by AOL/Time-Warner, which also owns Netscape. Yet they make no mention of it in the article. I guess just about everything is owned by them, these days, so it's sort of taken as a given. Also intersting to note that they use a Netscape bar at the top (I have no idea why they still brand it as such, as most people associate Netscape with a browser--not the "Netscape Network," although I guess it sounds more professional than "AOL Network"). Sounds like a conflict of interest to me.
Microsoft did not play quite fairly. When one installed the latest internet explorer, they were also changing windows DLLs that are preloaded on boot. This gives Internet Explorer a significant speed and stability boost. Netscape, on the other hand does not have that liberty.
I believe there was a quote from the antitrust trial in which a memo was brought forth by the VP saying that Windows should be altered "so that running any other browser should be a jolting experience for the user"
Microsoft may have made a better product in the end. But it came with cheating and sabotage.
My girlfriends friend, who is also a girl, was having problems with her Windows computer. I went over to her house, fixed all her windows problems, and when I was making sure her cable modem worked, I opened up IE. The default home page was the cable company's home page with **5** popup windows. I asked her very politely if she liked popup windows. She of course said "hell no." I told her I could install a browser that was small, fast, and didn't accept popups. She was very, very surprised that there was such a thing. I installed MozillaFirebird and put a shortcut on her desktop called "Better Internet Browser." Her whole family now uses it.
The browser wars will only be over when everyone agrees on what a "better browser" is.
without the support from AOL/TW, Mozilla will be dead. T -60 days and counting.
I've heard that Time Warner/AOL might be looking to split from their merger. Maybe Microsoft paid out the 750 million because they have plans to buy AOL.
What this settlement reflects is that the Time Warner part of AOL-TW is now firmly in control, and America Online people are not.
The Time Warner people are interested in selling media content for profit, not in technology battles like the AOL people. Hence the Windows Media 9 and DRM parts of the settlement.
Why continue to fight technology battles like IM or browser technology? There's no money in that. Nor is there money in continuing to make enabling technology like browsers etc. to sell your content for profit. Thus, the TW people are happy to use Microsoft browser technology and that's why the 7 year technology agreement is in there.
The AOL access business is slowly dying as people move to broadband, and the AOL-software-only subscription isn't going to replace that anytime soon. Sure, why not cooperate on IM formats? Not cooperating only opens AOL up to FTC complaints, and IM interoperability was at some point inevitable.
Microsoft was going to have to cooperate with AOL on Longhorn compatibility anyway; they give up nothing with that part of the settlement. Handing out AOL discs to system builders isn't much of a hit, either.
This is clearly the TW people saying "Take the $750 million, stop fighting battles that make no money, and go back to what made us huge long before AOL came along - selling content."
Yes, the browser wars were are over, decision in favor of Mozilla.
:)
:)
:)
Well, not completely, I just wanted to say that
There are so many (decent) browsers out there right now it's ridiculous, but better this extreme than the other one! My favorites, Yes, are mostly derived from Mozilla, but in that sense, they share a common heritage with Internet Explorer, since both netscape and IE derive from Mosaic
A very, absolutely, admittedly incomplete and mismatched list: Mozilla fullblown, mozilla firebird (and the formerly rich cousin, what's it called, yeah, "Netscape.") Galeon. Epiphany. Konqueror. (Skipping Skipstone and Kmeleon, RIP). Opera, if you're into the whole like non-free thing or whatever. Safari. Camino. Links. W3M.(And some other text-only or text-centric ones.) Amaya. Nautilus, even
(Thank you, Tim Berners-Lee!)
They say that $750 million is nothing for Microsoft as they have over $40 billion in the bank, but that's still almost 2% of their tresury, quite a significant amount for such a huge corporation. Am I the only one who thinks that 2% is a significant amount to be lost in a lawsuit?
The browser 'war' was over when 'Communicator' 4 shipped, and was a bloated piece of crap.
What's going on now is guerilla fighting.
I wonder if they mean money...or will they pay with $750m worth of free microsoft products
No, it wasn't. I wouldn't exactly call an 80% loss a "good return" on an investment.
I personally like IS... its the only microsoft product other then Halo that i ever have had any respect for. I don't like the idea of AOl having to use Windows format and media player. The intergration of the AIM and MSN iming services is the only good thing to come out of this agreement, but i think it will end up beniffiting M$ more...
AOL took $750M from Microsoft in the Netscape suit. How many threatening letters to developers and users of Netscape patented technologies, perhaps even those in Mozilla, will that pay for? How quickly after AOL begins such a scheme will Microsoft donate another couple million to license that IP for use in IE?
Is there a planet I can move to that has a constitution banning all private possession of intellectual property?
I didn't get a chance to chime in on this in the Munich story, but my money's on Microsoft in that one too. MS doesn't like to lose. And just try to measure the egg-on-face value of that!
The culture of fuck-over-at-all-costs comes from the top down, from Gates down. It's pervasive.
Remember the new winamp3 that was supposed to be better than 2.x? I read that development of the 3.x branch stopped and that 2.x is going to be updated more. That is why they released v2.91 of winamp just a few months ago. Is it because Winamp3 was so buggy that AOL told nullsoft to drop it (since AOL will just use WMP9)? Anyways I prefer Winamp 2.91 to Winamp3 but even 2.91 kinda sucks in that it sometimes makes my videogames run choppy if I have winamp in the background (yes I have winamp using directsound not waveout).
Who signs it?
Would the company formerly with ticker symbol NSCP still be in business if it weren't for MSFT's bundling/tying practices? How much market cap did NSCP lose during its struggle? How much of the cash in MSFT's bank is due to the fact that Netscape's and Sun's "run the same web/Java apps on Windows/Mac/Unix/whatever" concept never really took off?
This is finally it: The beginning of the endgame between Closed and Open Source, the last battle between Good and Evil, Armageddon in the software universe. AOL is doing so bad that "AOL Time Warner" has been considering dropping them out of the mother company's name; and Microsoft for all its resources can't help but feel the penguins and daemons breathing down its neck if even places like Munich will not heel when they call. Their backs are not quite against the wall, but their bums are touching brick, and they will not go away without one hell of a fight. I think it is safe to say that this is the worst threat that Open/Free Software has ever faced, given the sheer political and financial clout these two companies have combined.
