3 ms·

Why does microsoft still spend money building a web browser? I understood this in the 1990s because it locked people to windows, it was a feature, and hopefull

by blhack 16y ago

Why does microsoft still spend money building a web browser? I understood this in the 1990s because it locked people to windows, it was a feature, and hopefully it sold MSN subscriptions. But it's not the 1990s anymore. Let google spend their money on this, or let mozilla spend their money on this. Is there any reason microsoft doesn't bundle firefox with their operating system, and just EOL Internet Explorer? /admitting ignorance here

icey 16y ago
There are still mountains of money available on the web. Since Microsoft controls the OS, they can ship a browser with defaults set to sites under their control, like msn.com and bing. My assumption is that they consider those properties as revenue (or potential revenue) sources.
- heyitsnick 16y ago
  Hypothetically speaking, they couldn't ship windows OS with firefox preloaded with these same defaults?
  - icey 16y ago
    I'm not sure. I know Google spends a ton of money paying to be the default search engine in Firefox. No idea what would happen if Microsoft tried to do the same thing on its own with their own defaults. I'd guess it would be kind of a PR nightmare for them though. Nobody questions those defaults when the browser is owned by Microsoft.
idonthack 16y ago
They're still following the policy of "embrace, extend, extinguish"; the browser market just got away from them for a bit. Once they ship a browser good enough to shove out the other players with a bit of extra leverage from their desktop near-monopoly, it will become more obvious. It's already beginning to happen. For example: http://www.winrumors.com/bing-powered-u-s-searches-rise-to-over-30-market-share/ http://www.winrumors.com/bing-powered-u-s-searches-rise-to-o...
RuadhanMc 16y ago
Why does any company spend money on building a browser? Microsoft provides a range of different development tools and programming languages for web development. There is the modern stuff such as ASP.NET, Silverlight, etc, but lets not forget VBScript, ActiveX, etc, the latter not widely supported by other browsers. Microsoft has more to lose technology wise by dumping its browser than the other companies do.
cdesmar 16y ago
IE9 on win7 is slick, lightning fast graphics. Look for their fishie demo. By having a browser on one platform they can use hardware acceleration on the browser making a win for both and keeping their hold on both. That's the theory anyway. They'll probably screw it up bit that's the theory.
kenjackson 16y ago
Is there any reason microsoft doesn't bundle firefox with their operating system, and just EOL Internet Explorer? Despite common belief, MS actually wants the best browser in the world. But they want it to be noticeably the best. The fear MS would have if FF did their browser is that the FF browser for Windows offered no advantage over the one for Linux or the Mac. Or even worse, the Linux version of FF was substantially better than the Windows version. Now you can argue that IE isn't as good as Chrome or FF, but at least MS knows that's their decision. They've allocated their resources and made their business case. If FF is providing the browser then MS could end up in a situation where the most visible end user feature is out of their control. Let me flip the question on you. Do you think Apple ever would/should simply let FF or Chrome be their iOS web browser and stop doing Safari mobile?
- melling 16y ago
  Apple uses the open source browser Webkit, which runs on Linux and Windows too.

by blhack 16y ago

icey 16y ago

There are still mountains of money available on the web. Since Microsoft controls the OS, they can ship a browser with defaults set to sites under their control, like msn.com and bing. My assumption is that they consider those properties as revenue (or potential revenue) sources.

heyitsnick 16y ago
Hypothetically speaking, they couldn't ship windows OS with firefox preloaded with these same defaults?
- icey 16y ago
  I'm not sure. I know Google spends a ton of money paying to be the default search engine in Firefox. No idea what would happen if Microsoft tried to do the same thing on its own with their own defaults. I'd guess it would be kind of a PR nightmare for them though. Nobody questions those defaults when the browser is owned by Microsoft.

idonthack 16y ago

They're still following the policy of "embrace, extend, extinguish"; the browser market just got away from them for a bit. Once they ship a browser good enough to shove out the other players with a bit of extra leverage from their desktop near-monopoly, it will become more obvious. It's already beginning to happen. For example: http://www.winrumors.com/bing-powered-u-s-searches-rise-to-over-30-market-share/ http://www.winrumors.com/bing-powered-u-s-searches-rise-to-o...

RuadhanMc 16y ago

Why does any company spend money on building a browser? Microsoft provides a range of different development tools and programming languages for web development. There is the modern stuff such as ASP.NET, Silverlight, etc, but lets not forget VBScript, ActiveX, etc, the latter not widely supported by other browsers. Microsoft has more to lose technology wise by dumping its browser than the other companies do.

cdesmar 16y ago

IE9 on win7 is slick, lightning fast graphics. Look for their fishie demo. By having a browser on one platform they can use hardware acceleration on the browser making a win for both and keeping their hold on both. That's the theory anyway. They'll probably screw it up bit that's the theory.

kenjackson 16y ago

Is there any reason microsoft doesn't bundle firefox with their operating system, and just EOL Internet Explorer? Despite common belief, MS actually wants the best browser in the world. But they want it to be noticeably the best. The fear MS would have if FF did their browser is that the FF browser for Windows offered no advantage over the one for Linux or the Mac. Or even worse, the Linux version of FF was substantially better than the Windows version. Now you can argue that IE isn't as good as Chrome or FF, but at least MS knows that's their decision. They've allocated their resources and made their business case. If FF is providing the browser then MS could end up in a situation where the most visible end user feature is out of their control. Let me flip the question on you. Do you think Apple ever would/should simply let FF or Chrome be their iOS web browser and stop doing Safari mobile?

melling 16y ago
Apple uses the open source browser Webkit, which runs on Linux and Windows too.