Internet Explorer Antitrust Case Set To Expire

jbrodkin writes "The judgment in United States vs. Microsoft is on the verge of expiring, nearly a decade after antitrust officials ruled Microsoft unfairly limited competition against its Internet Explorer browser. Microsoft has two more weeks to fulfill the final requirements in the antitrust case, which is scheduled to expire on May 12. Although Netscape ultimately didn't benefit, the settlement seems to have done its job. From a peak of 95% market share, by some estimates Internet Explorer now has less than half of the browser market. Microsoft, of course, filed its own antitrust action against Google this week, and even commented publicly on the irony of its doing so, noting that Microsoft has 'spent more than a decade wearing the shoe on the other foot.'"

Comments

Expired and stagnant.

[ozmanjusri]

The settlement did nothing. It was Mozilla and Firefox which revived competition in the browser market.

Re:Expired and stagnant.

[RoFLKOPTr]

The settlement did nothing. It was Mozilla and Firefox which revived competition in the browser market.

This. The field of web browser development was almost completely stagnant before Mozilla came along. Since then, the web has made massive strides in usability and function, which would not have been possible without Mozilla (and later Google). No antitrust settlement could have caused new browsers to emerge.

Re:Expired and stagnant.

[ehrichweiss]

I don't know if I need to remind you but Netscape was essentially Mozilla's code and they even said it in the EULA around 1994 or 95: "Remember, it's spelled N-E-T-S-C-A-P-E but it's pronounced 'Mozilla'"

Re:Expired and stagnant.

[RoFLKOPTr]

I don't know if I need to remind you but Netscape was essentially Mozilla's code and they even said it in the EULA around 1994 or 95: "Remember, it's spelled N-E-T-S-C-A-P-E but it's pronounced 'Mozilla'"

Netscape was Netscape Communications' code. "Mozilla" was simply a codename (and useragent) for the browser back in the day. When I said "before Mozilla came along" I was referring to when Netscape essentially died and forked off into what was formally and officially called Mozilla which later split into Firefox et al.

Re:Expired and stagnant.

[sortius_nod]

As a Chrome user I agree 100%. Mozilla got their shit together and stopped producing bloatware (Navigator, Communicator, etc) which split the market.

If it wasn't for Mozilla I don't think Chrome would exist.

Re:Expired and stagnant.

[Black Parrot]

That, and the free UNICES turned out to be so useful as servers that Microsoft was not able to pwn the internet with its own "standards".

Re:Expired and stagnant.

[shutdown -p now]

The settlement did nothing. It was Mozilla and Firefox which revived competition in the browser market.

Well, that's kinda the point, isn't it? Anti-competition measures, by their very definition, enable others to fairly compete on their merits without being strangled by monopolies. For Netscape it was already too late, and they weren't actually better than IE5+, even once the barriers were removed. When something that was better did finally appear (Mozilla, and ultimately Firefox), it competed on its merits - and the result is most impressive.

Oh, and Opera? In the relevant time period this was Opera 5 & 6. Back then it was a good browser - very fast, certainly, and with a nice set of UI features - but in terms of supporting newer web standards it was even worse than IE6 (which was actually pretty good at the time it was released... it just stagnated quick afterwards).

Re:Expired and stagnant.

[hairyfeet]

But their code was absolute shite until they forked it as F/OSS as Mozilla. I know the theory loved by the tinfoil hat wearing crowd here is poor wittle Netscape beaten to death by the big bad MSFT, but you know what? Speaking for myself and the countless greybeards that had been actual customers of NS (hell I probably still got my NS4 disc in one of my storage lockers somewhere) who all ended up switching to IE I can tell you that it wasn't that we liked IE per se, it was that NS 4 was shit. It wasn't even a good hearty morning log, it was a weak runny stream of foul smelling shit after a bad illness kind of shit.

Here, let me do my impression of running NS4 for all those that didn't have the "enjoyment" of running it back in its day: "Oh look I got my shotgunned modems all screaming, I got Win98 stripped down and humming like a tweaked out Chevy, i'm good to go baby yeah! Let me just fire up my new NS4.../NS4 crashes hard/...Huh. Probably just a glitch, it happens. So I'll just fire up NS4 and head to my favorite.../NS4 locks up/...Motherfucker! Maybe the site just has some bad code on it, wouldn't surprise me. So I'll just relaunch and choose a different site and.../NS4 crashes hard and BSODs OS with it/ $&^%$^%$&^$&^$!

