7 ms·

Give over. Internet Explorer didn't hurt innovation at all. It was more innovative than Netscape by a country mile. IE was the first to pioneer CSS! And DHTML!

by nbevans 12y ago

Give over. Internet Explorer didn't hurt innovation at all. It was more innovative than Netscape by a country mile. IE was the first to pioneer CSS! And DHTML! Netscape pioneered, erm, cookies, I guess? There was no other web browser worth using other than IE or Netscape back in those wild west days of the Web. Yes there was a period of a year or two when Netscape entered the abyss and it took a while for a new competitor to IE to spring up. But that happened (Firefox) and shortly after Microsoft resumed development on IE too. You seem to have selective memory. IE brought A LOT of good to the Web. A LOT of good.

SwellJoe 12y ago
Courts in Europe and the United States disagree with you. And, while I'm willing to believe juries and judges can make mistakes, I have to say I don't think the courts did enough...and they went after Microsoft for many of the more minor problems with Microsoft's business. "You seem to have selective memory. IE brought A LOT of good to the Web. A LOT of good." From where I'm sitting you have a very imaginative memory. IE was better than the competition because it destroyed the competition using the very unethical (and illegal, according to courts in several nations) tactics I've already mentioned. Honestly, I'm surprised anyone on HN would have so little knowledge of the history of Microsoft and the web that you would interpret their stranglehold on the browser as a positive thing. I simply can't wrap my head around it, it's so absurd to me.
- nbevans 12y ago
  Thanks for the down vote for disagreeing with your opinion. The courts took issue with bundling it with Windows. Not that it was not innovative. There was even a few articles in recent years suggesting the courts went too far over the "bundling" case; sighting comparisons to vendor lock-in all over the industry now not reaching the courts at all. Just one top hit cite: http://readwrite.com/2013/11/12/apple-maps-takes-off-cue-the-antitrust-lawsuit http://readwrite.com/2013/11/12/apple-maps-takes-off-cue-the... The whole bundling IE case was fundamentally stupid and run by lawyers and judges who had no understand of the technology industry, the web and the wild west stage the web was going through. Back then, it was all about enablement. Getting people just onto the web in the first place was hard. They had to buy a computer, a modem, sign up with an ISP, possibly upgrade their operating system, install a web browser etc. But in those days, installing a web browser meant you had to go buy a Magazine from a shop just to get the CD-ROM. Microsoft viewed this, rightly, as an impediment. So they bundled IE with their OS. A practice that is still common place today by every major operating system that exists including Windows, Linux, OSX, Android, iOS, WinPhone. Without IE bringing DHTML we would not have the foundations that made modern day JavaScript, SPA, "Ajax" applications today. How is that not fostering innovation? IE 1 to 6 were a technology showcase to show everybody else what the web _could_ be or become. That's one reason why, though they'll never admit it, Mozilla abandoned Mozilla Suite and started work on Firefox. "So little knowledge of the history of Microsoft and the web"? Er, what? I date back to having to when you had to install a TCP/IP stack manually in order to get onto the web. What you're actually surprised about is that anyone would dare challenge you on what you perhaps believed would be a widely held opinion when it's far from that clear cut.
  - SwellJoe 12y ago
    HN does not allow one to downvote replies to your own comments. I do disagree with you, in every regard, but I don't downvote over disagreement (and could not possibly downvote you in this instance). Someone else must also disagree with you.
    - nbevans 12y ago
      You don't make much sense. You disagree with me "in every regard" and yet you agree with Ken who made an almost identical point to my own. Microsoft defined the business model of the web browser market as it exists today. I.e. free, widely and easily available, and bundled with the OS. This has not changed. The court cannot prevent free market economics, but they tried to. Yes Microsoft made Netscape go bust. But Netscape were weak and short sighted. They were like squashing an ant.
      - SwellJoe 12y ago
