There is something to be said for mediocre products from Microsoft. Netscape's browser was out a couple of years before IE was even introduced. When IE came out it was based on Mosaic, the same foundation that Netscape was based on. Netscape had the initial advantage because software becomes more mature as it goes through release cycles (duh). I do not know for sure but I believe that Netscape was on Navigator 3.x when IE 1.0 was released. The point is, it was established. IE was horrible. Netscape touted that they were better, and sat back and watched the money roll in. IE continued to improve and Netscape started to panic. Instead of releasing a new improved, standards based browser they filed lawsuits. Netscape still has yet to release a browser that is as useable as IE 4.0. The current Navigator release is buggy and barely usable because of constant crashes. Netscape says that they lost the market share game because IE was bundled with Windows, I disagree.
Small example. MS-DOS 1 through 4.0 had no disk repair utilities. If your hard disk had a problem, you either could run chkdsk/f (still around) that would give you a summary of your damage and fix some invalid clusters, or you would by Norton Disk Utilities, which amounted to a disk repair utility, defragger, and a couple of other utilities like disk explorer and a Hex editor. When DOS 5.0 (it may have been 6 I am not sure) came out it was to include a disk repair utility and a defragger. Everyone was elated. What did Norton do, they really licensed a stripped down version of their utility to Microsoft and beefed up their own product, thus they retained their market share and added some.
I am not saying that Netscape should have licensed their product to Microsoft, why would they, they were both based on the same open source, free, Mosaic browser. I am saying that Netscape was and is a bad company that was there on the ground floor of the browser market and did nothing to improve their product, or the medium. In response to their lazy attitude they thought they could solve it by suing Microsoft for their own misdeeds. There are other areas that Microsoft has done wrong but this is not one of them.
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There is something to be said for mediocre products from Microsoft. Netscape's browser was out a couple of years before IE was even introduced. When IE came out it was based on Mosaic, the same foundation that Netscape was based on. Netscape had the initial advantage because software becomes more mature as it goes through release cycles (duh). I do not know for sure but I believe that Netscape was on Navigator 3.x when IE 1.0 was released. The point is, it was established. IE was horrible. Netscape touted that they were better, and sat back and watched the money roll in. IE continued to improve and Netscape started to panic. Instead of releasing a new improved, standards based browser they filed lawsuits. Netscape still has yet to release a browser that is as useable as IE 4.0. The current Navigator release is buggy and barely usable because of constant crashes. Netscape says that they lost the market share game because IE was bundled with Windows, I disagree.
/f (still around) that would give you a summary of your damage and fix some invalid clusters, or you would by Norton Disk Utilities, which amounted to a disk repair utility, defragger, and a couple of other utilities like disk explorer and a Hex editor. When DOS 5.0 (it may have been 6 I am not sure) came out it was to include a disk repair utility and a defragger. Everyone was elated. What did Norton do, they really licensed a stripped down version of their utility to Microsoft and beefed up their own product, thus they retained their market share and added some.
Small example. MS-DOS 1 through 4.0 had no disk repair utilities. If your hard disk had a problem, you either could run chkdsk
I am not saying that Netscape should have licensed their product to Microsoft, why would they, they were both based on the same open source, free, Mosaic browser. I am saying that Netscape was and is a bad company that was there on the ground floor of the browser market and did nothing to improve their product, or the medium. In response to their lazy attitude they thought they could solve it by suing Microsoft for their own misdeeds. There are other areas that Microsoft has done wrong but this is not one of them.