3 ms·
It seems clear to me that MS didn’t just accidentally forget to develop IE for 5+ years in the early 2000s. They did so because they needed to avoid the antitru
by jimbob45 6y ago
It seems clear to me that MS didn’t just accidentally forget to develop IE for 5+ years in the early 2000s. They did so because they needed to avoid the antitrust inspectors. Given that Chrome exists in its current form today because of a lack of competition, I don’t know how you can claim that the antitrust stuff did “nothing”.
- mrkramer 6y agoWhat happened with Netscape? It survived?
- grishka 6y agoIt became Mozilla
- mrkramer 6y agoSo what was the point of antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft if current browser/s were able to adapt and evolve.
- AlexandrB 6y agoI think the point was that they were able to adapt and evolve because Microsoft's ability to force IE on users was constrained by the antitrust action. It's possible that without antitrust Mozilla might have died on the vine.
- whimsicalism 6y agoYour logic makes absolutely 0 sense, the success of current browsers is not exogenous to the lawsuit. Current browser/s were able to adapt and evolve in the context of an anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft. It's like saying "what was the reason for the Fed taking an expansionary stance in March if the stock market clearly has been doing fine since then?"
- mrkramer 6y agoMy logic makes perfect sense from my economic point of view. I'm a neoliberal economist and I think that hardcore competition benefits customers and consumers since it drives quality of products and services up and it drives prices of products and services down. State intervention is only required if a company is ravaging the economy.
- whimsicalism 6y ago> My logic makes perfect sense from my economic point of view. I'm a neoliberal economist Naming your particular ideological bent does not make your logic any more convincing. My understanding was that self-identifying "neoliberals" believed in data-driven policy. As a data engineer, I'm telling you that the causal assumptions you are making are fundamentally faulty. Perhaps they align better with your ideological view, but that doesn't mean it makes "perfect sense."
- mthoms 6y agoBecause... maybe it worked?
- contextfree 6y agothe argument is that they were able to catch up to / surpass IE because Microsoft stopped working on it for 5 years. (I'm not endorsing or rejecting it myself.)
- bhauer 6y agoIn a manner of speaking, yes. Netscape begot Mozilla, which in turn begot Firefox.