And THAT, that right there, is why IE won. NS4 was a buggy pile of total shit and by the time they got the bugs ironed out enough for the product to actually be usable nobody used it anymore. Just like the old DBase II they released half assed not ready for alpha testing code and paid the price.

Was MSFT douchebags? Yep, old Bill was a nerd that had been shoved into too many lockers and took everything as a "kill crush destroy!" mandate, but NS wouldn't have disappeared so quickly if it had actually been anything but poo. look up MSFT talking about IE 4, which was before they had bundled anything, and you'll see them talking about how it was a fight to keep the server from overloading and how they were sending out over 150,000 copies on CD weekly. They were getting slammed because people were going out of their way to get IE and get off NS because the simple fact is in EVERY single way hat counts to an end user IE was better. It was faster, it was more stable, it used less memory at a time when 16Mb was common, and for awhile there it was even more standards compliant (anybody remember the NS blink tag?).

So lets give credit where credit was due, it was the Moz foundation that took the steaming pile of poo that was NS and hammered it into something usable by the masses. It took them awhile, and they had some serious growing pains like the 2.x.x branch memory leaks, but thanks to them we now have a wealth of choices, all for free. We have the Gecko based like Seamonkey, FF, and Kmeleon, we have the Chromium/Webkit based like Chrome, Comodo Dragon, SWIron, Chromium, Safari, and finally we have Presto in Opera that most people forget before Mozilla made third party browsers free was a for pay product.

So thanks Moz, while my users are in the process of being switched over to Chromium based Dragon for performance and security reason you still made non IE browsers free for the masses and gave us a wealth of choice. Thanks.

Re:Expired and stagnant.

[Anonymous Coward]

BSODding an OS tells something about the host OS too.

Re:Expired and stagnant.

[wvmarle]

(anybody remember the NS blink tag?)

You mean that was not an html standard? I didn't know. And boy do I remember that... horrible. Makes the text involved so hard to read, especially when used on not a single word but a complete paragraph. My regard of the html standards board just went up :) At least they didn't invent that horror.

Re:Expired and stagnant.

[Andrei D]

I still remember that, in my early days as a Linux user (circa 2000), I had a relatively decent machine. I was using Red Hat 6.2 with XFree86 and Window Maker at the time. Netscape was indeed slow, so I clocked it to see how long it takes to start (display the home page): 51 fucking seconds.

wrong

[phantomfive]

I always thought the outcome of the anti-trust suit was completely wrong. Yes Microsoft was engaging in horribly unethical behavior, but what they did with Netscape wasn't very bad, really. They should have the right to bundle whatever software they want with the OS. The whole attempt to make it inseparable from the OS was a bit dodgy, but Google is essentially trying the same thing with Chrome OS.

The thing Microsoft did that was REALLY bad was not allowing OEMs to use Windows if they offered other operating systems, even if they still offered Windows. That is a clear and obvious abuse of a monopoly, and should be punished. And yet for some reason the focus was still on Netscape.

Re:wrong

[bloodhawk]

but they did allow OEM's to use other operating systems. The issue was that they gave preferrential pricing to OEM's that agreed to pay based on the number of machines they shipped, hence the best pricing came by licensing for every machine. bas

Re:wrong

[phantomfive]

I don't trust Google, but I don't trust any big corporation.

Do you trust anyone? I mean really? Is there a reason to trust the little guys any more than the big guys? I thought our reason for having contracts was basically because we can't trust anyone.

Re:wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to have to disagree on 2/3 of your arguments. First of all, yes what they did with Netscape was terrible. The anti-trust judgement was brought because it was a classic case of monopoly abuse. Microsoft used their exceedingly dominant position in Operating Systems as leverage to gain ground in the Web Browser market. Integrating IE into the OS really only did 2 things: 1) ensured that the average user would never look any further for a web browser (in fact, most new users weren't, until the last few years, aware that anything other than the blue 'e' existed for browsing the web) and 2) opened a number of security vulnerabilities due, in large part, to the browser's close ties to the OS.

Your evaluation of ChromeOS is, IMHO, completely off base. ChromeOS is a browser-based OS. The UI is a browser. That's pretty much it. Windows, on the other hand, was an OS which had a browser integrated for no other real reason beyond crushing the competition. It'd have been one thing if IE were simply free, however, I can still remember seeing boxes to buy it in stores. It was made free once they realized it was the only way to win. ChromeOS, in contrast, is simply banking on the fact that webapps are "good enough" for most people for most things at this point and that they can simply do away with the rest of the OS pretty much all together.

