6 ms·

But what they did to destroy netscape (bundling a competing app with some other thing) is now a tactic so common that it is taken for granted. I guess what made

But what they did to destroy netscape (bundling a competing app with some other thing) is now a tactic so common that it is taken for granted. I guess what made it scary is that they really did have a strong monopoly and it looked like they might dominate forever. So its not so much the tactics that offend people, but how much power they had when wielding those tactics. Seems to me like every big tech firm now makes the same sorts of moves Microsoft did in the 80s/90s, but because none of them dominate it all kindof just becomes accepted as the way to compete. But if one of them _did_ become as dominant as MS were, I'm pretty sure they wouldn't hold back.

troels 11y ago
I think that's very true. It was also a different environment back then - people affected were a much more homogenous group, so it's not surprising that we as a group identified strongly against what MS did. That fosters strong feelings. That said, is this all just another EMBRACE from Nadella? ;)
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
pjc50 11y ago
Oh, the tactics did offend people. And still do. But it was always a small number of people that cared about software freedom. The Microsoft consent decree was about restricting browser choice by shipping their own browser as default and claiming it was unremovable. By contrast, today Apple idevices not only ship with a browser but ban all competing browsers (via the ban on run-time compilation effectively banning JIT compilers). Apple have total control over every application that is allowed to ship on the platform and take a 30% cut. Google are responsible for Android, which is Free software to the absolute minimum they could get away with by law. It relies on millions of lines of GPL'd code, yet for most phones it's quite hard to get a rebuildable source tree that even includes all the kernel drivers, and if you do it may be prohibited from loading by a locked bootloader.
- berntb 11y ago
  The same laws don't apply for monopolists as for others in the USA. (I wish it was more similar in my native country.)
- jbombadil 11y ago
  Not to mention with 'SIP' (aka 'rootless'), Apple even has unrestricted control to part of your filesystem. They promote it as a security feature, but it only protects their own interests. It does very little to protect actual user data (which is what the user cares about), and all to protect their eco-system (and therefore, their finances).
- pmelendez 11y ago
  "The Microsoft consent decree was about restricting browser choice by shipping their own browser as default and claiming it was unremovable" But it was technically unremovable, in those days you could open a windows explorer and type an URL and then you suddenly have internet explorer right into your window. It was an awful design flaw that costed them lagging apart after the post IE6 era. The other thing is that wouldn't matter if Netscape were superior. Actually, it didn't matter because that was still the case and once better browsers came up (Firefox, Chrome), Internet Explorer turned in technical debt. So still now the whole "the browser comes as default" sounds like a whining excuse to me.
  - pjc50 11y ago
    The intent was to "cut off Netscape's air supply": http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/microsoft/stories/1998/microsoft111398.htm http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/micro... Had they succeeded with the IE strategy, ActiveX controls would have the same endemic status as Flash does now, but unimplementable on any browser other than IE.
    - pmelendez 11y ago
      I am not saying that wasn't the intent. What I am saying is the only real guilty one in the Netscape fail was Netscape. The situation was still there when Firefox and Chrome came to play (and I suspect also the intent) and it didn't prevent IE to step aside. The same goes to Flash... it is still there because there still are stuff you can't do in HTML 5 (streaming live video for instance) and without a real alternative we would have to live with it (hopefully that will change soon)
hga 11y ago
But what they did to destroy netscape (bundling a competing app with some other thing) One other point worth remembering: their browser, at least by version 3, was superior in speed and vastly superior in stability. They also ushered in the modern era of web applications by inventing XMLHttpRequest (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest). Netscape destroyed itself as much as Microsoft helped them by incompetence in developing software, server as well as browser. A common pattern in the '90s was Microsoft's competitors losing their ability to develop mostly working software while Microsoft didn't. That sealed the fate of Lotus, WordPerfect, Netscape, and Ashton-Tate (dBASE), and Borland did themselves no favors by buying the latter.
- wainstead 11y ago
  > their browser, at least by version 3, was superior in speed and vastly superior in stability IIRC, Microsoft were using hidden APIs to accomplish this, putting Netscape at a disadvantage.
  - hga 11y ago
    I don't recall that, not even allegations to the effect (there were such for Office competitors), plus I probably would have learned of such while working with a guy who had previous interned at Microsoft on IE of that era. More directly, I'm not aware of any public Windows APIs that handed out data that tricked your code into doing a general protection fault (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_protection_fault https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_protection_fault), or in the case of WordPerfect, compel programmers to use their own printer drivers, and write code that regularly drops your tables, figures, etc. to the bottom of your document (unlike the other companies I cited, WordPerfect actually managed to ship a Windows version that didn't GP fault, but that was late, terribly buggy, and prompted all the WP fans I knew to reluctantly switch to MS Word).
    - wainstead 11y ago
      My initial search turned this up: http://www.stratigery.com/nt.sekrits.html http://www.stratigery.com/nt.sekrits.html
kybernetikos 11y ago
I'm actually surprised there hasn't been more complaint about amazon using their hugely dominant position in web retail to get into streaming video. Forced bundling of a bit player video service with prime seems to be a particularly cynical way of pushing yourself into a market.
jasonkester 11y ago
Indeed. Even at the time it seemed like the silliest possible thing you could get upset about. I remember not being able to parse why anybody thought it was bad. They had the unmitigated gaul to include software with their operating system. Kinda like wordpad, file manager, hearts, calculator and dozens of other things that you'd expect to find on a computer. All those things had (and still have) alternatives that you can replace them with that may or may not cost money and may or may not be better. But somehow having a web browser installed by default was so obviously different as to be completely inexcusable even 20 years later. As a customer, having a web browser installed on your new computer by default is a Good Thing. Removing it from the install could only possibly make things worse for end users. It made no sense then, and even less sense now.
- WorldMaker 11y ago
  This is very much my version of the rant, too. Today it would be absolutely unspeakable for a computing device to boot up for the first time without a web browser installed. Microsoft may have jumped the gun by a half-minute or so, but they saw that future coming. Of course, I get even rantier about the "antivirus" companies blocking Microsoft from including Defender (nee Security Essentials) out of the box with XP and Vista, under similar reasoning to the Netscape decision. How is antivirus not an Operating System feature (system protection)? I'm glad that decision has finally passed and I really hope that people stop paying for the security theater "antivirus" programs that remain out there as OEM bloatware and those "products" will finally die a long, much deserved death.
BurningFrog 11y ago
There were stories about how they used to deliberately tweak the OS to break competitor software. That's awful. But I think writing a competing app is a completely proper way to compete. > they really did have a strong monopoly Evidently they did not. To those of us old enough to remember the "unbreakable" IBM monopoly, it's hard to worry too much about this stuff.
- Locke1689 11y ago
  >There were stories about how they used to deliberately tweak the OS to break competitor software. The reverse, as far as I know: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/10/15/55296.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/10/15/55296... This is just the tip of the iceberg with respect to application compatibility. I could probably write for months solely about bad things apps do and what we had to do to get them to work again (often in spite of themselves). Which is why I get particularly furious when people accuse Microsoft of maliciously breaking applications during OS upgrades. If any application failed to run on Windows 95, I took it as a personal failure. I spent many sleepless nights fixing bugs in third-party programs just so they could keep running on Windows 95.

