Tim Roberts wrote: > "Jeroen Wenting" <jwenting at hornet dot demon dot nl> wrote: > >>Microsoft isn't evil, they're not a monopoly either. >>If they were a monopoly they'd have 100% of the market and there'd be no >>other software manufacturers at all. > > > This is wrong. The dictionary definition of a monopoly is when a > manufacturer has all or nearly all of a market. Microsoft DOES have a > monopoly on PC operating systems. > > That, in itself, is not necessarily illegal. However, Microsoft then USED > that monopoly power to stifle their competition, and that IS illegal. > > Part of their behavior really escape me. The whole thing about browser > wars confuses me. Web browsers represent a zero billion dollar a year > market. Why would you risk anything to own it?
So they can disrupt standards and make it extremely difficult to create websites that work both with IE and with any non-Windows browser. The most blatant example is that, a full five years after XHTML came out, IE doesn't render it at all. A few years ago, they did the same thing with browser plugins. IE used to support the same plugins that Netscape did. Then MS arbitrarily designed a new way of doing plugins that can only work with Windows (and which, incidentally, opens security holes), and removed support for standard plugins. As a result, plugin makers have to support two different plugins, or else choose between compatibility with IE and compatibility with everybody else. The message -- "co-operate with us, or be punished". -- John W. Kennedy "...if you had to fall in love with someone who was evil, I can see why it was her." -- "Alias" -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