        Ken made the point that Google and Apple behave the same way as Microsoft in the markets where they have monopoly-like dominance, and I agreed with him. In that instance, I am not talking about browsers. I am talking about the markets in which Google and Apple have monopoly-like power, and the ways they abuse that power. Browsers are a small part of that picture (though, it is telling that all three build browsers, despite their being numerous good browser options on the web...the browser clearly holds a power position on devices, and OS vendors are guarding that position jealously). Anyway, I think what the justice department went after Microsoft for was a minor part of the wrongs Microsoft committed. Bundling the browser, and effectively prohibiting computer vendors from bundling Netscape, was a nasty trick and it killed Netscape (just as Microsoft killed Lotus, WordPerfect, and numerous others, often through backroom deals to separate those companies from their customer acquisition channels). But, my concerns are less about what happened to Netscape than about what happens to consumers and the market, when consumer choice isn't what decides the outcome. IE was a proprietary overlay on the web. It was not an HTML browser, it was a Microsoft delivery platform. Having a stranglehold on the browser locked every competing OS out of the web for a decade. I switched to Linux on my desktop in 1995. But, I had to keep a Windows installation around on every desktop I ever owned in order to be able to access bank and government web sites, so I could use IE to access it. That's why IE was destructive, and that's abuse of monopoly power. And, that's why Microsoft created IE: To embrace and extend the web, to use their existing monopoly in several enterprise markets to subtly take over the new market of the web and destroy the openness that allowed competitors to thrive. And, it succeeded for a long time. For years, we were trapped in this horrible Microsoft-owned world, where the dominant browser was incompatible with every other browser and with the standards and in ways that were intimately tied to the Windows operating system. So, the courts didn't tackle the most damaging issues, unfortunately, and it took several years for the web to recover from the damage Microsoft caused.
- kenjackson 12y ago
  In fairness, what MS did in the past is what Apple and Google are going now, just with larger market share.
  - SwellJoe 12y ago
    Ken, this is an amazing day. I don't believe I have ever agreed with you in a discussion about Microsoft (or any discussion for that matter). But, I can say with complete conviction that I agree with you. Apple and Google (much moreso Apple) are behaving badly on a number of fronts, and abusing their near-monopoly position in certain markets.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- piokoch 12y ago
  The courts questioned the fact that browser was delivered as a part of operating system, not that it was blocking innovation. Speaking of innovation it is true that IE was terrible in adopting standards (this was pain for long, long years and costed tones of money), but, on the other hand, they have invented XMLHttpRequest, which opened doors to modern web applications development.
  - scholia 12y ago
    It's simply not true that IE was terrible in adopting standards: it was very good at it up to and including IE6. That included the rapid adoption of Netscape "standards". The real problem was that Microsoft stopped browser development for half a dozen years, and that put it miles behind. The rapid releases from IE8 to IE11 show Microsoft trying to catch up, ie being pretty good at adopting standards. There are plenty of things to blame, including the US Justice Department, the unexpected delay from the Longhorn disaster, and the backlash against Vista. This left XP dominating the PC market, and XP shipped with IE6. If that's been holding up the web, it's not because Microsoft willed it. Just the reverse: it's being trying for years to kill it off.
  - nbevans 12y ago
    This is complete rubbish. IE was on the cutting edge of web standards, to such an extent it was having to make up some proprietary technologies itself such as XMLHttpRequest (just one example). The problem is a lot of Ruby/JS/dynamictypedlanguage hipsters these days who shout so loudly about IE having poor standards support weren't actually around at the time. Everyone loved IE back in those days as it was modern and every release had new exciting features in it (both for users and developers). The fact that IE got some things "wrong" with CSS and had bugs like transparent PNGs not rendering, er, transparently... were just necessary growing pains. This didn't matter in the wild west days of the web as, well, PNGs weren't even that popular back then and CSS was still something web developers were getting to grips with, slowly. Compare IE4-6 not to later-generation browsers, but to its direct rivals of the day which was Netscape and Opera and not really much else. Compared to these, IE was king.
- jabits 12y ago
  xhr.
jamespo 12y ago
Yeah, who uses SSL/TLS

