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Microsoft Cancels EU Antitrust Hearing
bahstid writes "The NY Times reports that Microsoft and the European Commission have canceled the only hearing planned in an antitrust investigation into the company's tying of Internet Explorer into Windows because of a dispute over the attendance of European regulators serving as advisers. As a result, the commission will reach its decision and levy a fine based on written statements from Microsoft and its adversaries. Microsoft decided against the opportunity to give oral evidence in the case after it was unable to persuade the commission to move the meeting, scheduled for June 3rd through 5th, so that it did not conflict with a global antitrust conference in Zurich that draws European antitrust regulators."
Netscape had the market volume and could easily have survived a few bad versions with their market share. However Microsoft made sure that didn't happen.
Microsoft was not in a position at the time to bury Netscape. They did it themselves.
Way back in April, I wrote that Netscape made the "single worst strategic mistake that any software company can make" by deciding to rewrite their code from scratch. Lou Montulli, one of the 5 programming superstars who did the original version of Navigator, emailed me to say, "I agree completely, it's one of the major reasons I resigned from Netscape." This one decision cost Netscape 3 years. That's three years in which the company couldn't add new features, couldn't respond to the competitive threads from Internet Explorer, and had to sit on their hands while Microsoft completely ate their lunch.