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Err... Didn't Internet Explorer have 90% browser share 10 years ago? (i.e. Microsoft achieved exactly what this post is warning against?) And yet, somehow we
by socalnate1 12y ago
Err... Didn't Internet Explorer have 90% browser share 10 years ago? (i.e. Microsoft achieved exactly what this post is warning against?)
And yet, somehow we aren't all living in a Microsoftian dystopia.
- x0x0 12y agothey did stall the internet as a development target for at least 5 years
- wycats 12y agoO_o
- dblohm7 12y agoAnd yet, now we hear people complaining that everybody should just run WebKit, while at the same time whining about needing to hack around IE6.
- nnethercote 12y agoBrowser share is only part of the puzzle. Microsoft didn't also own several of the most popular sites on the web. See callahad's comment for more detail (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8151400 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8151400).
- spain 12y agoYeah, and then Firefox came along.
- jomohke 12y agoIt did. But Microsoft disbanded the IE team after they won that marketshare, which gave other browsers years to catch up. Things may have looked very different had they continued the heavy development pace after releasing IE6. IE had a fast and modern engine compared to contemporaries when IE6 was first released, but then it went five years without any major updates. I'm undecided about Google's growing browser control, but in any case I don't see Google making the same mistakes as Microsoft.
- radmuzom 12y agoMicrosoft could afford to get complacent as IE was not their primary driver of profits. Google being an advertising company - it needs to control users through it's browser to gather more data and build algorithms to use that data, which will be eventually sold to advertisers. The two situations are not comparable at all.