by nbevans 12y ago

SwellJoe 12y ago

Courts in Europe and the United States disagree with you. And, while I'm willing to believe juries and judges can make mistakes, I have to say I don't think the courts did enough...and they went after Microsoft for many of the more minor problems with Microsoft's business. "You seem to have selective memory. IE brought A LOT of good to the Web. A LOT of good." From where I'm sitting you have a very imaginative memory. IE was better than the competition because it destroyed the competition using the very unethical (and illegal, according to courts in several nations) tactics I've already mentioned. Honestly, I'm surprised anyone on HN would have so little knowledge of the history of Microsoft and the web that you would interpret their stranglehold on the browser as a positive thing. I simply can't wrap my head around it, it's so absurd to me.

nbevans 12y ago
Thanks for the down vote for disagreeing with your opinion. The courts took issue with bundling it with Windows. Not that it was not innovative. There was even a few articles in recent years suggesting the courts went too far over the "bundling" case; sighting comparisons to vendor lock-in all over the industry now not reaching the courts at all. Just one top hit cite: http://readwrite.com/2013/11/12/apple-maps-takes-off-cue-the-antitrust-lawsuit http://readwrite.com/2013/11/12/apple-maps-takes-off-cue-the... The whole bundling IE case was fundamentally stupid and run by lawyers and judges who had no understand of the technology industry, the web and the wild west stage the web was going through. Back then, it was all about enablement. Getting people just onto the web in the first place was hard. They had to buy a computer, a modem, sign up with an ISP, possibly upgrade their operating system, install a web browser etc. But in those days, installing a web browser meant you had to go buy a Magazine from a shop just to get the CD-ROM. Microsoft viewed this, rightly, as an impediment. So they bundled IE with their OS. A practice that is still common place today by every major operating system that exists including Windows, Linux, OSX, Android, iOS, WinPhone. Without IE bringing DHTML we would not have the foundations that made modern day JavaScript, SPA, "Ajax" applications today. How is that not fostering innovation? IE 1 to 6 were a technology showcase to show everybody else what the web _could_ be or become. That's one reason why, though they'll never admit it, Mozilla abandoned Mozilla Suite and started work on Firefox. "So little knowledge of the history of Microsoft and the web"? Er, what? I date back to having to when you had to install a TCP/IP stack manually in order to get onto the web. What you're actually surprised about is that anyone would dare challenge you on what you perhaps believed would be a widely held opinion when it's far from that clear cut.
- SwellJoe 12y ago
  HN does not allow one to downvote replies to your own comments. I do disagree with you, in every regard, but I don't downvote over disagreement (and could not possibly downvote you in this instance). Someone else must also disagree with you.
  - nbevans 12y ago
    You don't make much sense. You disagree with me "in every regard" and yet you agree with Ken who made an almost identical point to my own. Microsoft defined the business model of the web browser market as it exists today. I.e. free, widely and easily available, and bundled with the OS. This has not changed. The court cannot prevent free market economics, but they tried to. Yes Microsoft made Netscape go bust. But Netscape were weak and short sighted. They were like squashing an ant.
    - SwellJoe 12y ago
      Ken made the point that Google and Apple behave the same way as Microsoft in the markets where they have monopoly-like dominance, and I agreed with him. In that instance, I am not talking about browsers. I am talking about the markets in which Google and Apple have monopoly-like power, and the ways they abuse that power. Browsers are a small part of that picture (though, it is telling that all three build browsers, despite their being numerous good browser options on the web...the browser clearly holds a power position on devices, and OS vendors are guarding that position jealously). Anyway, I think what the justice department went after Microsoft for was a minor part of the wrongs Microsoft committed. Bundling the browser, and effectively prohibiting computer vendors from bundling Netscape, was a nasty trick and it killed Netscape (just as Microsoft killed Lotus, WordPerfect, and numerous others, often through backroom deals to separate those companies from their customer acquisition channels). But, my concerns are less about what happened to Netscape than about what happens to consumers and the market, when consumer choice isn't what decides the outcome. IE was a proprietary overlay on the web. It was not an HTML browser, it was a Microsoft delivery platform. Having a stranglehold on the browser locked every competing OS out of the web for a decade. I switched to Linux on my desktop in 1995. But, I had to keep a Windows installation around on every desktop I ever owned in order to be able to access bank and government web sites, so I could use IE to access it. That's why IE was destructive, and that's abuse of monopoly power. And, that's why Microsoft created IE: To embrace and extend the web, to use their existing monopoly in several enterprise markets to subtly take over the new market of the web and destroy the openness that allowed competitors to thrive. And, it succeeded for a long time. For years, we were trapped in this horrible Microsoft-owned world, where the dominant browser was incompatible with every other browser and with the standards and in ways that were intimately tied to the Windows operating system. So, the courts didn't tackle the most damaging issues, unfortunately, and it took several years for the web to recover from the damage Microsoft caused.
kenjackson 12y ago
In fairness, what MS did in the past is what Apple and Google are going now, just with larger market share.
- SwellJoe 12y ago
  Ken, this is an amazing day. I don't believe I have ever agreed with you in a discussion about Microsoft (or any discussion for that matter). But, I can say with complete conviction that I agree with you. Apple and Google (much moreso Apple) are behaving badly on a number of fronts, and abusing their near-monopoly position in certain markets.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
piokoch 12y ago
The courts questioned the fact that browser was delivered as a part of operating system, not that it was blocking innovation. Speaking of innovation it is true that IE was terrible in adopting standards (this was pain for long, long years and costed tones of money), but, on the other hand, they have invented XMLHttpRequest, which opened doors to modern web applications development.
- scholia 12y ago
  It's simply not true that IE was terrible in adopting standards: it was very good at it up to and including IE6. That included the rapid adoption of Netscape "standards". The real problem was that Microsoft stopped browser development for half a dozen years, and that put it miles behind. The rapid releases from IE8 to IE11 show Microsoft trying to catch up, ie being pretty good at adopting standards. There are plenty of things to blame, including the US Justice Department, the unexpected delay from the Longhorn disaster, and the backlash against Vista. This left XP dominating the PC market, and XP shipped with IE6. If that's been holding up the web, it's not because Microsoft willed it. Just the reverse: it's being trying for years to kill it off.
- nbevans 12y ago
  This is complete rubbish. IE was on the cutting edge of web standards, to such an extent it was having to make up some proprietary technologies itself such as XMLHttpRequest (just one example). The problem is a lot of Ruby/JS/dynamictypedlanguage hipsters these days who shout so loudly about IE having poor standards support weren't actually around at the time. Everyone loved IE back in those days as it was modern and every release had new exciting features in it (both for users and developers). The fact that IE got some things "wrong" with CSS and had bugs like transparent PNGs not rendering, er, transparently... were just necessary growing pains. This didn't matter in the wild west days of the web as, well, PNGs weren't even that popular back then and CSS was still something web developers were getting to grips with, slowly. Compare IE4-6 not to later-generation browsers, but to its direct rivals of the day which was Netscape and Opera and not really much else. Compared to these, IE was king.
jabits 12y ago
xhr.

jamespo 12y ago

Yeah, who uses SSL/TLS