4 ms·
Classifying what Microsoft got in trouble for as merely "giving away a free browser" shows that their PR campaign was a resounding success. It wasn't just havi
by Karunamon 3y ago
Classifying what Microsoft got in trouble for as merely "giving away a free browser" shows that their PR campaign was a resounding success.
It wasn't just having IE be distributed with the operating system, or even having it be the default (as the EU later got upset about). They would have been perfectly fine in this position had they not attempted to use it anti-competitively: coercing OEMs to not include competing browsers like Netscape on pain of financial penalties.
That is textbook monopoly abuse.
- WalterBright 3y agoI installed and used Netflix for free in those days. Nobody paid a penalty for that. I later switched to Explorer, not because it was free, but because Explorer crashed far less often than Netscape. Netscape crashed constantly. Only a desperate person would continue to use it.
- FireBeyond 3y agoBut were you using Netscape or Netscape Gold??
- WalterBright 3y agoThe free one, whatever that was. It was a long time ago. If you're saying Netflix Gold didn't crash as often, the crashing free version was not a convincing advertisement for it. There was a lot of money made in the PC era by making better tools than the ones bundled with DOS. Netscape wasn't one of them, because it was worse than the bundled one.