68 ms·

seriously? Out of all crowds I would think anyone here would immediately get the terribleness of IE and how it had a huge impact on keeping the internet back.

by efuquen 12y ago

seriously? Out of all crowds I would think anyone here would immediately get the terribleness of IE and how it had a huge impact on keeping the internet back. And IE's (diminishing) dominance has everything to owe to the monopoly Microsoft imposed on that space for a long time.

Permit 12y ago
I cannot believe people still argue that bundling Internet Explorer with Windows was a BadThing™. http://xkcd.com/1118/ http://xkcd.com/1118/ It's so unbelievably mild to the walled gardens of today's app store where Apple, Google or Microsoft could freely choose to eliminate all browser apps on their platform if they chose.
- imanaccount247 12y ago
  That comic does not suggest that it wasn't a bad thing. Just because worse things happen does not make less bad things into good things.
- mikeash 12y ago
  Apple does prohibit other browsers on their (iOS) platform. You can ship a "browser" app, but it must use their engine. You cannot bring your own. Alternate iOS browsers are basically just reskinned copies of Safari. As for the others, they're more open because they see it as a competitive advantage. That's something Microsoft didn't have to think about, since they owned 95% of the market and nobody would figure out how to break in for over a decade. I wouldn't say that bundling IE was bad. What was bad was so thoroughly crushing all of the competition that "Windows" and "PC OS" became all but synonymous, and then that lack of competition causing terrible stagnation and the terror-filled reign of IE6.
  - sah2ed 12y ago
    > Apple does prohibit other browsers on their (iOS) platform. That is not true, otherwise, what do you have to say regarding Chrome for iOS [0]? [0] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chrome-web-browser-by-google/id535886823?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chrome-web-browser-by-google...
    - mikeash 12y ago
      It's a reskinned Safari, as I said.
- jamiesonbecker 12y ago
  That wasn't the bad thing. Killing off the IE team when it hit 90+% marketshare and not releasing ANY new browser for more than five years... yeah. that was a bad thing.
neilc 12y ago
Just neglecting to continue to develop a piece of software isn't exactly "inflicting billions of damage" on "humanity". Letting IE stagnate was a dumb move, but it's not like MS had a moral imperative to constantly improve it. Shame on the marketplace if it took a while for a feasible competitor to emerge.
- mattmanser 12y ago
  Perhaps you're too young, but you don't seem to understand what MS did. They drove the competitor (Netscape) out of business by giving away their browser. There's no way for the market to correct for that or "a feasible competitor to emerge". It amazes me that someone who's only 5 years younger than me and even has a CS degree is so completely out of touch with recent computer history. I understand why, everything changes so fast, but you cannot understand what MS did if you weren't there. Their callous destruction of Netscape stopped an era of rapid innovation in internet technologies, HTML & js simply stagnated for almost 6-7 years afterwards, before it had been iterating rapidly. It is now back to iterating like it did, these last 2-3 years and the WHATWG, it really feels like things are back on track again, though some really, really important things are still taking a while (like observables, which are super important for GUI driven apps).
  - SamReidHughes 12y ago
    I, for one, am happy not having to pay for my web browser.
  - WalterBright 12y ago
    And yet most software today is free. Yes, I was on the internet in that era. And no, I never did understand what was so awful about giving away software. All the software I write today I give away, too :-)
  - mwfunk 12y ago
    I guess I just don't see a direct correlation between what happened with MS in the late '90s and how web technologies have evolved (or not evolved) after that. Who's to say things wouldn't have been as bad (or worse) without IE? It's an imponderable, we'll never know the answer. You are extrapolating it out to a scenario where IE didn't exist, and Netscape, the standards organizations, and all the other key players were harmonious stewards of some sort of golden age. I'm not saying that I support anything that Microsoft did in the '90s, rather that it is totally plausible to me that the players in the no-IE parallel universe were perfectly capable of screwing things up just as badly or worse. Since it's extrapolation, what's plausible to us says more about how we feel about the different players than anything else.
mistermann 12y ago
Saying "IE sucks" in no way explains "the billions of damage he caused humanity" or "held the internet back for 6 or 7 years".
georgemcbay 12y ago
IE3 was a fantastic browser at a time when the only real alternative (Netscape Navigator) had become a bloated piece of shit. It wasn't until IE4's years-long stagnation that IE had what I would consider a negative impact on "keeping the internet back" and Netscape's spectacular pre-Firefox implosion had just as much to do with that as Microsoft's IE bundling did, since there was a good stretch with no really viable alternative browser that didn't suck even worse than IE. And on the topic of Netscape's implosion, I'd argue that while Microsoft's business practices didn't do Netscape any favors, Netscape's complete failure as a company was 50% on Netscape itself executing poorly, 49% on apache totally killing the idea of "paid web server software market" and maybe 1% Microsoft's business practices... at best). Also to be fair you also have to factor in the many ways in which Microsoft pushed the "internet" (and by that I am speaking mostly of the web) forward. One example: XMLHttpRequest ("Ajax"), prior to which the web was a very static "electronic pamphlet"-y place. I'd also argue that not bundling IE with Windows would have held the internet (in terms of people being connected) back a lot more than bundling it did. At the very least IE is (still) the best, easiest way to download and install Chrome on a new Windows install.

