Thinking About What Might Have Been

Thinking about what might have been…

John Borland: The call to arms stemmed from Microsoft’s obsession to protect the Windows operating system, which was and is the only near-universal platform on which other software developers can base their own programs. If software developers could have written their code instead for Netscape, which in turn could work with any operating system, the need to run Windows on every machine might have quickly diminished. Although the article quoted is new, the “call to arms” referenced happened in 1995.

John Gruber: But now what? Internet Explorer’s purpose was to dominate the browser market, not to generate revenue. Once it achieved dominance, many declared the browser market dead — which wasn’t a bad guess, given Microsoft’s history in other markets. But the difference with Internet Explorer is that Microsoft seems to have lost interest, and progress on the app has slowed tremendously. The reason is that unlike its for-pay software, Microsoft doesn’t have much of an interest in whether you’re using an older version of IE, or the latest release. Welcome to 2003, where Microsoft is the only browser developer stagnating, and the most visible.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *