What is Microsoft's effect on the tech industry?
July 12, 2009 10:32 PM Subscribe
What evidence is there that Microsoft is hindering technological competition and innovation?
I've seen a lot of antipathy toward Microsoft in the tech media and blogosphere. Particularly, people accuse Microsoft of hindering competition and holding back the tech industry.
In 2009, what evidence is there for this claim, one way or the other? Have there been any recent studies that attempt to model the economic effect of Microsoft on the technology industry?
I've seen a lot of antipathy toward Microsoft in the tech media and blogosphere. Particularly, people accuse Microsoft of hindering competition and holding back the tech industry.
In 2009, what evidence is there for this claim, one way or the other? Have there been any recent studies that attempt to model the economic effect of Microsoft on the technology industry?
Microsoft's implementation of Kerberos in Active Directory uses extensions to the protocol in an unorthodox way that breaks some interoperability.
Also, google for "embrace, extend, and extinguish."
posted by rhizome at 11:33 PM on July 12, 2009
Also, google for "embrace, extend, and extinguish."
posted by rhizome at 11:33 PM on July 12, 2009
As far as hindering competition, they have a lot of special deals with distributors such as Dell, HP, Lenovo to make sure Windows is preinstalled, and they have a history of bundling their software in such a way that can make it difficult to remove (see the Internet Explorer anti-trust investigation in particular). "Holding back the technology industry" is a vague claim at best, but I think a large amount of the antipathy towards Microsoft is the result of many normal consumers and programmers regard for their software as badly designed and executed. The fact that most of the world still runs on the Windows platform probably is holding back the technology industry, because it is a closed system which discourages open source involvement and tinkering. Their software also has a history of being bloated, slow, prone to buffer overflows and other security holes, and consistently refuses to implement open standards adopted by the larger community. Personal opinion here, but I think there is some agreement among people familiar with their history that Microsoft has excelled because of their ruthless business practices and not because of any particularly good code they ever wrote.
posted by sophist at 11:44 PM on July 12, 2009 [2 favorites]
posted by sophist at 11:44 PM on July 12, 2009 [2 favorites]
As a web developer, I have to spend time specifically coding around the failure of Microsoft browsers to adhere to standards. So do other web developers. (Google IE workarounds to see for yourself.)
Every minute we spend accommodating their refusal to display web pages the way everyone else does is a minute we can't spend adding functionality or content to the site.
posted by kristi at 11:53 PM on July 12, 2009 [1 favorite]
Every minute we spend accommodating their refusal to display web pages the way everyone else does is a minute we can't spend adding functionality or content to the site.
posted by kristi at 11:53 PM on July 12, 2009 [1 favorite]
I don't think it's happened for a while, but back in the 90's there were a lot of instances of Microsoft basically obliterating an existing market with a few vendors who were all innovating to compete with each other, by including that functionality into their operating system, often by just buying one of the vendors in that space.
One example of course is web browsers - though there wasn't a whole lot of competition there before - Netscape basically owned the market. But then MS waltzed in with a clearly inferior offering, that gained huge market share just by virtue of coming pre-installed. Though it wasn't only MS "cheating" (leveraging their OS monopoly) that let them beat Netscape. As soon as IE got to be sort of as good as Netscape, Netscape immediately spent the next 4 years dicking around without any worthwhile updates, so they lost control of the valuable "Giving a browser away for free, with no way to make any money from it" market.
A less famous, but probably better example of this sort of thing is Stacker, a automatic disk compression package for DOS. Basically Stac Electronics created a new market niche. MS talked to them a bunch about licensing it, but turned around and reimplmeneted it, violating Stac's patents in the process, and totally eliminating the market for Stacker. I think a lot of people saw this as sort of a big fuck you to Stac Electronics: Innovate, and MS will steal your ideas, and make you irrelevant due to monopolistic practices (it's hard to compete with "Comes free with the OS", though there's enough badly implemented stuff in there that it was not impossible).
In the games industry, MS typically doesn't build up studios of their own - they buy game studios. Even if those studios go on to make something good (e.g., Halo) MS doesn't really get the creative credit, even though technically those games were produced by Microsoft.
They're also of course not always first to the party - they didn't have a usable GUI until a long time after Apple did. They made windows mobile stuff long after Apple invented PDAs and Palm figured out how to sell them. The Zune came a long time after the iPod (though the iPod wasn't the first device of its kind either, it was the first that had any kind of success). C# and .net really are in a lot of ways a Java knock-off.