by efuquen 12y ago

Permit 12y ago

I cannot believe people still argue that bundling Internet Explorer with Windows was a BadThing™. http://xkcd.com/1118/ http://xkcd.com/1118/ It's so unbelievably mild to the walled gardens of today's app store where Apple, Google or Microsoft could freely choose to eliminate all browser apps on their platform if they chose.

imanaccount247 12y ago
That comic does not suggest that it wasn't a bad thing. Just because worse things happen does not make less bad things into good things.
mikeash 12y ago
Apple does prohibit other browsers on their (iOS) platform. You can ship a "browser" app, but it must use their engine. You cannot bring your own. Alternate iOS browsers are basically just reskinned copies of Safari. As for the others, they're more open because they see it as a competitive advantage. That's something Microsoft didn't have to think about, since they owned 95% of the market and nobody would figure out how to break in for over a decade. I wouldn't say that bundling IE was bad. What was bad was so thoroughly crushing all of the competition that "Windows" and "PC OS" became all but synonymous, and then that lack of competition causing terrible stagnation and the terror-filled reign of IE6.
- sah2ed 12y ago
  > Apple does prohibit other browsers on their (iOS) platform. That is not true, otherwise, what do you have to say regarding Chrome for iOS [0]? [0] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chrome-web-browser-by-google/id535886823?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chrome-web-browser-by-google...
  - mikeash 12y ago
    It's a reskinned Safari, as I said.
jamiesonbecker 12y ago
That wasn't the bad thing. Killing off the IE team when it hit 90+% marketshare and not releasing ANY new browser for more than five years... yeah. that was a bad thing.

neilc 12y ago

Just neglecting to continue to develop a piece of software isn't exactly "inflicting billions of damage" on "humanity". Letting IE stagnate was a dumb move, but it's not like MS had a moral imperative to constantly improve it. Shame on the marketplace if it took a while for a feasible competitor to emerge.

mattmanser 12y ago
Perhaps you're too young, but you don't seem to understand what MS did. They drove the competitor (Netscape) out of business by giving away their browser. There's no way for the market to correct for that or "a feasible competitor to emerge". It amazes me that someone who's only 5 years younger than me and even has a CS degree is so completely out of touch with recent computer history. I understand why, everything changes so fast, but you cannot understand what MS did if you weren't there. Their callous destruction of Netscape stopped an era of rapid innovation in internet technologies, HTML & js simply stagnated for almost 6-7 years afterwards, before it had been iterating rapidly. It is now back to iterating like it did, these last 2-3 years and the WHATWG, it really feels like things are back on track again, though some really, really important things are still taking a while (like observables, which are super important for GUI driven apps).
- SamReidHughes 12y ago
  I, for one, am happy not having to pay for my web browser.
- WalterBright 12y ago
  And yet most software today is free. Yes, I was on the internet in that era. And no, I never did understand what was so awful about giving away software. All the software I write today I give away, too :-)
- mwfunk 12y ago
  I guess I just don't see a direct correlation between what happened with MS in the late '90s and how web technologies have evolved (or not evolved) after that. Who's to say things wouldn't have been as bad (or worse) without IE? It's an imponderable, we'll never know the answer. You are extrapolating it out to a scenario where IE didn't exist, and Netscape, the standards organizations, and all the other key players were harmonious stewards of some sort of golden age. I'm not saying that I support anything that Microsoft did in the '90s, rather that it is totally plausible to me that the players in the no-IE parallel universe were perfectly capable of screwing things up just as badly or worse. Since it's extrapolation, what's plausible to us says more about how we feel about the different players than anything else.

mistermann 12y ago

Saying "IE sucks" in no way explains "the billions of damage he caused humanity" or "held the internet back for 6 or 7 years".

georgemcbay 12y ago

IE3 was a fantastic browser at a time when the only real alternative (Netscape Navigator) had become a bloated piece of shit. It wasn't until IE4's years-long stagnation that IE had what I would consider a negative impact on "keeping the internet back" and Netscape's spectacular pre-Firefox implosion had just as much to do with that as Microsoft's IE bundling did, since there was a good stretch with no really viable alternative browser that didn't suck even worse than IE. And on the topic of Netscape's implosion, I'd argue that while Microsoft's business practices didn't do Netscape any favors, Netscape's complete failure as a company was 50% on Netscape itself executing poorly, 49% on apache totally killing the idea of "paid web server software market" and maybe 1% Microsoft's business practices... at best). Also to be fair you also have to factor in the many ways in which Microsoft pushed the "internet" (and by that I am speaking mostly of the web) forward. One example: XMLHttpRequest ("Ajax"), prior to which the web was a very static "electronic pamphlet"-y place. I'd also argue that not bundling IE with Windows would have held the internet (in terms of people being connected) back a lot more than bundling it did. At the very least IE is (still) the best, easiest way to download and install Chrome on a new Windows install.