Oh, and think of the irony that it comes at a time when Neo is in a coma and has been revealed to be not the Saviour, but the Angel of Death; when Buffy has been discontinued; and when Nanny Ogg is feeling just a wee bit under the weather...were these not omens that we failed to heed? How could we be so childish to believe these signs were just random events in popular culture...
... if IE didn't become a decidedly better browser than Netscape. Illegal monopolistic practices aside, it'd be hard to imagine that Netscape would have eventually won the war.
But now we'll never know...
- adam
Many people have already commented on it, but if a company can make money from selling a browser, the browser war can't be over just yet.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
I hope the settlement is hard cash and not Windows XP licenses ;)
.... ... }
int main (void) {
Aol should include moz/firebird . Pure bullshit if you ask me
If anyone is wondering if there is real justice by our government out there , look at this little deal by these two joker/fraud companies.
Aol is garbage and Steve Case is a dumbfuck.
The gov should have banned all Microshit software from being included with new puter purchases. They didn't because of BUSH .
Wow, a real genius, aren't ya?
It would have been different, perhaps, if 'Joe's Browser Company' with an employee count of 4, released a browser for free download, and it gained market share over time, and eventually grew such that Netscape just couldn't compete. Netscape browser dies a natural death, due to natural competition on the marketplace.
That is not what happened, if I recall correctly.
The largest software company in the world used its market dominance to quash its only competitor at the time, into oblivion. I don't expect you to understand though, since you clearly don't understand the facts. It's not about playing God, it's about assuring fair play in the marketplace. This is a good thing for consumers. But again, I don't suppose you would understand that.
If you give them points, it will just get worse.
Just check out his last journal entry if you care.
Honestly, what did Microsoft gain with making Internet Explorer? The company offers Windows developers the free web browser control, and to the best of my knowledge there are no royalties on it. The only two things I can think of that Microsoft could use Internet Explorer for are to charge Apple and to get more people on MSN. But wouldn't Microsoft lose more money on the browser development?
Now where's mine?
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
It's official...
Much in the way that AOL forced Nullsoft to pull their nascent "Gnutella" technology when it first came out, it appears AOL has once again forced Nullsoft to yank distribution of their "Waste" secure P2P-based file sharing and messaging software.
Slashdot.org announced the product this morning, and by afternoon it is officially gone from the Nullsoft site.
Fortunately, the Internet routes around censorship and the software is still available here (along with an interesting chat forum on the subject) and, undoubtedly, in other places around the net.
It's likely that the source and binaries for this much-needed freedom-inducing GPLed software will be making an appearance on a freesite at some point in the not-so-distant-future.
Yes folks, history, once again, repeats itself.
I guess it just shows to go you, that when it comes to kick-ass software Justin Frankel is still the man!
This time, M$ has gone beyond giving away IE for free. They're effectively paying their only potential competitor (of note) in the browser market $750MM to stop expending resources to further develop its product.
as he takes a billion dollar bill from his wallet: "Got change?"
If I worked in the Mozilla group, I'd feel pretty worthless right about now. I wouldn't be surprised if AOL/Netscape abandons Mozilla entirely after this. What's the point? Mozilla will never ship with AOL, and AOL doesn't seem to think it's bad that they'll be using IE forever. The sun is setting.
# Erik
IE won the browser wars because Netscape 4 was a festering piece of shit. I don't know how you could say otherwise with a straight face.
AOL's stock was up during and after the announcement.
$oftware vouchers??
It's got a lot of those small features that make Apple stuff so damned cool.
Stop/Reload use the same button, depending on whether or not the page is loaded. Why didn't anyone else think of this?
The bookmark manager is so sweet it's been known to make grown men cry. So cool that the Camino guys are working on copying it.
Three meg or so download. Remember when Opera could claim this?
SnapBack makes getting back to search results very easy.
Spell-checking in textareas. No tpyos in this post!
So, no, it's not going to revolutionize browsing or anything. Since browsing technology has likely reached it's apex, all that's left are the small things.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
some points:
.75 bil USD from MSFT is a win for them. It's .75 bil USD more than they'll ever get from Moz users
1) AOL cares nothing about the browser wars - they wanst customers - period
2) AOL getting
3) Since when did 'we' care two hoots about what AOL did or didn't do? Now, if they bought a gnu/linux vendor and started to ship knoppix-like CDs with everything locked down so their tech-support was even easier.....
4) APPLE used KHTML cos they liked it. Next iteration, they might use a different renderer for safari. They're allowed to! It's not political for them.
5) Isn't the desktop more important than the browser? Isn't the browser less important than the 'suite' of Net-scraping-tools these days? Isn't there space for a start up to run a bare bones distro w/ moz, OO, and some neat GNU audio/ video apps that the end-luser doesn't realise is a distro? Isn't that where the sweet spot is?
http://milkshake.dexy.org
Jesus Christ, why does slashdot cover microsoft more than they cover BSD and Linux combined? Feels like I'm at a Godamn Windows rumor mill. Meanwhile, my submission on University of Idaho's cloning of a donkey is rejected.
I'm on a road shaped like a figure eight; I'm going nowhere but I'm guaranteed to be late.
1. Find entity with lawsuit that they are likely to win against one of your largest competitors.
2. Acquire competitor during litigation.
3. ???????
4. Profit!
I've been down on Microsoft, but I think this is extremely shady on AOL's part. Not that it's illegal or anything..it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Safari is innovative? only because Apple had access to some very nice open source browsers.
Repackaging an open source browser and fixing a few bugs isn't innovatation my friend. It's probably the Microsoft dictionary definition of innovation.
And here I thought anti-trust rulings were supposed to discourage trusts, not build new ones.
Winners
MS - they get off the hook by giving up $750m which others have pointed out they can easily afford given their cash reserves. More guaranteed market share for IE. This isn't a penalty, its an investment for them.
AOLTW - Given how the AOL division is a primary cause of the massive amount of AOLTW's debt, getting the $750m looks great on their balance sheet. If I'm not mistaken, dealing w/ AOLTW's debt was one of Dick Parson's most important charges when he took the helm.
Losers
Mozilla et. al - Having a Gecko based AOL client would have given an instant boost to Mozilla's marketshare / mindshare which negatively effects...
