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A riddle: Why does Netscape still exist? | |
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| Time: 00:00 EST/05:00 GMT | News Source: ZDNet | Posted By: Robert Stein | ||
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COMMENTARY--When I heard the news that AOL Time Warner (my employer) filed a lawsuit last Tuesday against Microsoft, I was not surprised -- just disappointed. AOL's civil suit accuses Microsoft of using its Windows software, which has long been bundled in its Internet Explorer browser, to crush Netscape, which has a competing browser and is owned by AOL. Don't get me wrong. It's not that I think Microsoft is entirely innocent of using its monopoly power to crush Netscape. The facts speak for themselves. Internet Explorer, which was developed after Netscape, now controls more than 80 percent of the market for Internet users, while Netscape is limping along as a minor subsidiary of AOL. Netscape actually lost the browser wars a long time ago, in part because of Microsoft's tactics but also because its product is no longer very good -- and no judicial ruling is going to change that. Even AOL realizes this, since it bundles Internet Explorer instead of Netscape with its own PC software. | ||
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| #1 By 116 (66.68.170.138) at 1/28/2002 11:54:51 PM |
| Finally something true published on ZDNet. I followed the article and its just some commentary from some guy I have never heard of, but the point he makes is very valid. |
| #2 By 2332 (129.21.145.80) at 1/29/2002 12:03:10 AM |
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Another thing to note is that Microsoft achieved 30% market share (from < 1%) with Internet Explorer 3.0, which wasn't bundled with anything.
If Microsoft could gain 30% share with IE 3, which wasn't a whole lot better than Netscape 3 (actually, I personally liked Netscape 3 better), IE 4 was destined to be king whether or not Microsoft bundled it with Windows. Netscape failed primarily because they stopped producing a quality product that offered advantages over the competition, just as this guy says. |
| #3 By 2332 (129.21.145.80) at 1/29/2002 11:08:58 AM |
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#5 - Microsoft had already gained the 30% market share before the "bundling" with OSR2.
In addition, OSR2 was one of the weakest releases of a Windows OS in history, selling very few copies over a fairly long period of time, and could therefore have not be responsible for the 30% market share. (Probably because it was basically a glorified bug fix.) The vast majority of that 30% was a result of independant downloads thanks to the fact that IE was free, and at this point, Netscape still cost money for everybody but non-profit organizations. |
| #4 By 1845 (12.254.163.101) at 1/29/2002 11:47:18 AM |
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#13 I disagree with almost every point you made.
"IE's inability to run Java apps has further made it an undesirable platform for me" That's odd. No browser that I know of runs Java apps. They run JavaScript (completely unrelated to Java) or Java applets. Now, Java applets run in IE if you have the version of the JVM to match the byte code version of the applet. Since Sun writes a JVM for IE just as it does for Netscape, I can't see why this would be a problem for you. "Coupled with the stupid decision to separate the browser from the e-mail package (Outlook Express) has made the IE platform nearly unusable." Not bundling email software with a web browser doesn't make a browser unusable. It makes a browser a browser and an email client an email client. Since Eudora was selling (and maybe still is) its email client back when Netscape had a monopoly in the browser market, one might think they should sue Netscape for leveraging their browser monopoly to kill competition in the email client market. "Mozilla are much faster and more standard compliant than any other browser" If you are so interested in standards compliancy, then you should have switched to IE 5 in March of 1999, since it was far more standards compliant than Netscape 4.x. First and foremost in my mind it had support for XML which Netscape 4 hadn't even heard of. You'll remember that Netscape 6 wasn't released until August of 2000, so you had a full year and a half with a lesser compliant browser. "Every company knew that since IE was bundled with the OS that it was on every computer so they tailored their websites for it. The fact that it was on every Windows computer was the salient point. The fact that it was not then or even now an excellent browser for several of us makes no difference." First, most companies write sites tailored for both browsers. They don't want to alienate anybody. How do I know this? I'm a web developer and am forced to write sites which support the lesser quality Netscape 4.x browsers. IE and Netscape 6.x don't usually give me problems. Secondly, perhaps you should look at the support each company gives to developers. If I have a question on how to develop web applications for Internet Explorer, I have hundreds if not thousands of articles, pages, demos, conferences, videos, etc from Microsoft.com alone to teach me how to write for that platform. Start at msdn.microsoft.com and you can find just about anything you need. If you want to write for Netscape, you'll have quite a difficulty find resources from Netscape itself. Internet Explorer became what Netscape tried to be - a platform for application development. I've written applications for IE that closely mirror the functionality and performance of desktop apps. "Microsoft leveraged their monopoly in the OS market to kill off a comptetitor and for this they deserve huge penalties. Leveraging their OS monopoly gives them incredible power that stiffles competition and this need to be severly remedied or it will continue past the demise of Netscape's and Corel's market shares in the browser and office suites areas." Microsoft gave consumers what consumers wanted. When I bought a house last year, the damned builder had bundled smoke alarms into my house. To boot he had already painted when I first saw the house. Duh! If didn't want the house, I could have gone somewhere else. If Microsoft is not free to innovate, then it is not free to compete. Netscape declared that it would make the OS irrelevant. That means, it was competing with Windows. Since it was competing, Microsoft competed back and Microsoft won. Let's remember that Netscape started this war, not Microsoft. |
| #5 By 655 (165.125.17.2) at 1/29/2002 3:29:25 PM |
| A couple of years ago, before it's demise, Windows Magazine published a commentary regarding the (then young) antitrust suite against MS. True, MS has used it's size/power over many competing products. But WinMag took a look at several products - Netscape, Wordperfect, Lotus 123. WinMag noted (and I have to agree) that all lost market share primarily due to their own fault. Netscape has had a number of bugs since ver. 3; Corel hasn't done WordPerfect any good (the wordprocessor portion is still good, but the related applic's - namely CorelCentral - are bug-ridden - note that WP Office 9 is up to 8 service packs). Lotus 123 was king of spreadsheets - IBM has let Lotus, along with OS2 all but die. |
| #6 By 135 (209.180.28.6) at 1/29/2002 4:49:46 PM |
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Software is something that requries a lot of resources and is very expensive to invest the R&D into. As such it is only natural that a larger company, especially one that has dedicated itself to building efficient practices is going to be more successful.
Netscape died because it was really just a bunch of college cowboys doing development with no established methodologies or processes. It's fast, but it's not sustainable or maintainable. I don't know what to say. Is it fair? Probably not. Should we do something about it? Probably not. |
| #7 By 4379 (65.193.250.194) at 1/29/2002 5:02:28 PM |
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I loved NS 3.0 and when NS 4.0 hit I switch over to IE. NS4 sucked. It seemed to be a wannabe IE, simple as that.
It's not a matter of MS money; it’s a matter of NS not sticking to what got it where it was. Only God knows the reason why AOL bought NS? |
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