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Perhaps. But it's also worth noting that United States vs. Microsoft was coincident with the stagnation in Internet Explorer, with the case starting in 2000, d

by bhauer 11y ago

Perhaps. But it's also worth noting that United States vs. Microsoft was coincident with the stagnation in Internet Explorer, with the case starting in 2000, during IE 5's tenure. For better or for worse, I think the case had a lot to do with Internet Explorer's long pause. I often wonder how Microsoft's browser, its Internet services, and the company as a whole would be today had that case not been undertaken.

Drdrdrq 11y ago
If I understand correctly, MS was found guilty of abusing its monopoly by bundling IE with OS, which has put other browsers to disadvantage. The way I see it, the only trouble with the case was that it was too late. By that time IE has already won. Are you suggesting some other consequence of this case, leading to stagnation of IE development? I can't see any...
- bhauer 11y ago
  > Are you suggesting some other consequence of this case, leading to stagnation of IE development? I can't see any... I can't directly see any either because I don't know anyone at Microsoft, least of all on the IE team. But I think the coincident pause in IE's evolution is undeniable. As for a cause and effect link, that's just conjecture. To me, it seems likely that there were either formal business decisions that reduced the effort expended on IE or at least a psychological block that had much the same effect. Look, I am a Mozilla partisan through and through. I've been using Netscape, then Mozilla, then Firefox for years. So in many ways, I applauded the outcome of the United States vs Microsoft case. But to consider the case as one of only upsides and no downsides seems a bit narrow minded.
  - cwyers 11y ago
    I think the antitrust suit also scared Microsoft off from including antivirus software with Windows, which has protected the incumbents in the antivirus industry, but the monetization model of Norton and MacAfee makes them little better than the malware they combat.
- WorldMaker 11y ago
  «Are you suggesting some other consequence of this case, leading to stagnation of IE development?» I think that you could see a lot of optimistic excitement from Microsoft in the idea of merging IE into Windows just prior to the antitrust case. There were experiments with using the HTML renderer everywhere in the OS from widgets (the "Active Desktop" thing) to applications (HTML Help, even the HTML usage of Windows (now File) Explorer)... Admittedly today with have mixed opinions of such experiments (and their often poor performance), but it is hard not to wonder what could have happened had Microsoft invested fully into that combined Windows/IE rendering platform had they been less afraid of the antitrust repercussions... We're finally starting to see HTML/JS/CSS "everywhere" application toolkits (it's a vertical slice in the "Universal Windows Platform", and then there's efforts like Electron and Cordova), and it's interesting to think that maybe some of that would have happened sooner in a world without that antitrust lawsuit. (Certainly the counter is that it would have been less standardized, but I don't think that is necessarily the case, either: it would have largely have been different standards though.)

by bhauer 11y ago

Drdrdrq 11y ago

If I understand correctly, MS was found guilty of abusing its monopoly by bundling IE with OS, which has put other browsers to disadvantage. The way I see it, the only trouble with the case was that it was too late. By that time IE has already won. Are you suggesting some other consequence of this case, leading to stagnation of IE development? I can't see any...

bhauer 11y ago
> Are you suggesting some other consequence of this case, leading to stagnation of IE development? I can't see any... I can't directly see any either because I don't know anyone at Microsoft, least of all on the IE team. But I think the coincident pause in IE's evolution is undeniable. As for a cause and effect link, that's just conjecture. To me, it seems likely that there were either formal business decisions that reduced the effort expended on IE or at least a psychological block that had much the same effect. Look, I am a Mozilla partisan through and through. I've been using Netscape, then Mozilla, then Firefox for years. So in many ways, I applauded the outcome of the United States vs Microsoft case. But to consider the case as one of only upsides and no downsides seems a bit narrow minded.
- cwyers 11y ago
  I think the antitrust suit also scared Microsoft off from including antivirus software with Windows, which has protected the incumbents in the antivirus industry, but the monetization model of Norton and MacAfee makes them little better than the malware they combat.
WorldMaker 11y ago
«Are you suggesting some other consequence of this case, leading to stagnation of IE development?» I think that you could see a lot of optimistic excitement from Microsoft in the idea of merging IE into Windows just prior to the antitrust case. There were experiments with using the HTML renderer everywhere in the OS from widgets (the "Active Desktop" thing) to applications (HTML Help, even the HTML usage of Windows (now File) Explorer)... Admittedly today with have mixed opinions of such experiments (and their often poor performance), but it is hard not to wonder what could have happened had Microsoft invested fully into that combined Windows/IE rendering platform had they been less afraid of the antitrust repercussions... We're finally starting to see HTML/JS/CSS "everywhere" application toolkits (it's a vertical slice in the "Universal Windows Platform", and then there's efforts like Electron and Cordova), and it's interesting to think that maybe some of that would have happened sooner in a world without that antitrust lawsuit. (Certainly the counter is that it would have been less standardized, but I don't think that is necessarily the case, either: it would have largely have been different standards though.)