Web Standards - Anything that boosts IE and lessens Mozilla increases the likelihood of MS induced standards
Consumers - Less competition (browsers, streaming media formats), more MS entrusted DRM
Jeesh - what exactly does antitrust even mean in today's business climate?
For the love of $DEITY, loose != not win!!!!!
I'm not sure now, but seems like just a week or so ago I was reading that. If that happens, AOL will need all the cash and free software it can get, which is exactly what this settlement does for them, coincidentaly. Being able to still use IE will cut them a lot of development R&D slack for a long time, so I bet they won't care what label is on the browser.
Here's a hoot of a thought, I wonder if any MAJOR ISP would consider being all free software based, and ENCOURAGE the alternatives out there, instead of defaulting to the borg? Maybe even an offshoot branded browser, moz based perhaps, for those folks who just love to be able to "insert a disk, klik hier, and get the intarweb"? maybe even an entire distro, that came with signup, had support with it? Geeks still wouldn't need it, but just maybe....
consider, the earthredrakemoztooiannetlinux ISP/OS/browser/office/etc combo
might help a scosh with funding of whatnot.. I know I'd sign with them.
just a few thoughts..
With around 95% of the market it makes sense that Microsoft hasn't really been adding new features to Internet Explorer.
But I'd guess that with the growing dissatisfaction with pop-up advertising and the growing popularity of Mozilla's (or Firebird pop-up blocking they might have to rethink this soon.
Quack, quack.
This isn't a settlement, this is MS paying US$750million so that they can have AOL users using MSIE. Probably a bargain.
It's good to see the original internet innovator, Netscape, finally vindicated. Even if it is at the hands of an evil media corporation... Let's hope AOL continues to support the Mozilla browser effort, so that we can continue to see innovation in the browser market.
With this ruling, mabye AOLTW will actually turn a profit this quarter.
.
So, Netscape got officially netscaped :-)
An app called Cocoa Gestures (site seems to be down at the moment) allows mouse gestures in any Cocoa app, so there's no need for individual browsers to support them.
Safari has all the features you've listed, with the notable exceptions of remembering sessions and an integrated mail client. Until someone integrates mutt into their browser, count me out on that one.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
AOLTimeWarner buys Nutscrape for $4 Billion of its worthless stock, which is now worth about $5. Now they can get $750 M in REAL money from MS.
Seems like a net gain for AOL, which will probably be out of business in a few years anyway, and is able to drain the coffers of TimeWarner.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
I wonder what will ever become of ICQ now that AOL has a stake in them. Though the program has gotten bloated over the years, ICQ Lite is a nice step back to it's original roots. I personally hope it sticks around
Life is not for the lazy.
Mind you, I consider this a Very Bad Thing. I don't like seeing any company, much less Microsoft, control such an important technology so thoroughly. And MS's sloppy attitude towards W3C standards (especially CSS) drives me up the wall. But simply creating superior browser technology is not going to win back all those desktops. It doesn't matter if kHTML or gecko are more innovative or standard-compliant. Nor does it matter who has the coolist features. And least of all does it matter that MS used dishonest and monopolistic tactics to gain 90% of the browser market.
What matters is that IE has that browser dominance, that people are not going to switch back just because some geek tells them their browser is technically inferior. Nor do they crave standards compliance: that just means that other browsers don't render all their IE-specific web apps "correctly".
Don't put your hope in AOL switching to Gecko, either. First of all they won't do it -- they can afford a few license fees in order to avoid making life even more difficult for their subscribers. Second of all, AOL doesn't have that much of a future -- web users are getting more sophisticated, and realizing they don't need that bloated and obsolete client to access the Internet.
Flame on! I know you guys don't want to hear it. But yeah, MS has won the browser wars.
The largest software company in the world used its market dominance to quash its only competitor at the time, into oblivion. I don't expect you to understand though, since you clearly don't understand the facts. It's not about playing God, it's about assuring fair play in the marketplace. This is a good thing for consumers. But again, I don't suppose you would understand that.
That is exactly it. If it had been a company of 4 people, no one would complain. But to maintain the status quo of idiocy around Slashdot people must complain since its Microsoft as usual. So what are they (Microsoft) suppose to do, sit by and do nothing?
Netscape did die from natural death, they lost the marketplace. There was nothing blocking people from using Netscape. I used it quite often. So Windows came with IE installed. And that makes a difference.....why again?
There were only two options for Microsoft. Release a browser or not release one. They chose the former and get lambasted for winning the market and effectively killing Netscape. The only other option was to sit by the Internet revolution and do nothing. No one on Slashdot would complain then would they? But thats just it. Microsoft is a business. They were only right to expand into the browser area to help further their image. To hell with anyone that thinks modesty is a virtue and stop pretending your holy and poor poor Netscape. Yeah so what its a damn shame they sucked the big one but thousands of companies do that yearly. Grow up.
Now we know the answer to why Steve sold his MS stock last week.4 /134823 8&mode=thread&tid=109&tid=187&tid=98&tid=9 9
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/05/2
... Unless just working reliably and quickly counts as innovative. ...
...this day and age, a piece of software working reliably and quickly is innovative.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
How much would it cost some rich OSS supporter to burn millions of Mozilla CDs and distribute them in the mail or the malls? Highlighting the pop-up blocking would be enough for many non-geeks to switch.
If Microsoft can pay $750M and get an advantage, maybe a player like IBM could help protect its investment in WebSphere, Java, Notes, and SameTime for 1/10 of that.
Forget Apple releasing Safari for Windows...I would like them to see them release the code for GNUstep. The way GNUstep is shaping up, most of the work to "port" it would be done.
(For an example, see GNUmail.app which compiles on both Linux and MacOS X).
THAT would rock. And give GNUstep a needed shot in the arm. And if Windows users want it, they can work on porting GNUstep to Windows.
This is slightly skewed from the topic at hand, but I just can't help it.
I just realized tonight that I actually feel now that AOL and MS users actively *deserve* what they get from these companies. How many years now have people been trodden over and acted like they enjoy it? I think maybe they actually *do*, but I just don't care anymore, and at this point, if I'm sitting near someone who is trying to open a corrupted word document or wrangling with AOL tech support I just sort of laugh inwardly. I used to feel sorry and identify with those problems. Now it feels like justice.
