On Sat, Apr 10, 2004 at 10:58:31AM +0800, Manny wrote: > On Fri, 9 Apr 2004, Andy Sy wrote: > > > > Long before Microsoft learned the "importance of sharing code," it > > > learned that to beat any competitor, it should "embrace and extend" > > > that competitor's technology. Want to take over the Internet? Embrace > > > Web browsing technology with a free browser, Internet Explorer, that's > > > incorporated into the operating system, and extend it with proprietary > > > "enhancements" that make other browsers look bad. It worked. > > > > No it didn't work... > > Tell that to Netscape. M$ managed to make Netscape LOOK bad even though IE > was not really needed to access most websites. But the strategy worked.
Having used the web since 1993, when Mosaic was the only browser, I think I'm qualified to discuss this. What Microsoft did was to create a mostly standards-compliant browser. That's W3C standards, not netscape "standards". Read the history of the time and you'll find that Netscape had become incredibly arrogant having a monopoly in the browser market, and had started making up extensions (embrace & extend tactics) to keep ahead of IE. Microsoft had a better code base, and by version 4 of the browsers Netscape's browser was trash while IE was starting to look good. Microsoft's IE 5 browser was far more standards compliant than Netscape's, and these were important standards: CSS. As anyone who does web programming can tell you, CSS makes life much easier, so it just made sense. At the height of its arrogance, Netscape had even considered passing up CSS completely in favor of its own proprietary Javascript style sheets. Netscape had to rewrite from scratch to compete, but they didn't have the cash. In desperation they decided to create an open source project to attempt to get free development help. This is possibly the only case where Microsoft didn't use the "embrace & extend" tactics to kill a competitor. Frankly, many of us feel that Netscape committed suicide. There's a lot that could be written, but crying for netscape makes no sense. They tried to take over the web with proprietary extensions to html and a free browser, and it worked for a year or two. Michael -- Michael Darrin Chaney [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.michaelchaney.com/ -- Philippine Linux Users' Group (PLUG) Mailing List [EMAIL PROTECTED] (#PLUG @ irc.free.net.ph) Official Website: http://plug.linux.org.ph Searchable Archives: http://marc.free.net.ph . To leave, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/plug . Are you a Linux newbie? To join the newbie list, go to http://lists.q-linux.com/mailman/listinfo/ph-linux-newbie