As for abusing their monopoly in regards to OEMs, I'll agree, though they aren't the only ones that engaged in this behavior in this market (see: Intel).

Re:wrong

[calmofthestorm]

You shouldn't say bad things about the Corporation. The Corporation loves you.

Re:wrong

[similar_name]

Is there a reason to trust the little guys any more than the big guys?

I think there is. While it is true that trust can be betrayed by anyone, there are differences between a small organization and a large one (small business vs large corporation). It is generally easier to get access to the owner of a small business as opposed to the CEO of a large corporation. In addition and also related, a large corporation will usually have more layers between the top and bottom strata of their workforce. This very often leaves (upper) management without any concept of a connection to the customer other than as a statistic. Company structure becomes more dependent on rules and less influenced by fairness and trust.

IMHO Big Banks, Big Business, Big Union, Big Government, Big Religion, all have very similar problems. Having too much trust is generally not one of them. They are like an evil patriarch that has hidden all of his wealth, lies on his death bed, and swears that if you don't do everything to keep him alive he will hurt your children.

Re:wrong

[phantomfive]

So, a couple of people here have responded saying that ya, they trust the little guys sometimes. But really, how much would you trust them? Would you do business worth a million dollars without a contract? What about 10 thousand dollars? What about five hundred. We don't even get married without a contract, and hopefully you are marrying someone you can trust at least as much as anyone else.

Re:wrong

[phantomfive]

Now, my memory is that the contract was based on more than the number of machines they shipped. That's what Intel got convicted of not long ago. But Microsoft was going even farther, limiting OEMs.

I remember back then our purchasing manager told me about a conversation he had with some OEMs (we didn't want Windows), and they basically said they couldn't give us computers without Windows because of Microsoft. If you're influencing your resellers like that, then you are abusing your monopoly position. This is part of how they crushed OS/2 warp, which was a far superior OS at that time.

Re:wrong

[Cinder6]

IANAL, but I've always figured this is allowed for two reasons.

1. Apple makes hardware that comes with a "special" OS on it. Nobody is stopping you from installing anything else.
2. Apple is unilaterally "hostile" to all other companies--they don't play favorites, they don't strong arm anyone into using their products, but they don't let anyone install OS X. Microsoft basically said, "If you work with anyone else, you can't do business with us." Apple just says, "You can't do business with us."

(There's also the fact that Apple's marketshare was and is a fraction of Microsoft's.)

I would be interested to hear with somebody who actually knows what they're talking about, though. What makes Apple's situation acceptable in the eyes of the law?

Re:wrong

[shutdown -p now]

Depends on how much I (think I) know that someone. On a few occasions, I have trusted people with what amounts to several thousand dollars.

Re:wrong

[TheRaven64]

Is there a reason to trust the little guys any more than the big guys?

A couple of reasons, yes:

First, small companies typically don't have large teams of lawyers on the payroll. This means that a lawsuit is as expensive for them as it is for you, so it's in their interest to resolve any problems before they get to the stage where you'd consider suing them.

Secondly, there is the idea of personal accountability. When I deal with a small company, I usually deal with a single individual who has the authority to make decisions. At the very least, I deal with someone who has a direct line to the person who can make decisions. When I deal with a big company, the person I talk to often doesn't even have a way of getting a message to the person who can actually make important decisions.

As a corollary to the second point, employees at small companies tend to feel that they have more of a personal stake in the company's reputation. This is especially true for cooperatives, where the shareholders are the employees. If your behaviour has a significant impact on the company's reputation, and your income depends on the company's reputation, then you have a strong incentive to not to harm that reputation.

Of course, there are exceptions in both directions, but all other things being equal I'd pick the small company over the large company.

Re:wrong

[TheRaven64]

I don't understand why everybody seems to think there were sinister intentions behind Microsoft's bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows. What does increased browser market share really accomplish?

Were you not alive in the '90s, or were you just not paying attention? Microsoft saw Netscape as a real threat. Microsoft had two products that accounted for over 95% of their total income: Windows and Office. No one bought Windows because they liked Windows, they bought it because it ran the software that they liked (that's not to say that they disliked Windows - although a lot did - just that the OS was irrelevant to most computer buyers). If web applications started to take off (and Netscape was aiming to make their browser a thin client interface) then there was a lot less of a reason to buy Windows.

Microsoft wanted to avoid this, so they introduced ActiveX. This let you write incredibly rich web applications, because you were basically just shipping a Windows binary to the client and running it in a browser. Internet Explorer existed to push ActiveX. With ActiveX established, web applications would just mean Windows applications that happened to be delivered over HTTP with a little bit of HTML glue, and the Windows monopoly would be safe. There was no chance of getting other browser makers to support ActiveX, because they also supported other platforms and it was against their interests to promote a single-platform technology on the web. IE was given away for free, back when Netscape was only free for noncommercial use. Microsoft dumped it at below cost to encourage people to use it and to drive the competition out of business.

Anti-trust is always bad

[mfh]

Microsoft does some things right and other things really wrong, but never only one or the other... their forced efforts are always a sad uneven mixture of the two.

IE has always been terrible. Perhaps when Netscape was just starting out, IE may have been somewhat better from a UI standpoint only, with fancy hooks into the OS of the day... but standards trump bells and whistles and IE cannot compete against browsers coded correctly. This is typically because the philosophy of these other products available is to create something that delivers web content safely, rather than trying to control the internet by stifling web development into a proprietary lock-in scheme designed to generate wealth rather than deliver what people want.

Re:Anti-trust is always bad

[shutdown -p now]

Perhaps when Netscape was just starting out, IE may have been somewhat better from a UI standpoint only, with fancy hooks into the OS of the day

In terms of web standards IE5 and IE6 were significantly better than competing versions of Netscape. And, no, this wasn't back when Netscape "was just starting out" (that was way before IE1!), but it was in the last days of Netscape.

trying to control the internet by stifling web development into a proprietary lock-in scheme designed to generate wealth rather than deliver what people want.

Um, did you miss the whole Netscape proprietary <layer> thingy, when there would be sites on the Net that would say "This website requires Netscape Navigator"?

Netscape was mainly to blame for their failure

[TheLink]

Yeah back then Netscape was actually WORSE than IE.

Microsoft may have stepped on their toes, but Netscape themselves were to blame for blowing away their own feet.

I used Netscape from 1.x till 4.7. And at the ending stages Netscape was inferior. It was slower in rendering and crashed more. Trust me I tried to look for alternatives to IE at that time.

Mozilla and Mozilla based versions of Netscape (e.g. Netscape 6) were crap too and not worth the megabytes of download. I tried Opera too but it just didn't fit with the way I did things back then.

Mozilla only got usable a few years ago (2005? 2006? Barely usable too - still had many memory issues back then) and that's when it started gaining marketshare.

If you think I'm trolling or talking shit, just look at Google Chome - it has gained so much share in a far far shorter time than Mozilla took.

Even nontechs/nonnerds are downloading and installing Google Chrome and recommending it to their friends.

FWIW, I'm currently using Mozilla for TreeStyleTabs, Noscript, Adblock Plus and Certificate Patrol :).

Re:Netscape was mainly to blame for their failure

[kvvbassboy]

"Mozilla only got usable a few years ago (2005? 2006? Barely usable too - still had many memory issues back then) and that's when it started gaining marketshare." I would say sometime around 2004, it was the first time I used Firefox. I loved it instantly, tabbed browsing and everything. I wondered why everyone wasn't using it already. I don't know about memory issues, but it was already much more secure than Internet Explorer.

Re:Netscape was mainly to blame for their failure

[RoFLKOPTr]

Mozilla only got usable a few years ago (2005? 2006? Barely usable too - still had many memory issues back then) and that's when it started gaining marketshare. If you think I'm trolling or talking shit, just look at Google Chome - it has gained so much share in a far far shorter time than Mozilla took.

I've been using Firefox on and off since before 1.0. I had no problems with it back then. It was horrible compared to the standards of today, but it was still better than fucking IE6. I think we could attribute Chrome's rapid market share gain at least in part, though, to the fact that people are now aware of (and actively seeking) newer better ways to browse the web, and it has been backed by a multi-billion-dollar household name since the get go. Firefox really started the alternative browser trend, so it took a long time to gain steam.

Should have been 3 Baby Microsofts

[ackthpt]

Microsoft should have been split into 3 companies, but when George W. Bush rolled into Washington DC, he viewed every Clinton move as garbage and disregarded it. Really would have been a good thing for Microsoft, in the long run, one of the three was bound to ditch the crappy OS and build a better one without all the legacy garbage and bundling everyone's products for free.

Re:Should have been 3 Baby Microsofts

[Black Parrot]

but when George W. Bush rolled into Washington DC, he viewed the rule of law as garbage and disregarded it.

There; I've fixed it for you.

Re:Should have been 3 Baby Microsofts

[Archangel Michael]

I blame Microsoft for creating a marketplace that made Linux popular. Yes, one of the biggest reasons why Linux became successful, especially on the server market, was because there was no viable alternative. That created the opening that allowed Linus' creation to grown and be nurtured for years completely ignored by Redmond. It was too small, and wasn't a threat. It was a toy, just a college kid's cute experiment.

Then the internet bubble hit, and it was expensive Netscape Server or Less Expensive IIS, and the pesky upstart OS and Apache, both FREE (libre, gratis), Small ISPs who couldn't afford Unix or Windows NT servers started using it. And against all odds, it became popular. Holes were patched quickly as they were found, showing how nimble Open Source Code could be, and better than proprietary code that was constantly being hacked while websites waited for updates from the vendors.

I know, I was there, in one of those ISPs (Yay Slackware). Since then, I've done Debian, SuSE, RedHat, Yellowdog, Ubuntu and a couple roll your own distros. I credit, almost entirely, the monoculture that was Microsoft, for the rise of Linux. Not because I like Microsoft, but rather because I can look back and see the utter apathy that the monoculture rested upon.

Re:Should have been 3 Baby Microsofts

[doktor-hladnjak]

Don't forget the implications of the BSD/AT&T lawsuit in the early 90s on the rise of Linux. Even Linus himself has admitted that had 386/BSD been available to him (i.e., not caught up in a major lawsuit which delayed development and release of other BSD derivatives), he probably would have never written Linux.

Re:Should have been 3 Baby Microsofts

[drsmithy]

I credit, almost entirely, the monoculture that was Microsoft, for the rise of Linux.

Really ? Because it's not like Linux was being used for tasks that Windows would frequently have been seriously considered for.

Linux was displacing commercial UNIX systems (Solaris, et al). Windows was displacing Novell servers in SMBs. These are mostly distinct and separate markets.

Re:Should have been 3 Baby Microsofts

[devent]

Funny, because this "legacy garbage" is the only reason why Windows is still so popular. In addition, the "legacy garbage" (aka ActiveX, ask the people in South Korea why they can't use anything but IE. http://blog.mozilla.com/gen/2007/09/21/update-on-the-cost-of-monoculture-in-korea/ ).

How about they build a new Windows, without the 'legacy garbage' and every mom and pop need to buy all the software they all love and use again for no reason other than the older version doesn't run on the new Windows?

Would be nice if Windows would start to compete with other systems on fair grounds and not how well Windows application can be run on the different systems (which no matter how well your system is, Windows will always run Windows applications better).

After decades we finally have somewhat of a fair ground where Microsoft Office needs to compete on fair grounds and not how well the office suites can open and save Microsoft Office documents. But of course that move was undermined by Microsoft with their OOXML format.

Yes, Microsoft should have been split up and the new companies should have been under control by the feds. Further, the APIs and the document formats should be opened up, for Wine, Samba, and OpenOffice. The judgment did in fact nothing at all and you can see how well the governmentcooperation relationship is doing.

Re:Should have been 3 Baby Microsofts

[loosescrews]

Have you ever used a clean install of Windows? I don't think you will find anyone else's products bundled with it. Sure, Sony will bundle a bunch of crap with their computer, but that isn't Microsoft, that is Sony.

As others have said, the main reason that Windows is so popular is that it has great legacy support. In fact, I find it a refreshing change compared to Apple who completely changed platforms requiring everything to be recompiled. Now that is fragmentation.

As a former Opera developer during that era

[LostMyBeaver]

I have to say that Netscape was our best friend. Their code has become such crap that it gave us the chance to not only catch up, but to run free.

Frankly, the lawsuit mentioned was one of the worst things ever to happen to many other companies. Mac, Linux and everyone else was completely left without a browser capable of performing online banking, reading news sites etc... The lawsuit caused Netscape to become a litigation company and their development just fell to pieces. Their server packages were amazingly bad and the day they added Javascript support and "layers" to their browser, everything just fell to pieces.