I know it's elitist and all, but I seriously wonder sometimes if many of the people out there using MS and AOL are the kinds of people the Free Software Movement should be wooing. I work in a menial tech support job (where I'm forced to actually help, and not just smirk) at the moment, and the amount of stupidity out there in the user population is staggering. These are people studying and teaching at a major university, some of whom are involved in incredibly complex subjects... and they don't "get" what a file is versus a folder, or what an email "address" is. And part of this stems from the watering down of the tech world by companies like this to the point now where everyone bases their idea of what a Killer App (tm) is on the abilities of either the mythical "Joe User" or someone's grandma. And I've got to say, if I ever run into either of those two people, the stupidity confronting me will probably be my end.
How does this relate to the MS/AOL/IE/Netscape/$$$/Free Speech/Beer topic? Well, I'm not sure, except that I think maybe it's not such a bad thing that 90 % of people use Windows. After all the years of dumbing-down, it suits most of them.
Flame away... it's just my mood tonight.
B
"We must still have chaos within in order to be able to give birth to a dancing star." --Friedrich Nietzsche
Apple took the KHTML rendering engine from Konqueror and built a browser around it. No doubt they looked at Opera and other browsers while developing their feature set.
KHTML is licensed under the LGPL. Apple has provided many bug fixes and performance enhancements for KHTML. Those improvements are being incorporated into KDE 3.2.
Oh look, another "Waaah waah! Stop beating up on poor old Microsoft!" post. I swear people are being paid to come around here and post this stuff, there's been so much of it lately. You wouldn't be Steve Barkto, by chance?
Listen newbie, Slashdot has always been anti-Microsoft in slant. Get used to it, or go to the WinSuperSite. As Rob has said many times, this is his site and he'll post whatever the hell he wants.
Actually, Taco is being indirectly paid by Microsoft to post "whatever the hell he wants". Or have you missed all the .NET ads?
IOW, fuck you and your fucking Lunix fanboy ass.
I almost agree about the pop-up blocker, but I think it is possible they would include it as long as there was an agreeable ad serving technology to use in place of the ever popular pop=ups.
As pop-up blocking becomes more common I think its only natural that advertisers will have to find ways to push their media around the technology (like the pop-up blocker detectors, or DHTML on page windows).
Sorry, I'd include links (of course you've probably seen them already) but I'm on my way out the door..
Quack, quack.
Regardless of whether this:
'"Netscape is less and less of a priority for AOL Time Warner, and this is just another step in the slow sun-setting process of Netscape Navigator," said Hilal.'
reflects some prediction of what AOL will do about Mozilla, I don't think these commercial folks understand what being open source means. Mozilla can and will outlive AOL. It will not die. If IE expands a little more, so what? It already dominates, but that doesn't mean the open source community has given up and fallen in line. The grunt work of Mozilla has been accomplished. The browser is out there now, and has taken on a life of its own where it counts most - in the computer savvy world. Sure, there may come a time when open source is the last fortress in a Microsoft world, but it will hold out as long as there are people to back it. Maybe there will be parts of the web that will be closed to non-Microsoft users, but so be it. Free software will live on. Ironically, a Star Wars line seems appropriate here - "The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers." Microsoft can't kill open source completely, unless they get legislation passed that makes it illegal in various countries. I doubt even they can do that much damage to the legal system. But they can and will crack down on Microsoft "pirates" as hard as they can, to make as much as possible off of license fees, as soon as they think they control things so tightly in the computer world that no one will be able to get buy without paying them. That process has already begun. They moved too soon on that, and it's starting to make some businesses wary while they can still do something about it. I hope Microsoft makes piracy impossible and forces companies to pay as much as possible for each version of Windows. It's the best way to drive people from it. Greed is destructive in the end.
As for the interface in Mac 6, it's great, and the standards support is still excellent apart from very basic DOM support.
Clever signature text goes here.
But this begs the question. What does a media company need with an open source browser company?
Is this the beginning of the end for AOL? What does a media company need with an ISP anyway? Once their content is on MS technologies, they can arrange to distribute it over MSN. No need for AOL any more.
Why would anyone want to use a text editor that is not vi?
Did you catch the recent posting (that I'm too lazy to dig up) referenced an article showing how net adoption is actually tapering off around 44%, because the other half of people without net connections....*gasp*...DON'T WANT THEM.
Yes, there's still the unwashed that have been here for months/years, but they feel no motivation to hop in the shower.
The only real way to get people off IE is to get them off Windows, which does make sense to many people, as they'll save money. Wheareas all web browsers (except for Opera) are free-beer.
Otherwise these people have no motivation to switch if stuff Just Works. Those who will already have.
There is no new market. The Wild West is over. Sorry.
The browser wars are over the way that the Cold War is over. It is no longer the case of two contenders battling it out for dominance, with the consequence being that the consumer wins (since a split market means that developers would adhere to standards). Instead, one brower dominates the market, and the little browsers that "compete" with it do so by trying to keep up with its "functionality."
...but I'm using Opera and I think there's been one site in my last month of surfing that choked on it. I'd say the _standards_ won. I remember trying to do a website for our University with Netscape 4 as the Uni client, and it was a fucking huge PITA. No wonder so many sites (and thus people) stopped caring about anything but IE. Now, I use both Opera, Mozilla and IE and all three work very well, and I don't find it a *problem* to design something that looks good on all platforms anymore. Granted, you *can* make stuff that is IE-only, but before it happened almost automagically...
And yes, if I'm on the local variant of pricewatch, and the webshop was $2 cheaper but it doesn't work with my browser, I say screw it. Chalk up a lost sale. Same if I'm doing a google search and has opened ten windows. One refuses to load? Too bad, let's see if the other 9 have what I want. The only reason I'd fire up IE is because your site has something special(tm). And truth be told, most aren't that special.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I'll be your best friend if you give me $750,000,000 all your software and licenses to use it as I see fit. I'll stick it to you again tomorrow, but we don't have to talk about that now.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Their deal calls for interoperability between MSN Messenger and AIM, but that doesn't solve the big problem: when will those idiots start paying attention to the history of the web and work on a free and open standard?
