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Dvorak Says MS Should Buy Opera
patro writes "Should MS beef up cranky old Internet Explorer for today's standards? Dvorak thinks buying Opera would be a smarter move. It works on all the major platforms including the Mac which IE won't support anymore and $400 million for it is pocket money for Microsoft."
...Dvorak is a hack...so, there you have it.
Last week everyone thought Opera was being bought by Google. So now its obvious that MS should buy it first to keep it out of the hands of Google.
Microsoft doesn't want their stuff to work on all other platforms... After all, they intentionally discontinued work on IE for mac, and have bought several companies only to immediately axe their Linux offerings.
Microsoft is not a company selling apps, Microsoft is a company selling lock-in. As long as customers are sticking with them, they don't really need to spend "pocket change" to keep up with technology.
What are you eating? isItVeg?.
Dvorak has apparently forgotten all the work that Microsoft put into stuffing Internet Explorer and its components into every unlikely corner of the Windows operating systems. You can't just easily rip that out and replace it with a new browser..
He's just another utterly clueless pundit. To have them buy Opera is to admit that they didn't have what it takes to secure and extend the thing. MS flatly won't be inclined to do that if they can help it- this suggestion is in the same class as saying MS ought to do a Linux version of MS Office.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Unlikely. Opera isn't compatible with Microsoft's business strategy since it implements web standards.
Why does Dvorak even make it on here? I'm not trying to troll, just noticing that every Dvorak post made is a HUGE flamewar against his ignorance in computing. I mean, sure, he can have his opinion. But why does it make slashdot EVERY single time he makes a comment?
Microsoft Sucks, F/OSS Rocks. I get mod points now right?
Microsoft already covered this when they based IE on Mosaic years ago. Mosaic used to run on more platforms. They could just take the Opera code base and do the same thing they did with Mosaic, knee-cap and labotomize it.
Seriously though, I think it's one of the worst ideas I've ever heard. I don't see why MS should want to sink so much money into something that they already have and don't really make money on anyway. It may be pocket change for MS at this point, but that doesn't mean they should throw their pocket change in the gutter. The future not incredibly rosey for this point, they need better planning than to buy someone elses product that does the same thing as something they already have. You may not like IE, but it's good enough for the majority of users. I'm not trying to evangelize MS BTW, I'm writing this message through Firefox.
His entire argument is predicated upon the false premises that Microsoft wants to support open standards and that they want to support the Mac.
Microsoft has virtually bottomless resources - if they really wanted to, they could crank out a secure cross-platform web browser that supported relevant standards. What Microsoft has is exactly what they want - vendor lock-in with a mediocre product that through its various 'feature-driven' incompatibilities gives them some sense of control.
If Mircosoft can't own the roads, they want to own the potholes.
400 mil is an awful lot of money to fix a browser... For a 1/10 of that price, you could fix the current IE... Plus, MS has to save face here... Buying opera is as much as saying "IE is worthless, buggy, crap... we had to buy opera because it was just too bad to be fixed"... Not exactly positive PR...