4 ms·
> I don't trust benevolent people. I trust self-interest. I don't need to offer my undying allegiance to Microsoft - I can like them as long as they do things t
by sergiosgc 8y ago
> I don't trust benevolent people. I trust self-interest. I don't need to offer my undying allegiance to Microsoft - I can like them as long as they do things that benefit me, and dislike them when they don't.
Sound logic, were it not for the fact that you may be trapped by the time you dislike Microsoft. Given Microsoft's history, it's a risk I will never take. I don't trust them, never will.
We nearly avoided a monolithic web in the browser wars. Microsoft pushed, successfully, Internet Explorer to be the only game in town. You didn't write websites against the standard. You wrote them to run on MSIE.
Mozilla, Google, the iphone and MS's hubris made IE 6 so noncompetitive that the web evolved past that blockage. It was luck, and we must recognize the near miss. The open Internet could have ended up closed and a lot worse. We almost ended up writing webapps in Activex.
- sbhn 8y agoMicrosoft successfully pushed internet explorer to the front by making it cheaper and more accessible than Netscape. If they didn’t, the internet may have still lacked competition today and you’d still be paying money for Netscape. The foresight and competition that Microsoft brang to the browser market was probably the most significant factor for the adoption of the internet by the whole world back in those days.
- TheOtherHobbes 8y agoI never, ever paid for a version of Netscape. Hardly anyone did. I - like everyone - paid a huge cost in wasted time and non-existent security when I tried to use IE or develop a site compatible with it.
- sbhn 8y agoIf you never paid, well that’s because you entered the scene after Microsoft’s commoditising effect of the browser market had taken effect. You now had a choice.
- sergiosgc 8y agoYou've got your history wrong. Free browsers were always available. Mosaic first, Netscape and then Firefox, with plenty of other lower market share offerings. Microsoft didn't commoditize anything.
- fourthark 8y agoNetscape was basically shareware - it cost money, but hardly anyone paid for it. Since shareware is kind of an alien concept these days, many people remember Netscape as "always free" but it was not really.
- mishad 8y agoMany users would have obtained Navigator from ISP and magazine cover disks etc. So those copies would have been paid for as part of the price of the magazine or connection.