Earlier in the day, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates was onstage at the RSA Conference in San Francisco to unveil a beta of an updated version of Internet Explorer, a Web browser that's been begging for new security features--let alone a facelift--for ages.
Microsoft promoted the introduction as a big deal. Naturally, I thought my interlocutor would jump at the opportunity. C'mon, I thought, run some jive about how IE is all ready to rout those pests from the Mozilla Foundation once and for all.
Instead I was left high and dry. All I got was marketing mumbo-jumbo about how the company strives to do good by its customers and that's the ultimate payoff--and so on and so forth.
Maybe that's the standard PR practice "going forward," as the jargon-meisters are wont to say. But Microsoft wasn't always so reluctant to speak frankly. In fact, the company was damn good at sticking it to the competition.
During the early 1990s rivalry with IBM's OS/2, Microsoft pulled out all the stops to make sure reporters were convinced the world was a better place because of Windows. Microsoft's marketing prowess came in handy because IBM had a better product. The reason OS/2 failed was because Big Blue was utterly inept at making its case.
Company executives were too high-minded to call a spade a spade. Instead, IBM excelled at putting reporters to sleep with mind-numbing recitations of all its customer advantages. Maybe it was a corporate culture thing, but Microsoft was faster, smarter and meaner--and it paid off. Management knew what was on the line: nothing less than control of the PC desktop and the potential billions of dollars in future revenues that would accrue to the winner.
A similar scenario played out later in the decade during the so-called browser wars. Microsoft executives had no compulsions about trashing Netscape--publicly or privately--to reporters. (Was it really true that Marc Andreessen was "a cheeseburger-addicted frat boy," as I recall hearing during one singular briefing back then.)
Again, the stakes were high. Netscape sought to replace Microsoft Windows with its Navigator Web browser as the de facto application development platform for personal computers. Had the strategy succeeded, Gates and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer today would be pumping gas for a living.
History obviously worked out differently. IE ultimately caught up and then surpassed Navigator. The company's aggressiveness also ran afoul of antitrust statutes and Microsoft wound up in a drawn-out court battle with the U.S. Justice Department.
Firefox poses the latest challenge. The Mozilla folks say they have registered more than 25 million downloads since the release of Firefox 1.0 last November. Not too shabby a performance, even if some of those 25 million happen to be multiple downloads. Full disclosure: Yours truly switched from IE to Firefox last fall and hasn't regretted the decision for a second.
Microsoft's brass remains low-key, but the competition from Firefox is forcing the company to step things up. The beta version of IE 7 for XP SP2 will be ready later this summer. For Microsoft, which fought tooth and nail over the years to keep the browser fused to the Windows operating system, this is quite a big deal.
It's a gamble, but it's also a sensible idea. The next version of Windows is due out sometime in 2006, and Microsoft is notorious for missing shipping dates for the release of operating systems. Microsoft can't wait another two years to answer the challenge from Firefox. But if the interim browser update fails to stem the tide, get ready for a flood of verbal pyrotechnics coming out of Redmond.
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Charles Cooper is CNET News.com's executive editor of commentary.
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It was not only attack-dog PR that Microsoft deployed last time.
They also levered web standards by ensuring that IE complied with the latest versions of HTML, CSS and JavaScript/ECMAScript at a time when Netscape was committed to proprietary HTML extensions, a proprietary stylesheet technology (JSS) and restricted scripting access to browser functionality (the 'DOM').
This basically meant that web designers could code for IE while ensuring graceful degredation for other browsers. The reverse could not be done by those who coded for Netscape.
As soon as Netscape was out of the way, Microsoft dropped any serious pretence of completing their implementation of CSS and other W3C standards.
Since then, just about all of their web and browser related initiatives (especially XAML) have been designed to replace the web interface with Windows-only .Net technologies and protocols.
They deserve to suffer Netscape's fate and be out-flanked by Firefox's excellent support for 21st century standards. Sadly, this is unlikely to happen while media commentators continue to ignore the critical role that standards play.
Superior applications like Dreamweaver have done a lot to keep the IE extensions in place. They recognize the differences in IE, but offer methods for segregating the code in the web pages. Dreamweaver goes a long way in pointing out the browser differences and gives the user a chance to handle those situations. That has helped a lot.