Like many things Mac, Safari isn't so much about the technology but how it is presented to the user. Oprea and friends are great browsers if you know about them. Safari takes what was learned with the open source browsers and exposes it to the (somewhat) wider market.
AOL for Mac OS X and Compuserve use Gecko. AOL for Windows still uses IE.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
...the loose cash from under Bill Gates' sofa cushions.
JWall: GUI client for IPTables
Free tech support!
Newsflash: AOL has been using IE for years, so nothing substantial has changed. Or did I miss a story about AOL laying off the Netscape employees who work on Mozilla?
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
The real horror will be when they bully hardware makers into DRM so that there are no free hardware platforms left. Free software can replace M$ garbage, but a gimped bios and bad laws can defeat that. My nightmare is pinging, DRM bios and the DMCA.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Netscape 4's rendering engine and standards compliance completely and totally sucked ass. IE loaded faster due to Windows integration, yes, but it also was better in every other aspect as well due to Netscape's lousy, slow, and bloated rendering engine. There's a reason the Mozilla people completely threw out that code.
But AOL does use Gecko in the Mac OS X version of AOL and in their CompuServe product. I think switching to Gecko in AOL for Windows now might increase help desk calls significantly. Maybe they're waiting for more websites to support standards instead of IE proprietary HTML and JavaScript.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
What Microsoft gained by making IE was a FUTURE. Did you just get here from the moon or something?
AOL Sues for infringement on Netscape then they go and get 7 years of using Internet Exploder for free.
If they're so worried about Netscape being infringed on you'd think they would strive to have it as the default AOL browser.
The loss of 750 Million isnt going to hurt MS and hell 7 years of Ie being on X more desktops will probably work out in their favor anyways.
I'll stick with Mozilla
Though I don't see how it's different than when I use the Microsoft Internet Control in VB6 for free, my first thought when I heard IE was going to AOL royalty free was, "Scary that Mozilla belongs to 'em."
My second: Maybe the Mac OS X AOL client, which already uses Gecko, will keep Mozilla around.
Now the real question will be whether Apple's Safari (and its spin on khtml) can modularize like IE's engine (the Internet Control) to the point that Mozilla is moot on OS X as well. If that happens, Mozilla is in real trouble. Think I'm kidding? Seen any recent builds of Mozilla for Mac OS 9 recently? Not that you'll ever kill Mozilla completely, but if AOL pulls funding it won't be the same fast moving [sic; think about how big a project it really is!] project it is now.
In any event, this move makes the OS X client release seem a much smarter move. "See, we don't need you [someplace you don't exist]; we could trash you on Windows too! And then partner with Lindows!" Good leverage.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
Windows is fine for small things, but try moving arounds large files or large amounts of files using the gui, and then try the same thing using the command prompt. Ugh, the gui is orders of magnitude slower.
.Net should be a bit slower.
Dude, that isn't even possible. There is nothing grapically intensive about coppying files. Even if you are using drag and drop. MFC is not any slower than win32 API, nor is properly written Visual basic.
Yes, you missed that story. Don't expect these fanboy sites to print bad news about Mozilla.
"So, the browser wars are over the way that the cold war is over: there are still countries which aren't the US, but that's not really the issue - the US has demonstrated that it calls the shots and the rest of the world has to toe the line or get out of the way, and that's just what MS is doing with IE."
Um excuse me. That's a load of bullshit and you know it. The only thing that the US has demonstrated is that some of it's citizens and a lot of it's government can be cocky bastards. And I can certainly see that Microsoft either is the product of that cockyness, or is the cause of. The only thing that Microsoft's and your governments actions prove is that your slide to the bottom of the historical heap will be a rocky and painful one. Remind me to send flowers.
"The two companies also set a seven-year licensing agreement that allows AOL Time Warner to use Microsoft's Internet Explorer browsing technology in its flagship Internet service provider service without having to pay royalties. AOL Time Warner is the parent of CNN/Money."
Microsoft is known for lowering prices or even giving its software away when faced with loosing to open source. This doesn't mean that AOL asked for that part of the deal or even that they will take advantage of it. Why should they? Microsoft is trying to compete with them via MSN. It seems to me that using IE would be playing into Microsoft's hands.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
Expect = maybe
UI tweaks = visible changes only
(popup blocking at least, = everyone's but our's
not sure about tabs), = we STILL can't hew to our own standards
managed code = we lost the codebase again
and a significantly better security model. = still sucks
1. It will add tabbed browsing.
2. It will add a Sidebar function (which was in the early betas of IE 6.0 but was dropped in later builds and the final version). The Sidebar can be customized to accept data from various web sites.
Anyway, I think Microsoft was smart not to add tabbed browsing and Sidebar functions in IE 6.0x since they are features that just end up confusing less-experienced users.
Or did I miss a story about AOL laying off the Netscape employees who work on Mozilla?
Give it a month or two.......
Pot calling kettle - come in kettle...
So then I'm wondering is Safari usable on anything but OS X? I guess Windows users will probably never see this... hmmmmm.
That's not entirely true. IE5 for Mac and IE 6 for Windows made a lot of ground for standards compliance. It's to the point now where I can code a page ONCE and have it look exactly the same in IE5/5.5/6-Mozilla-Opera7. Of course it sucks in IE4/Netscape4.x. Yes MS's 'extensions' are still available for use but you CAN and SHOULD code to the standards.
Additionally I'll say this: As a community we put no pressure to bare on anyone to make sites that are accessible. See if the site was built with accessibility in mind then it would degrade in non-compliant browsers and still be of some use. Unfortunately we spend more time beating the MS-is-evil drum instead of encouraging developers to stand up for better coding practices. There are many many more reasons for coding to standards than just getting something to work in browser-x (efficiency of coding, readability, accessibility, modularity, etc.).
The company wouldn't want to.
The Mozilla developers sure wouldn't want to.
So who would? And yes, some users really need support. And if they got that CD, they'd expect some sort of it, even if it's not "premium" support or anything.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I'm not saying they innovated, but they definitely refined.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
I had to post it with "tpyos" all underlined in red.
I think it makes perfect sense to assume that morality can play a logical role in the vitality and profitability of a company. Saying that corporations by definition are amoral is in a sense true but those companies do have to take action based on the morals society has deemed worth legimizing as laws. Additionally behaving according to same mores/morals as the groups that you wish to solicit to secures brand recognition and a sense of well-being with your product/company. If a corporation was to leverage profit over morals then typically consumer back lash ensues and profits are short lived.
Actually it seems to me that there was a study that was done that showed the longest lasting most profitable companies actually were the ones that were "morals" based companies. I need to dig that out. I think some mutual fund or retirement investment plan was based around this premise.
This could be interesting for trillian users... imagine, if the networks could talk to each other.. you could send a message thru trillian on your MSN acct to someone with AIM, or you could contact them thru AIM itself.. very nice for when AOL has its glitches (and this is often)
Does anyone else see the irony in this? M$ loses a court case based on their monopolistic practices against the plaintiff's product. So, part of the settlement is to provide free licenses for the monopoly's product?
Which browser was it exactly that had XML/XSL transformation first? Oh yeah that's right it has been a couple of YEARS that MS introduced XML/XSL into their browser... Mozilla got it when?
The quote seems unqualified. How was the user to be jolted? Electroshock... scary faces on the screen. I personally was jolted by the fact that Netscape 3 Gold went down like cheap hooker (about once every 3 minutes).
Did the document actually say "hey look if we change how windows operates as to disable other products we will make our own product look better" or did it allude to what they really did which was "if we change windows to preload part of IE, then other browsers will appear slow because they don't preload anything"
Not only is TW in control, basically ignoring whatever Steve Case thinks, but I believe that this was the prelude to TW selling AOL off in the near future. AOL's lifeblood is dial-up, and that's going the way of the dinosaur. They've lost the mindshare race for broadband, and as more people pick up cable or dsl, they're going to use IE. Why? Because most people buy DSL from their phone company and cable of course, from their cable company. These companies happily point out that they supply everything they need, and that AOL can still be had for an "extra charge". That usually kills the deal for AOL right there. Plus, after being on AOL for awhile, users are a little more net-savy. Moving to IE is no big deal for them.
AOL IM still is a draw, and TW will use that to their advantage for the time being, but they know AOL is a sinking ship. This deal got them a big load of cash, asserted control of the AOL operations, and established a relationship with Microsoft that TW will still be using long after AOL has been pawned off to the highest bidder.
Ten years from now, we'll all be saying "remember when" about AOL, much the same way we talk about Prodigy and the BBS system.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
ding ding ding ding... WE HAVE A WINNER! AOL/TW is carrying huge debts and expenses right now. Continuing down the lawsuit path just increases that. However getting some free tech and 3/4 of a billion dollars (almost 1/23 of their debt) plus free marketing and instant placement on the desktops of 95% of the market... HELL YEAH! AOL get's to dump off some development costs and stop whipping the slaves so much. Tone down the AOL 7/8/9/10 6 month development cycle trying to stay ahead of MSN's versioning. They can dump just enough Mozilla developers to show shareholders they are cutting back expenses but not so much that they really piss off their most ardent supporters in the community.
The alternative for TW is to spin off AOL and that would be a bitter pill for the shareholders to swallow.
I dream of anything that could remove it. Hell, I'd even run a program that'd sit in the background and kill any IE task it sees running. Just to have the illusion that I'm in control.
" Oh, and think of the irony that it comes at a time when Neo is in a coma and has been revealed to be not the Saviour, but the Angel of Death; when Buffy has been discontinued; and when Nanny Ogg is feeling just a wee bit under the weather...were these not omens that we failed to heed? How could we be so childish to believe these signs were just random events in popular culture..."
Ummm, because they were? Because you don't have a firm grip on reality if these tidbits of pop culture seem like omens of fate to you?
Look, I love the Matrix too, but these people that mistake movies like it and other pop culture for philosopy (or even a religion...Hello, Canadian Jedis!) need to pull their heads out of their asses and start taking their lithium. It's a FUCKING MOVIE, folks. You'd have thought Jesus Christ was playing Neo in it as seriously as some people are taking it.
As cliched' as it sounds, I'm going to say it anyway. Move out of your parents basement and get a life. There's a real world out there.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Microsoft just payed AOL $750 million in return for AOL continuing to use IE. If AOL didn't have Netscape to use as a bargaining tool/threat, there's no way they would have been able to get so much cash from Microsoft.
Netscape development just turned a big profit for AOL.
I'm already tossing out aol disks. Windows 2003 server cd's are about the same value to me.
i said no text
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
The C/Net article seemed to have a lot of positive M$ spin (as usual) but let's review the facts of the situation:
1. M$ gave $750 million (probably found underneath Bill Gate's couch cushions) to AOL.
2. M$ gave AOL non-exclusive rights to use IE and Windows Media formats (but see below).
3. AOL agreed to drop charges.
The real story is that M$ caved and agreed to pay AOL cash. A little Googling has determined that AOL already uses IE as its browser and has perpetual rights to do so, so the bit about non-exclusive rights to IE is just PR. The bit about Windows Media is a smokescreen too. AOL doesn't care at all about streaming technology; they care much more about services. If an online service makes a profitable proposal to them they won't examine the technology too closely while counting their money.
It is easy to see why M$ continues to dominate; they somehow managed to turn a $750 million loss into a business deal! Unfortunately our current forms of mass media are so expensive that publishers are required to sacrifice objectivity to continue to stay in business.
Sometimes I think that the ability to turn off popups, plus tabbed browsing and even the ability to turn off cookies, and all from the PrefBar utility right on the top of your browser, shows that Mozilla was designed with one purpose in mind... browsing porn.
As you suggest, AOL may not know or care what is going on. However, Time-Warner still does and press and broadcasting in the U.S. is going through further changes to increase consolidation again. Promulgation of WMP seems to be the real motive to pay AOL $750 000 000. The potential to block competing feeds or foreign feeds is built into the client...
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
MS got the result they wanted anyway, and just had to give away a few free copies of their bloatware to some schools as compensation. It could be argued that the latter actually helps MS in the long term anyway, as more students are locked into the Redmond way of doing things. Thanks, Judge KK.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
And for those who don't remember, Microsoft has quit W3c recently and some time ago it was revealed that they had filed for a patent describing the the use of "style sheets in a publishing system - 5860073" (which is CSS). A patent which they acquired back in 1999, and I believe right under everybody's noses.