troels 11y ago

I think that's very true. It was also a different environment back then - people affected were a much more homogenous group, so it's not surprising that we as a group identified strongly against what MS did. That fosters strong feelings. That said, is this all just another EMBRACE from Nadella? ;)

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

pjc50 11y ago

Oh, the tactics did offend people. And still do. But it was always a small number of people that cared about software freedom. The Microsoft consent decree was about restricting browser choice by shipping their own browser as default and claiming it was unremovable. By contrast, today Apple idevices not only ship with a browser but ban all competing browsers (via the ban on run-time compilation effectively banning JIT compilers). Apple have total control over every application that is allowed to ship on the platform and take a 30% cut. Google are responsible for Android, which is Free software to the absolute minimum they could get away with by law. It relies on millions of lines of GPL'd code, yet for most phones it's quite hard to get a rebuildable source tree that even includes all the kernel drivers, and if you do it may be prohibited from loading by a locked bootloader.

berntb 11y ago
The same laws don't apply for monopolists as for others in the USA. (I wish it was more similar in my native country.)
jbombadil 11y ago
Not to mention with 'SIP' (aka 'rootless'), Apple even has unrestricted control to part of your filesystem. They promote it as a security feature, but it only protects their own interests. It does very little to protect actual user data (which is what the user cares about), and all to protect their eco-system (and therefore, their finances).
pmelendez 11y ago
"The Microsoft consent decree was about restricting browser choice by shipping their own browser as default and claiming it was unremovable" But it was technically unremovable, in those days you could open a windows explorer and type an URL and then you suddenly have internet explorer right into your window. It was an awful design flaw that costed them lagging apart after the post IE6 era. The other thing is that wouldn't matter if Netscape were superior. Actually, it didn't matter because that was still the case and once better browsers came up (Firefox, Chrome), Internet Explorer turned in technical debt. So still now the whole "the browser comes as default" sounds like a whining excuse to me.
- pjc50 11y ago
  The intent was to "cut off Netscape's air supply": http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/microsoft/stories/1998/microsoft111398.htm http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/longterm/micro... Had they succeeded with the IE strategy, ActiveX controls would have the same endemic status as Flash does now, but unimplementable on any browser other than IE.
  - pmelendez 11y ago
    I am not saying that wasn't the intent. What I am saying is the only real guilty one in the Netscape fail was Netscape. The situation was still there when Firefox and Chrome came to play (and I suspect also the intent) and it didn't prevent IE to step aside. The same goes to Flash... it is still there because there still are stuff you can't do in HTML 5 (streaming live video for instance) and without a real alternative we would have to live with it (hopefully that will change soon)