I've been able to code my web pages using CCS without having to stoop to catering to IE. I code by hand, but after while you develop a toolset of code snippets that is compatible across the board.
Standards are definitely making a comeback.
They would be wise to adopt everything from MS as a standard. No one is going to open a Firefox or IE browser if the application on the desktop doesn't require it. The integration of the browser into the OS (Avalon) will make Firefox and IE useless.
FF1.0 was not release on Feb 15, if so thats 25 million downloads in 3 days, lol... FF was released 100 days prior to Feb 15. So it's 25 million in 100 days..
Will the updated IE automatically make itself the default browser? (probably)
Will IE be changed so that Firefox can no longer import IE favorites and other settings? (no doubt -- why make it easy for people to switch to Firefox?)
Will it support web standards? (who nows, I'll hope for the best and expect the worst)
How many of Firefox's nifty features (or extensions) will IE co-opt and market as "new and improved" features in IE? (probably many, as MS has done this before with other products -- Excel being a great example)
Easy. Simple. History has demonstrated this over and over.
Examples:
Adobe Photoshop: Succeeds because it is clearly superior to Microsoft's integrated Paint program.
Netscape Navigator: Tremendous success and a monopoly on browsers when competing against the inferior IE 1.x and 2.x that was integrated at the time. (IE never surpassed NS in marketshare until it had a superior product with version 3.02, I think)
WinDVD: Has a higher user-base for DVD watching than the integrated Windows MediaPlayer, because in may respects, it is superior for this particular function.
IPSec VPN Clients: More common than Microsoft's initial L2TP integrated solution because it is clearly superior.
Oracle DB: Tremendously successful because in some situations people consider it superior to SQL Server.
How do you compete successfully with ANY product on the market? Create a BETTER product, of course! This requires obvious superiority over existing products... not a mishmash of mostly irrelevant features like tabbed browsing and false claims of performance. And certainly not through bashing your competitors products. CLAIMS of superiority are pointless if they are not easily visible to ALL customers.
Look at the auto industry. Power windows, power locks, power steering, rear defrost, heated seats, and the list goes on. You think us as a consumer would truely benifit if the above features stay with and only with the auto manufactorers that originally invented/implemented them?
They must have been stock holders in M$.
Consumers did not prefer OS/2. And neither did IBM employees or developers. They all preferred either Windows, or some other variant of Unix. How can you support the idea that Warp was "clearly" superior when IBM iteslf rejected it?
OS/2 was excellent, but it seldom got a break in the press of the day. The combination of the press saying how few applications there were for the OS were generally true, but mostly failed to take note that OS/2's DOS really *was* a better DOS and Windows 3.x apps generally ran VERY well on it.
It's fair to comment that Microsoft out-marketed Big Blue. It's not the whole story, though.
The judge overseeing the U.S. settlement appears recently to have become a bit more questioning of MS, and this implies MS is feeling constrained, especially in light of its dreadful EU predicament, wherein the bright legal minds of Europe have essentially told MS they must halt their entire business model, period.
Perhaps MS, having made its own bed, is now having to lie in it, so to speak, or else.
How ironic, creating a clever excuse for bundling--that the OS made them do it; and now MS dare not unbundle IE (which explains why IE 7 is just for XP).
But the mighty MS might just fall on its own sword because of this. Let us not get our hopes up, however.
There are other markets that pay for software. Maybe web page developers just aren't that important to that market model. If I wanted to trim out fat, I'd adopt a model that enabled development of open source components on a proprietary operating system. Oh wait! That is what FireFox does. I think they are always glad to see someone develop yet another Windows application. :-)
The browser war doesn't excite them. It has become a sport like the America's Cup: nice to have the bragging rights but in the bigger picture, it's just a cup.
Great summation. Wish I thought of it first.
DOJ Anti-Trust Lawsuit & the pending fines &/or breaking
Microsoft into smaller companies?
Didn't he swear under oath that because of the tight integration
of IE with WinOS which "benefits" the consumers, also make it
impossible to "divorce" them from one another?
Also, after a series of Prosecution expert witnesses testimonies,
Citizen Gates then swore under oath that IF in fact MS was
FORCED to "divorce" IE from WinOS, that is would cause great
havoc & expense to MS to the point of near bankruptcy?
It would also "stiffle innovation" & the consumers would suffer...