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
The way capitalism works is that generally large companies have advantages that smaller companies don't. Once a market "matures" then the large companies have all the advantages and the successful ones buy all the less successful ones. This "consolidation" results in a few companies dominating the market. If one company dominates then this is a "monopoly". A monopolist can charge whatever they like for their products; basically they can print their own money.
Theoretically a monopolist could use all this free money to gain advantage in another market where they don't already have a monopoly. In reality this is exactly what businesses do; leverage one monopoly to try to gain another. We have laws against this because things would suck if all markets were controlled by monopolists.
In this case your example is invalid because you did not include any market specific information. M$ used their monopoly in one market (OSes) to illegally exert leverage in another market (browsers). Specifically they charged nothing for a piece of software they spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing. They also made their browser faster by using exclusive Windows APIs and preloading DLLs. This is also illegal since it is using one monopoly to try to gain another.
Microsoft is a monopolist in the OS and Office Suite software categories because:
A. They have >90% market share
B. Their profit margin is >50%
These factors indicate that they can charge relatively high prices because they face no significant competition. You sir, with your whitebox PC, are what we like to call an "exception", which does not disprove the rule.
At the bottom of the page you indicate that oil is more important than computers. This is probably true, but there isn't a single oil company today that could do business without computers. Actually there isn't a single mega corporation that could do business without computers.
That's actually the very reason why I don't order from B&N any more. It chokes on Mozilla when you get to the checkout and all I ever got was a canned "your business is very important to us" response.
Yeah, I might be a stubborn son of a bitch, but if your business doesn't support standards I'm more then happy yo take it somewhere else.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
decide if this is good or bad tbh. I guess you need to figure out which the lesser of two evils is.
--
$750M is obviously less than it would cost Microsoft to allow the case get to media, to let everyone hear there is a pretty good competition to IE and try "What is that Mozilla thing anyway"? If MSIE didn't put down the case before it got loud (way before the trial would end, and no matter what result it had) the cost in loss of browser market share control would reach billions. Blocking banners, no hardwired integration with MS Office and other expensive packets, influences gained by the competition, showing people that "It can be done much better and still free" would mean way heavier financial impact on Microsoft that that bit of media "low noise" as this article.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
" The browser 'war' was over when 'Communicator' 4 shipped, and was a bloated piece of crap."
To a certain point this is true, but this isn't the full story. Communicator 4 was an interesting product in the number of additional, non - html rendering features it shipped. One of these was live connect, which was a toolset for allowing plug - ins to interoperate, for example quicktime movies could be displayed within a VRML world. Another was inclusion of castanet software for Java Application multicast distribution, which also had a lot of promise at the time.
What Netscape forgot to do was continue to develop their HTML rendering engine, support for DHTML was erratic, their layers implemetation strange and wasn't accepted as the standard and even basic HTML was only displayed once the whole page had loaded and had to be reloaded every time the window was resized, truely awful.
However, Netscape then made some very, very awful decisions which essentially killed the browser off. They actually fixed the page draw and resize bug using their old code base 5 years ago but this was never released into the Netscape 4 releases, where the code was effectivly frozen for 3 years. The complete rewrite of the rendering engine as part of Mozilla showed progress after a year, but a decision was taken not to release at this stage, even into a Netscape 4 update, until the product was 100% ready with all the XUL etc. complete. To compound the misery, after about 4 years they lost their nerve and released Netscape 6 as a production product. This was much better than 4 but didn't deserve a point release of its own given the remaining bugs. Netscape 7 is actually quite nice but why use it over a mozilla spin off or a KHTML based browser (written by a very small team in a fraction of the time) is anyone's guess.
However, I miss where Netscape were going with Plug Ins. 5 years ago I worked at the Science Museum in London and we were looking very closely at VRML worlds and Quicktime VR movies of exhibits. A lot of this innovation seems to have disappered with the loss of the old Netscape. Nowadays I add Java and possibly Flash and I'm done. Although mozilla extensions are fantastic I can't see them completeing with the 200+ plugs ins we had in Netscape's hayday.
The news.com article has more meat.
AOL got cash (which it needs badly), CD distribution (which may help its subscriber base), and royalty-free licenses to IE and WMP 9.
MS got the AOL lawsuit off its back, and got MSN/AIM interoperability --although another poster already pointed out that the FCC requires interoperability before audio/video may be added (#6072015).
There is nothing in the article that implies that AOL must use these IE or WMP exclusively. This is very different from past MS maneuvers attempting to force exclusivity.
In fact, AOL would be wise to remain as independent of MS as possible for browser and multimedia technology, while at the same time bundling IE and WMP for customers who wish to use them. Bunding IE and WMP for free, I might add, since the licenses are royalty-free.
I would rather have seen an
agreement that required Microsoft to bundle AOL and Netscape
with their operating systems for the next 7 years.
What have us windows users done to deserve that!
...."Why didn't anyone else think of this?"
Well, because it's the most stupid UI mistake in the world.
Given that no one ever reads anything, why would you change stop, please don't download any more, to 'reload', reload the whole fucking lot again.
The functions seem compleatly oposite and bastard anoying if you click reload thinking it was stop.
It's like replacing the break with the accelerator when the car is stopped.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
>>And truth be told, most aren't that special.
Gecko has it there - IE/KHTML don't like my CSS2 selectors and KHTML doesn't even have a default XSLT lib.
>but if your business doesn't support standards I'm
>more then happy yo take it somewhere else.
IMO this goes for javascript and flash too, if your site needs them it doesn't need me.
Association test: WMP is to RealPlayer as IE was to Netscape.
Time/Warner wants to put their content in front of as many eyeballs (ears) as possible, and DRM would be a bonus. That means you use the tools with the best market penetration (it's what I would do in their position). And that means you partner with Microsoft.
Unfortunately (as another post indicated) marginally better technology isn't going to displace the market leader, particularly when they have the market share and cash to give product away to ensure their dominance. Legislation and antitrust lawsuits have been ineffective. I don't see an alternative to a breakup of Microsoft (into media unit, OS, applications, support, etc.). It may be a short-term pain to the industry, but a long-term gain to society.
