The AOL-Netscape-Sun Triune want to slay Microsoft

paRcat wrote to us with the lastest news from MS Trial. It appears, from court documents, that AOL-Sun-Netscpe (Or, Apollo, Zeus and Odyssey as they referred to themselves) have laid a plan to make Microsoft irrelevant. Reading through much of it is common-sense, but it's interesting to see the plans laid out, including the tidbit that IE4-AOL is "the last" one. The three are betting heavily on the notion that everything runs off of the Internet-and they mean everything, pairing that with Java from Sun, and Netscape in applications, they want to dominate everything.

Comments

And this is different...

[tweek]

from Microsoft how? I am far from a fan of MS by any stretch but quite honestly how does this make this trinity different from the way Microsoft is now? Other than the fact that its 3 companies united via partnership. I'm far from a lawyer as well so does this still constitute the same business practices that MS is in trouble for right now?

The "AOL PC" is a pipe dream

[Kurt Gray]

The problem with the "AOL PC" is where are the
other applications, ie. Office applications???
What else could you do with an AOL PC other
than surf and send email?? Not much else --
no games, no office apps, no servers, just
surfing. You may as well buy a WebTV. If you
think you can build Java apps to play Quake
and write heavily formatted spread sheets, well
it's not going to happen any time soon -- Java
can't handle heavy applications.

Microsoft's dominance rests on at least three
hinges: Windows, Microsoft Office, and Internet
Explorer. OK, so you figure you can replace
Windows and Internet Explorer but you're
forgeting the Big One: Microsoft Office, and
I don't recall Sun or Netscape having any office
application ready to roll.

As long as the business world is hopelessly
addicted to MS Office, Windows will be there
too. The only real threat to that market is
Linux w/ Star Office or Applix or some other
office suite in Linux.

Nice URL

[TreesCanHurt]

Nice URL-- looks like it's reflected through a hotmail machine... (209.185.130.250) ?

Correct URL is http://www.msnbc.com/news/280218.asp

Hmm...not for awhile I think.

[Mycroft-X]

Ok, if I read this correctly (and I admit I ran through it only once) then there are a few things that I think could hinder this plan.

1. This seems unfeasible(sp?) until there is inexpensive and common high/ultrahigh-bandwidth connections to peoples homes. Perhaps AOL wants to buy Qwest? :-)

2. Is a JVM system really fast enough now to work as a real OS or even application on its own?

3. Somehow it seems to me that using the net as a giant application server is a very good way to both reduce security both on the server end (cracker modifies the Java code? BOOM) and in the data stream (we would want uber-encryption on this data, and it is still decoded on the server side, returning to my previous point).

4. Who would run the massively high-speed computers to do all this processing? I would think that serving apps for x number of net users, combined with whatever encryption is needed on the data would slow most computers (I mean even SMP servers and clusters) to a crawl. And if you limit the number of connections to each server, what happens if there is a surge in users and the servers are overloaded? Can you say lawsuit?

5. The 'net, even though it is designed to be redundant, occasionally loses connection with parts of itself. How would this be handled? For those on modem access, what if you are suddenly disconnected after typing 9 pages of a term paper? Are there accounts on these servers in which your abandoned document is saved, or does it just expire as soon as the connection times out?

Tom Byrum

What this means.

[pspeed]

In a word, nothing. (BTW, read the _whole_ article. It becomes easier to not hear B. Gates' voice reading it as you go along.)

It is a truely desperate effort on Microsoft's part to use this kind of material as a defense. It could backfire on them. These three companies are only going through with these deals because of Microsoft's dominance. And in the end, their plans could amount to nothing more than pipe dreams.

Most of the quoted documents were apparently written by Sun. I am a Java advocate, but I'll be the first to tell you that Sun inappropriately likes to see their plight on a mythic scale. I equate some of their comments to those chain-letter type of e-mails that run around the internet comparing MS to a dragon, or a car, or a giant spider, etc.. When I was an OS/2 user (duck) I used to see these types of e-mails all the time. And we OS/2 users always held onto the belief that some day our OS would beat the evil MS. We knew it wasn't true, but that's what faith is all about.

Alot of the triad's plans sound similarly dream-like. I do think that Java will become more wide-spread but you have to have a pretty faithful imagination to think it will dominate the desktop. (Nothing would please me more but I still have a few OS/2 pains where those muscles are.) There other plans are just that. Plans. Add 50 cents and you might be able to buy a cup of coffee. Only time will tell how much they succeed.

Fortunately, the Judge in the trial seems to have a pretty good head on his shoulders. He seems to be able to recognize smoke and mirrors when he sees it. Still, only time will tell if they succeed.

However, if MS does make it through this trial completely unscathed then I don't think the triads plans amount to anything.

MS's "downfall" would have to come from another direction. And I won't hold my breath.