NOW all of a sudden when MS has some competiton from Open
Source/Mozilla/Firefox/Safari/Mozilla based Netscape/AOL/
Opera/etc. browsers & people are tired of all the security risks &
loss of business & waiting for six years for Redmond Jurassic
DOSasaurs to get off their fat behinds & DO some REAL
innovation,
NOW MS IE can be "improved & security assured" yet SEPARATE
from the OS as a stand alone browser software....HMMMM.....
Me thinks me smells a (Fire)Fox in the hen house.
Basically he was saying he couldn't sell a version of windows without any IE components in it. Undoubtedly an exageration, since there is always more than one way to skin a cat... but not really contradictory to releasing a new version. (and lest be realistic in years past they've released new versions of IE outside of Windows releases, so that was never really the claim).
This is why there can be no IE7 for Windows 98, and 2000.
about it a little more, carrying out this action will NOT make
Gates a liar. That's because they are not actually "divorcing"
anything. They are simply upgrading the existing browser, which
is already integrated into Windows XP. So it seems Bill won't be
facing any perjury charges after all...
IE is MUCH faster. The URL below shows that. I myself can see a significant speed difference. http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/browserSpeed.html
As far as security the SP2 update prevents several security threats that the common user doesn't know how to avoid in the first place. Face it, any software that's on the top is victim to countless attempts to compromise. If OS X and Mozilla Firefox where at the top, they'd be the PRIMARY victims.
Microsoft is quick to release patches to address security issues. As we all know Linux and many other software in the computing world provides updates to secure their software. I don't know of any software that was released that never had any patches or security issues for that matter, since MS is on top they get the brink of it. Face it Microsoft changed the digital age. Everyone wants to knock them off the top and/or a piece of the pie, from malicious users? compromising the security (probably competition) to the competition.
We all know MS software is installed and more widely used than any other software, whatever the case may be. By writing this malicious software and targeting OS X, Linux, Firefox, etc. you are only targeting probably 15 percent of the users. The other 85 percent is MS users. Why wouldn't you make them your primary target?
Microsoft Visual Studio has had ?tabbed browsing? since version 2002 (I wish you could drag the tabs in Firefox to change their order like in Visual Studio) and I guess it's using Internet Explorer libraries to render the content.
state that unlike your claim "IE is faster" they
stated:
"So overall, Opera seems to be the fastest browser for windows. Firefox is not faster than Internet Explorer, except for scripting, but for standards support, security and features, it is a better choice. However, it is still not as fast as Opera, and Opera also offers a high level of standards support, security and features."
And lets keep in mind that they are compairing new
firefox technology and capabilites with old IE code. The fact is that IE even with the latest
patches still lack much of the capability and standards that come defalut in Firefox. A better
comparison will be when they benchmark IE7 with
a (then) current version of Firefox.
W3C standards? what a joke!
New HTML? yet another joke!
Firefox is not the cure all. It's just that so many poeple are getting so tired of IE problems. The absolute biggest problem here is the ability for someone to code a website in such a way that the code is processed by the browser and the browser is no longer in control. With all these new html (and other) features, the more the browser can process, them more control the website has over the browser. The only reason we even need anti-popup software is because the browser can correctly process the html code that creates the popup in the first place. If the browser didn't process it, it would be a concern and websites would stop being coded to do it. One of the biggest problems with IE is that it processes code to allow a site access to the windows files and registry. Remove this capability, and you plug most of the holes. But, what is actually happening is that browsers are getting programmed to process even more of this and thereby making the problem worse. A stand-alone browser would be better, but I think that too many people are looking at Firefox blindly hoping for the "perfect" out and a cure-all. Coming out with new html, xlm, or whatever codes and tags is not the answer. There are already too many. A large portion of these codes and tags really need to be eliminated. That isn't the direction this is going.
What you say is true. But since Windows update works through this, I see very little possibility for the real hole to ever be fixed.
Has anybody heard Gates rational for this complete reversal after
TESTIFYING in court that they couldn't separate the browser from
the OS without irreparable harm??
Where is the DOJ on this?
- Outfoxed
- by February 22, 2005 9:31 AM PST
- I switched last fall also and had my customers do the same. If Microsoft only allows customers running XP SP2 to get the new IE 7 then they will really be missing out. I know there are a large number of people running Win2K and dont see any reason to switch to XP and IE 7 wont convince them. (this includes me)
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