hga 11y ago

But what they did to destroy netscape (bundling a competing app with some other thing) One other point worth remembering: their browser, at least by version 3, was superior in speed and vastly superior in stability. They also ushered in the modern era of web applications by inventing XMLHttpRequest (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest). Netscape destroyed itself as much as Microsoft helped them by incompetence in developing software, server as well as browser. A common pattern in the '90s was Microsoft's competitors losing their ability to develop mostly working software while Microsoft didn't. That sealed the fate of Lotus, WordPerfect, Netscape, and Ashton-Tate (dBASE), and Borland did themselves no favors by buying the latter.

wainstead 11y ago
> their browser, at least by version 3, was superior in speed and vastly superior in stability IIRC, Microsoft were using hidden APIs to accomplish this, putting Netscape at a disadvantage.
- hga 11y ago
  I don't recall that, not even allegations to the effect (there were such for Office competitors), plus I probably would have learned of such while working with a guy who had previous interned at Microsoft on IE of that era. More directly, I'm not aware of any public Windows APIs that handed out data that tricked your code into doing a general protection fault (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_protection_fault https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_protection_fault), or in the case of WordPerfect, compel programmers to use their own printer drivers, and write code that regularly drops your tables, figures, etc. to the bottom of your document (unlike the other companies I cited, WordPerfect actually managed to ship a Windows version that didn't GP fault, but that was late, terribly buggy, and prompted all the WP fans I knew to reluctantly switch to MS Word).
  - wainstead 11y ago
    My initial search turned this up: http://www.stratigery.com/nt.sekrits.html http://www.stratigery.com/nt.sekrits.html

kybernetikos 11y ago

I'm actually surprised there hasn't been more complaint about amazon using their hugely dominant position in web retail to get into streaming video. Forced bundling of a bit player video service with prime seems to be a particularly cynical way of pushing yourself into a market.

jasonkester 11y ago

Indeed. Even at the time it seemed like the silliest possible thing you could get upset about. I remember not being able to parse why anybody thought it was bad. They had the unmitigated gaul to include software with their operating system. Kinda like wordpad, file manager, hearts, calculator and dozens of other things that you'd expect to find on a computer. All those things had (and still have) alternatives that you can replace them with that may or may not cost money and may or may not be better. But somehow having a web browser installed by default was so obviously different as to be completely inexcusable even 20 years later. As a customer, having a web browser installed on your new computer by default is a Good Thing. Removing it from the install could only possibly make things worse for end users. It made no sense then, and even less sense now.

WorldMaker 11y ago
This is very much my version of the rant, too. Today it would be absolutely unspeakable for a computing device to boot up for the first time without a web browser installed. Microsoft may have jumped the gun by a half-minute or so, but they saw that future coming. Of course, I get even rantier about the "antivirus" companies blocking Microsoft from including Defender (nee Security Essentials) out of the box with XP and Vista, under similar reasoning to the Netscape decision. How is antivirus not an Operating System feature (system protection)? I'm glad that decision has finally passed and I really hope that people stop paying for the security theater "antivirus" programs that remain out there as OEM bloatware and those "products" will finally die a long, much deserved death.

BurningFrog 11y ago

There were stories about how they used to deliberately tweak the OS to break competitor software. That's awful. But I think writing a competing app is a completely proper way to compete. > they really did have a strong monopoly Evidently they did not. To those of us old enough to remember the "unbreakable" IBM monopoly, it's hard to worry too much about this stuff.

Locke1689 11y ago
>There were stories about how they used to deliberately tweak the OS to break competitor software. The reverse, as far as I know: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/10/15/55296.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2003/10/15/55296... This is just the tip of the iceberg with respect to application compatibility. I could probably write for months solely about bad things apps do and what we had to do to get them to work again (often in spite of themselves). Which is why I get particularly furious when people accuse Microsoft of maliciously breaking applications during OS upgrades. If any application failed to run on Windows 95, I took it as a personal failure. I spent many sleepless nights fixing bugs in third-party programs just so they could keep running on Windows 95.