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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?
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"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!!
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
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
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
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.
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...
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.
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