Reloaded has been out for about what now, a month? in the U.S., which I think is quite long enough to have a discussion ban. How long do you think we should wait before talking about the film in a public forum? Two months? Half year? A year? Until you tell us it is okay?
The number of viewers has peaked, in fact, Reloaded is already on its way down the box office charts with Bruce Almighty or whatever it is called in first place. It is not a new film anymore. If I had made a reference to the end of Reloaded before the film was out or even up to a week or two later, I would have understood your criticism. This way -- well, sorry, but you can't expect people to hide the plots of films that have been out that long, especially when the Internet is full of discussions about word-by-word analysis of, uh, this guy in the film who is kinda -- well -- you'll see. And then you'll want to talk about it, very badly.
I'm sorry to hear that you waited so long to see the film that you got some of the plot before you got your popcorn. I know how that feels, because I'm sitting here in Germany with Buffy still running in season seven, and the whole U.S. part of the Internet is making references to what happened to Spike. So what am I susposted to do? Flame every American who isn't considerate enought to wait until Europe has caught up to the last episode? Tell them to wait about, oh, two months until the 300+ million European viewers have had their chance?
If it hadn't been me, it would have simply been somebody else, and popular culture is there to be referenced. Pity, too, since I was really wondering how they were going to get out of the Spike-Buffy-Angel triangle...
In the first quarter, 55.8 percent of worldwide shipments came from PC makers not among the top five, according to research firm Gartner. Under Thursday's deal, these builders will get AOL discs when they order Windows.
wait, so they still think there are people left in this country that haven't already thrown away enough aol cd's to wallpaper a room? do they really think that anyone out there who isn't using aol at this point isn't using it because they dont have access to an aol cd? It might have helped if they went back to the old deal they had with ms (circa win95r2 and win98) where they had a "sign up for aol" icon on the desktop when you installed windows. but this is just going to be an extra cd no one will ever look at. if aol really wants to gain marketshare, they should really be going after dell, gateway, etc. to include aol memberships with their pre installed software bundles.
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
I can't help but fear that this development might well spell the end of companies like Macromedia supporting netscape-compatible browser plugins. Most comercial web sites these days usually require some sort of browser, at least to make the site more interesting. It none of those plugins existed for Netscape, it would only further alienate anyone not using IE. For me personally, it would make using Mozilla a lot harder...
If you read the article on News.com, it becomes painfully clear who won. M$ does have to pay 750 million, but look what it gets out of it. AOL will now definitely use IE in AOL for the next 7 years, effectively blocking their only 'major' browser competitor, Mozilla. M$ gets to put DRM Media 9 into all those AOL users machines, they get more control. What M$ is getting here is a big market to distribute their software to. I am sure they are happy with this since they are trying to push DRM onto everyone, and what better way to do it then to put it in new windows and get the rest with AOL? Well, this is another example how a company with enough money, and even a monopolistic record, can not just buy its way out, but also to increase its power.
Have fun with the world of DRM, where only you, M$ and the government can read your private email. (***I stole this one.)
Free speech is getting expensive...
MS and AOL gained a small competitive advantage attributable to many factors, none of which was necessarily ease of use. MacOS was millions of times easier to use than Windows 3.x. A true grandma OS if there ever was one. We know what happened.
To explain the debacle of the IT industry in favour of the less good technically speaking we have to move to the realms of marketing where a lie repeated enough times, well, you know the rest.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You know zilch about usability Mr Nobody.
Why o why... I should just do as my signature says, but sometimes it is too much to bare.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
AOL got IE licenses 'Royalty free'? Does anyone pay for IE licenses?
I've got some Mozilla licenses to sell them, too.
The question is: whether corporate "virtual persons" should be held to the same standards of ethics, and right and wrong, as an actual person in their pursuit of profit? I vote yes. And the naysayers be damned - unless we are all, virtual or actual, held to the same standards; society as we know it is screwed.
-an actual person seeking profit.
Using Konqueror 3.1.0 and there's separate buttons for Stop and Reload.
You must remember that Opera (and I would presume other browsers as well) can identify itself as IE of any version to the site serving up the pages. This is even the default setting upon install. How valid are your numbers under these circumstances?
Also, "real" web designers develop what their clients ask for. If their clients ask for a web application that supports the "enabled" property for button objects, and you tell them "only IE supports that" - guess what? You do it anyway. You can throw all the standards documents you want into their faces, and they don't care and they won't pay for it, because all their customers use IE. I've been developing web pages since 1995, and clients have told me to REMOVE cross-browser scripting to save bandwidth.
So get on your high horses all you want, but IE IS the standard for right now.
AOL could always tell Apple that they need to supply people to make KHTML / Webcore work with the Mac version of AOL. Apple would do it (couldn't afford not to really) and AOL doesn't have to keep the engineers. Not a great thing for us, but a possible given the circumstances.
I wonder if MSN will come with an updated version of IE.
Do you think AOL bought up the rights to Netscape and established the Mozilla OSS project out of the goodness of their hearts?
I don't think so.
It has been obvious to me for some time that Mozilla is an ace card that AOL can use when bargaining with Microsoft over the rights to use the IE browser from their AOL client. Without Mozilla, Microsoft would be able to dictate the terms of the agreement. With Mozilla, Microsoft has to give a little so they can take a little. The arrangement is much more fair that way.
Personally, I think AOL played this one smart. They will probably continue to feed the Mozilla project for the foreseeable future; it's just a question of to what degree they will do that.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
The medication isn't working, we'll have to increase the dosage.
MS did a good thing in paying them off to end this whole legal issue.
Change to websites.
Change to versions.
Change to browser's.
Change to your.
There are some stylistic errors but they do not need immediate attention.
Cheers,
CD
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
There are a couple of Firebird extensions that allow you to dynamically change the User Agent string so that the browser appears to be a different one - Internet Explorer, for instance.
/ phoenix/usera gentswitcher/
Go to http://texturizer.net/firebird/extensions.html
I use "User Agent Switcher" by Chris Pederick and it works perfectly, provided the site you want to visit is arbitrarily blocking Mozilla, and not using proprietary HTML extensions.
http://chrispederick.myacen.com/work
I'm a tad late here. But all I can say is "Hallelujah, Brother!"
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk