I was just reading a story in ZDNet about whether Internet Explorer should be unbundled from the operating system. It seems the European Union is going after Microsoft again for being anti-competitive based on a request from the company that makes the Opera browser.
Like all ZDNet articles, there is a section called Talk Back at the bottom. And, as usual, most of the people who respond come from a more technical background or have a better understanding of technology than most people. Theydo not take into consideration the history of the industry or the average consumer that uses computers in their homes.
The following quote is from one of the people who posted a comment. His comment kind of set me off as it usually does when I read statements from uninformed people. The paragraphs following the quote are my response to the author’s comment.
“But who cares about a multi-billion dollar corporation that has run roughshod over the entire industry for longer than I can remember?”
I don’t know how old you are or how far back you can remember, but if it were not for Microsoft, the industry would not be anywhere as advanced as it is today.
They are as big as they are for a few reasons, one of which is luck and another is being in the right places at the right times and seizing the opportunities that arose from them.
Who should have competed against Microsoft and didn’t?
How about Apple? They were first with a desktop computer, but chose to go the route of the enthusiast early on and still do to some extent. They COULD have been as big as MS today is Steve Jobs thought the way he Bill Gates did about the future of the industry.
How about IBM? Twice in IBM’s history they could have beat Microsoft to the prize as biggest software company. First, they blew it with the DOS debacle not keeping the copyright for themselves. Then, they decided not to develop, support, and promote O/S2 more aggressively than they did. For the time, it was cool and better than Windows.
And what about Xerox? What would have happened if the management of Xerox would have developed, promoted, and sold Star instead of letting it die. AND, letting Jobs and Gates steal the GUI space and other technology.
All of the software, hardware, and peripheral companies we know of would not be here if MS had not pushed their OS and encourage startup companies to follow suit.
Dell would not be here, or as big, if it weren’t for MS. Compaq would not have designed the first IBM Clone if it were not for the MS operating system of the day.
So, the bottom line is that we would still be in the dark ages of desktop computing if it were not for Microsoft.
As for Internet Explorer ? It is not only part of Explorer and called by many third party applications for GUI services, but it IS the GUI of windows. Take a look at a themes structure. The file extension is .hta. It IS html with some scripting.
The Windows GUI is Internet Explorer.
Take Internet Explorer away and you break the GUI, you break the functionality of many third party apps, and you piss off a lot of confused moms and dads who don’t know one browser from the other or why their apps don’t work any more. Many don’t even know where the address bar is in a browser! They think the search bar is.
Think of the turmoil caused in the gen X consumer market. I service hundreds of these gen X computers every year. These people DON’T have a clue.
So, let’s break their experience and confuse them some more. Let’s put MORE money in my pocket providing support services.
If Opera what’s a bigger piece of the pie, then they should get off their asses and compete like Firefox has done instead of leaning on government to do their job.
This reeks of the same thing the RIAA is doing. Using government as a means to their end.
It’s a shame that the European Union does not seem to be able to look at the big picture when it comes to technology and also seems to like using Microsoft as a bank.
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