That left it up to us to come in and make waves. We became "the other browser" sure, our market share at the time sucked. Lars Knoll was still working on the first release of his amazing code.... imagine a browser written in such a way that the code was readable and manageable. But, what it really came down to is, Netscape's focus on litigation damn near ruined the entire computer market for anyone that wasn't willing to simply just become another Microsoft shop.

You want to know what REALLY killed BeOS? It was Netscape. We were too small to make the BeOS version, so we used a small Swedish company run by a group of incredibly bright and talented developers. Even now, years after Opera bought that company, the VP of engineering is the guy who ran that group, the guys making the screaming fast rendering contexts and other technologies which keep Opera in the top two at all times really has a lot to do with those guys. But, we just didn't have the resources to do it back then. As a result, Be would either have to make their own browser (they didn't have the manpower or inclination) or Netscape could have made one. But, without a reasonable browser, users had to reboot their machine into Windows to be able to run IE or Netscape to surf the web.

The world has changed... you can port FireFox or WebKit to a new platform in days (for a crap build, but still functional), if you can interest Opera (which typically isn't hard to do) they can port to a new platform as quickly as they can write a handful of classes and a new Makefile. The reason IE has lost market share isn't because the lawsuit did anything, it's because the other browsers are all equal to or better than IE.

That said, WebKit has become so good as of late that if Microsoft didn't have to support all the IE infrastructure that they do, switching to WebKit would be a great idea for them. Oh... well, there is another catch to that. If they did that, the whole world would be in an uproar complaining about how Microsoft is trying to be WebKit by absorbing it etc...

I don't think however that Microsoft is bothering to compete with other browsers anymore. Their developers have a competitive spirit and should, and they should be proud of what they manage to accomplish, but Microsoft doesn't really benefit at all from competing with other browser now. What's the market case for it? Really, there are now 3 great browsers on Windows (Opera, Chrome, FireFox) and Internet Explorer. They are all getting faster and faster, getting more features, the standard web can now do most of what needs to be done without non-standard extensions, in 5 more years, the web standards might even be as capable as Flash Player. There will always be a need for plug-ins if for no other reason but DRM. But, let's face it, Silverlight was proof that Microsoft isn't trying to alter the basics of the web anymore. They're not trying to make new Microsoft only extensions to the standards, but instead decided that a plug-in which could be run on all browsers would be good enough instead.

Oh, and Chrome and others let you even choose Bing and stuff over Google if you choose to. So, Microsoft still makes their money no matter what browser you use, even if it's Safari (why would anyone use that?) on Mac with Bing.

So, the business case for competing with the other browser vendors is just not there anymore. Internet Explorer is just another p

The settlement did its job?!?!

[Tracy Reed]

"Although Netscape ultimately didn't benefit, the settlement seems to have done its job"

Sure, so much competition was restored to the browser market by the settlement that Mozilla/Firefox had to be built FOR FREE by thousands of people and then given away FOR FREE for TEN YEARS to get where we are now!

IE vs Something

[alphatel]

This was a poor anti-trust suit which didn't address the real problem at the time - Microsoft giving OEMs rebates for NOT installing other OSes. IE had very little to do with the bad practices at MS. In the interim, yes Google really has been much more anti-competitive in a myriad of ways, but nothing as prominent as Intel paying to NOT have AMD chips or Ma Bell charging you more because they owned everything.

A stacked deck

[Brian Kendig]

For all of you who are pointing out, with some rightness, that Netscape Communicator 4 had quality issues - let me remind you of something.

This was the time period when Microsoft had decided to, as a Microsoft executive stated during the antitrust trial, "cut off [Netscape's] air supply". For each product Netscape was trying to make money on - web servers, proxy servers, ecommerce solutions - Microsoft was giving away a workalike product for free, funded with the earnings from Microsoft Windows.

And, at the same time, Microsoft was forcing its OEM partners to keep Netscape Communicator off the computers they sold. Any company that refused would no longer get volume licensing discounts on Windows, which would then price their computers out of the market.

So Netscape was starved for cash at the same time as it had to put in a lot of effort to keep up with the extremely-well-funded Internet Explorer. There was no way that Netscape could have survived, much less competed, against this.

Re:wow

[matt_gaia]

what the hell is that ...

That's a perfect reason why you shouldn't start drinking until at least 9AM. YMMV