In Microsoft's is so omnipresent it's pretty easy to bash them. They've sold enough software that almost everyone has used at least one of their more problematic products, and so anti-Microsoft sentiment resonates pretty universally. But I think the "they don't innovate" claims have a lot of merit. Certainly Microsoft has innovated, but they do tend to stay focused on their bottom line, and rarely persue novelty / invention for its own sake. And from that point of view, yeah, why take the risk when you can just wait for another company to give it a shot, and buy them out or rip them off if it works out.
posted by aubilenon at 12:38 AM on July 13, 2009 [2 favorites]
One example of course is web browsers - though there wasn't a whole lot of competition there before - Netscape basically owned the market. But then MS waltzed in with a clearly inferior offering, that gained huge market share just by virtue of coming pre-installed. Though it wasn't only MS "cheating" (leveraging their OS monopoly) that let them beat Netscape. As soon as IE got to be sort of as good as Netscape, Netscape immediately spent the next 4 years dicking around without any worthwhile updates, so they lost control of the valuable "Giving a browser away for free, with no way to make any money from it" market.
A less famous, but probably better example of this sort of thing is Stacker, a automatic disk compression package for DOS. Basically Stac Electronics created a new market niche. MS talked to them a bunch about licensing it, but turned around and reimplmeneted it, violating Stac's patents in the process, and totally eliminating the market for Stacker. I think a lot of people saw this as sort of a big fuck you to Stac Electronics: Innovate, and MS will steal your ideas, and make you irrelevant due to monopolistic practices (it's hard to compete with "Comes free with the OS", though there's enough badly implemented stuff in there that it was not impossible).
In the games industry, MS typically doesn't build up studios of their own - they buy game studios. Even if those studios go on to make something good (e.g., Halo) MS doesn't really get the creative credit, even though technically those games were produced by Microsoft.
They're also of course not always first to the party - they didn't have a usable GUI until a long time after Apple did. They made windows mobile stuff long after Apple invented PDAs and Palm figured out how to sell them. The Zune came a long time after the iPod (though the iPod wasn't the first device of its kind either, it was the first that had any kind of success). C# and .net really are in a lot of ways a Java knock-off.
In Microsoft's is so omnipresent it's pretty easy to bash them. They've sold enough software that almost everyone has used at least one of their more problematic products, and so anti-Microsoft sentiment resonates pretty universally. But I think the "they don't innovate" claims have a lot of merit. Certainly Microsoft has innovated, but they do tend to stay focused on their bottom line, and rarely persue novelty / invention for its own sake. And from that point of view, yeah, why take the risk when you can just wait for another company to give it a shot, and buy them out or rip them off if it works out.
posted by aubilenon at 12:38 AM on July 13, 2009 [2 favorites]
Some areas I'd say they do hold thing back, and some they don't. Microsoft is a large company with many different development teams. Some do a better job than others, I think. Web, and specifically web browsers, are one area which I think they are holding us back.
MS doesn't really compel anyone to automatically upgrade their older versions of IE, and there are reasons why it's quite hard for corporations to upgrade (e.g. their intranets work only in IE6 because they use some IE6-specific code). Which means developers typically have to cater for older versions of the browser so sites will work on a certain percentage of visitor's systems (still a significant portion of the market).
As a freelance web developer, I generally only provide full support for IE7 and IE8 unless requested to support IE6 by the client, in which case I mark it down as a separate item (e.g. "IE6 compatibility - x hours at $x") so they are aware of the cost of doing this! Also, on my own sites I am now putting a one-time popup when the user first visits the site if they are using IE6, telling them to upgrade and linking them to a site that tells them about other browsers.
posted by Eastgate at 1:12 AM on July 13, 2009 [1 favorite]
MS doesn't really compel anyone to automatically upgrade their older versions of IE, and there are reasons why it's quite hard for corporations to upgrade (e.g. their intranets work only in IE6 because they use some IE6-specific code). Which means developers typically have to cater for older versions of the browser so sites will work on a certain percentage of visitor's systems (still a significant portion of the market).
As a freelance web developer, I generally only provide full support for IE7 and IE8 unless requested to support IE6 by the client, in which case I mark it down as a separate item (e.g. "IE6 compatibility - x hours at $x") so they are aware of the cost of doing this! Also, on my own sites I am now putting a one-time popup when the user first visits the site if they are using IE6, telling them to upgrade and linking them to a site that tells them about other browsers.
posted by Eastgate at 1:12 AM on July 13, 2009 [1 favorite]
Microsoft's handling of ODF for spreadsheet files has really pissed off a lot of people. ODF is supposed to be an open format backed by international standards that allows interoperability between office programs. The idea was to get together and have all office apps from all the major vendors interoperate so that your files could be read or written by any office program.
The problem is that spreadsheet formula cells are not part of the international standard yet, but there is a de facto standard based on existing practices. Until Office 2007 SP2, most programs wrote cells in that format. But since this is a de facto standard and not an official one, there are some inconsistencies which can result in spreadsheets not doing what the user intended.
So for SP2 Microsoft wrote their own integrated ODF reader/writer (as opposed to users using third party plugins previously) and instead of implementing something that works they completely went off into Microsoft land and invented something that works with NONE of the other office programs (OpenOffice/StarOffice, Google Documents, Symphony, KSpread, etc.) They put all their cell formulas in a msxml namespace that no other program recognizes. This means if you use 2k7 SP2 to read or write spreadsheets you cannot read or write those spreadsheets in any other office app without serious degradation (e.g. formulas turned into literals.) And yet MS has the nerve to call their implementation 100% conforming to the standard -- which it does, technically, because again a formal spec for formulas has not been ratified yet and you can always put anything you want in a custom namespace. Their justification for this in essence was that, because some formulas didn't work in some circumstances under the de facto standard (and it would be confusing to the user when this did occur) they wanted to err on the side of having nothing work rather than possibly having some things not work. To Microsoft, the user is better served being forcefully made aware that they cannot interoperate, rather than finding it out by accident.
For details, read the following blog posts:
ODF Spreadsheet Interoperability: Theory and Practice
Update on ODF Spreadsheet Interoperability
A follow-up on Excel 2007 SP2's ODF support
posted by Rhomboid at 1:20 AM on July 13, 2009 [1 favorite]
The problem is that spreadsheet formula cells are not part of the international standard yet, but there is a de facto standard based on existing practices. Until Office 2007 SP2, most programs wrote cells in that format. But since this is a de facto standard and not an official one, there are some inconsistencies which can result in spreadsheets not doing what the user intended.
So for SP2 Microsoft wrote their own integrated ODF reader/writer (as opposed to users using third party plugins previously) and instead of implementing something that works they completely went off into Microsoft land and invented something that works with NONE of the other office programs (OpenOffice/StarOffice, Google Documents, Symphony, KSpread, etc.) They put all their cell formulas in a msxml namespace that no other program recognizes. This means if you use 2k7 SP2 to read or write spreadsheets you cannot read or write those spreadsheets in any other office app without serious degradation (e.g. formulas turned into literals.) And yet MS has the nerve to call their implementation 100% conforming to the standard -- which it does, technically, because again a formal spec for formulas has not been ratified yet and you can always put anything you want in a custom namespace. Their justification for this in essence was that, because some formulas didn't work in some circumstances under the de facto standard (and it would be confusing to the user when this did occur) they wanted to err on the side of having nothing work rather than possibly having some things not work. To Microsoft, the user is better served being forcefully made aware that they cannot interoperate, rather than finding it out by accident.
For details, read the following blog posts:
ODF Spreadsheet Interoperability: Theory and Practice
Update on ODF Spreadsheet Interoperability
A follow-up on Excel 2007 SP2's ODF support
posted by Rhomboid at 1:20 AM on July 13, 2009 [1 favorite]
Software patents.
posted by devnull at 1:35 AM on July 13, 2009 [1 favorite]
posted by devnull at 1:35 AM on July 13, 2009 [1 favorite]
Nowadays, I'm personally of the belief that very little is consciously done. I think the EU's antitrust arguments about Windows Media Player are completely ridiculous—operating systems are EXPECTED to include the ability to play media out of the box, and Linux and OSX can do so, so that entire case is rather ridiculous to me, especially since nothing precludes me from installing another media player.
There are issues with their document formats and support, but they've gotten a lot better with that. Finally, Internet Explorer really is the bane of all things for developers--some of us poor souls still have to develop for IE6, a sisyphean ordeal that brings about much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but more importantly, as stated above, keeps us from progressing as quickly as we could. Worse still, also mentioned above, IE8 isn't quite right in the head, either. Why Microsoft insists on using its own rendering engine instead of just using a GPLed renderer or Webkit is simply beyond me--though their argument lies a lot in requiring backwards compatibility for the horrible ActiveX programs that used to allow and other API controls that other applications (like QuickBooks, for instance) use to integrate a browse with their software. It's a perpetuating cycle of horribleness, that.
Moving past browser compatibility issues, you also must recall that the Microsoft Antitrust case was an intense, very public one. At the heart of it, the DOJ was arguing that Microsoft was anti-competitive by including IE with Windows automatically. I think that was and continues to be a ridiculous claim--an operating system without a browser (with which I can download my PREFERRED browser, Firefox) is nearly useless. Requiring me to travel to the store and PURCHASE a browser, or (and this is what's being suggested for copies of W7 without IE) use FTP to point to a file you can download... it's fucking ridiculous. What's the point?
The point, frankly, is that there's a lot of bitterness at how MS handled this in the past. There were talks and murmurs of them not simply including IE with Windows automatically, but also of them compelling their OEMs like Dell to NOT include Netscape and other competing browsers. (Need a source on that, though.) This IS anti-competitive, and leaves a very sour taste in people's mouth for decades to come about a company.
Further, Microsoft had a bad habit of including undocumented API features in Windows. This was an interesting trick that they would use to allow them to deploy features in their software, like Microsoft Office, that other developers simply couldn't offer in their competing products, because, frankly, they were unaware they could even interface with Windows in such a way. If you're building the platform and selling additional tools on top, it can be argued that not allowing other developers access to every single part of the platform that you have access to is anti-competitive. The move to web-based applications is changing the way people think about such things *dramatically* though, and we're going to see some REALLY messed up and horrible law coming out of who has what rights, with regards to platform developers and maintainers, versus third party developers. (Think Facebook and Twitter versus the developers who write apps on top of them.)
All of that said, I think Microsoft has come nearly full-circle around. They're simply not this way anymore, and a lot of that is because of Ray Ozzie, MS' new Chief Software Architect. I think they've realized that the transparent nature of the internet works against companies that seek to be evil and that they need to do their best to at least create the appearance of transparency and openness. They've done a good job, though, and their products are better for it. I don't hate Microsoft at all. I think most of the anti-trust arguments were totally bogus to begin with. But a lot of people have deeply ingrained opinions that simply won't change, and they will remain always suspicious, whenever Microsoft does anything to turn a profit.
posted by disillusioned at 2:23 AM on July 13, 2009 [2 favorites]
There are issues with their document formats and support, but they've gotten a lot better with that. Finally, Internet Explorer really is the bane of all things for developers--some of us poor souls still have to develop for IE6, a sisyphean ordeal that brings about much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but more importantly, as stated above, keeps us from progressing as quickly as we could. Worse still, also mentioned above, IE8 isn't quite right in the head, either. Why Microsoft insists on using its own rendering engine instead of just using a GPLed renderer or Webkit is simply beyond me--though their argument lies a lot in requiring backwards compatibility for the horrible ActiveX programs that used to allow and other API controls that other applications (like QuickBooks, for instance) use to integrate a browse with their software. It's a perpetuating cycle of horribleness, that.
Moving past browser compatibility issues, you also must recall that the Microsoft Antitrust case was an intense, very public one. At the heart of it, the DOJ was arguing that Microsoft was anti-competitive by including IE with Windows automatically. I think that was and continues to be a ridiculous claim--an operating system without a browser (with which I can download my PREFERRED browser, Firefox) is nearly useless. Requiring me to travel to the store and PURCHASE a browser, or (and this is what's being suggested for copies of W7 without IE) use FTP to point to a file you can download... it's fucking ridiculous. What's the point?
The point, frankly, is that there's a lot of bitterness at how MS handled this in the past. There were talks and murmurs of them not simply including IE with Windows automatically, but also of them compelling their OEMs like Dell to NOT include Netscape and other competing browsers. (Need a source on that, though.) This IS anti-competitive, and leaves a very sour taste in people's mouth for decades to come about a company.
Further, Microsoft had a bad habit of including undocumented API features in Windows. This was an interesting trick that they would use to allow them to deploy features in their software, like Microsoft Office, that other developers simply couldn't offer in their competing products, because, frankly, they were unaware they could even interface with Windows in such a way. If you're building the platform and selling additional tools on top, it can be argued that not allowing other developers access to every single part of the platform that you have access to is anti-competitive. The move to web-based applications is changing the way people think about such things *dramatically* though, and we're going to see some REALLY messed up and horrible law coming out of who has what rights, with regards to platform developers and maintainers, versus third party developers. (Think Facebook and Twitter versus the developers who write apps on top of them.)
All of that said, I think Microsoft has come nearly full-circle around. They're simply not this way anymore, and a lot of that is because of Ray Ozzie, MS' new Chief Software Architect. I think they've realized that the transparent nature of the internet works against companies that seek to be evil and that they need to do their best to at least create the appearance of transparency and openness. They've done a good job, though, and their products are better for it. I don't hate Microsoft at all. I think most of the anti-trust arguments were totally bogus to begin with. But a lot of people have deeply ingrained opinions that simply won't change, and they will remain always suspicious, whenever Microsoft does anything to turn a profit.
posted by disillusioned at 2:23 AM on July 13, 2009 [2 favorites]
Microsoft has built a great deal of DRM technology into Vista and Windows 7 that keeps people from legitimately and efficiently sharing data and raises costs for hardware and software developers:
Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called “premium content”, typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect not only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it's not used directly with Vista (for example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server). This document analyses the cost involved in Vista's content protection, and the collateral damage that this incurs throughout the computer industry.posted by Blazecock Pileon at 2:50 AM on July 13, 2009
I can't offer the hard facts and figures you want but I can offer some interesting perspectives.
First, consider the link between Intel and Microsoft (Wintel). Each version of Windows has required more and more resources, and this has forced users to upgrade hardware (even though the software could simply be made more efficient, and hardware is essentially fail-proof solid state). This has kept hardware innovating and improving, to the extent that a computer of just a few years old is considered useless. So from this perspective, Microsoft has been aggressively furthering hardware technology since its inception. Of course, this has meant we've been stuck with x86 chips since the early 80s, and these perhaps aren't the most efficient or elegant for our modern world, but that's another argument.
Secondly, Microsoft's products are based around the concept of discrete computers on every desk. This is historical rather than deliberate, but that era is coming to an end now. Over the next ten years the operating system is just going to become less and less important, because it's going to morph into merely a way of getting online. What we do online nowadays is almost everything that we do with a computer, but compare that to ten years ago, when it was all about software you could run on your computer. Google's new Chrome OS has already spotted this trend, and were seeing it all played out right now in the netbook arena. I think there will be a day when operating systems come on glorified BIOS chips of some kind. But I suspect Microsoft will cling to this market position, because it can't do anything else, and will attempt to retard progress as much as possible.
Throughout everything, it's always worth remembering that Microsoft primarily makes business software. We use this software on our home computers too because it fits the bill. The online world is a lot less cleanly defined, and this means that something like Gmail is not entirely business oriented but makes a pretty decent business tool. Again, it's all about the transition that's happening right now away from discrete computing.
posted by humblepigeon at 4:02 AM on July 13, 2009
First, consider the link between Intel and Microsoft (Wintel). Each version of Windows has required more and more resources, and this has forced users to upgrade hardware (even though the software could simply be made more efficient, and hardware is essentially fail-proof solid state). This has kept hardware innovating and improving, to the extent that a computer of just a few years old is considered useless. So from this perspective, Microsoft has been aggressively furthering hardware technology since its inception. Of course, this has meant we've been stuck with x86 chips since the early 80s, and these perhaps aren't the most efficient or elegant for our modern world, but that's another argument.
Secondly, Microsoft's products are based around the concept of discrete computers on every desk. This is historical rather than deliberate, but that era is coming to an end now. Over the next ten years the operating system is just going to become less and less important, because it's going to morph into merely a way of getting online. What we do online nowadays is almost everything that we do with a computer, but compare that to ten years ago, when it was all about software you could run on your computer. Google's new Chrome OS has already spotted this trend, and were seeing it all played out right now in the netbook arena. I think there will be a day when operating systems come on glorified BIOS chips of some kind. But I suspect Microsoft will cling to this market position, because it can't do anything else, and will attempt to retard progress as much as possible.
Throughout everything, it's always worth remembering that Microsoft primarily makes business software. We use this software on our home computers too because it fits the bill. The online world is a lot less cleanly defined, and this means that something like Gmail is not entirely business oriented but makes a pretty decent business tool. Again, it's all about the transition that's happening right now away from discrete computing.
posted by humblepigeon at 4:02 AM on July 13, 2009
The real issue with regards windows media player was not the app, but the proprietary drm'd audio and video codecs included (wma, wmv) as opposed to the defacto standard of mp3/mpeg4 at the time. They also worked by default in IE, but you needed custom plugins to make them work in alternative browsers.
The fear was that with codecs included in the monopoly desktop, web-developers would switch en masse to them for streaming audio and video over the internet, a nascent industry at the time. If they gained such a dominant position as they had already with windows and IE, it would cut off alternative OS users from vast swathes of internet access, and cement windows position going forward. Whether removing windows media player was the most effective solution remains debatable (windows N never gained traction in the wild, as EU OEMs still had access to the standard version at the same price), but in the end flash video, rather than wmv became the dominant web standard. With the video tag in HTML5, we may finally see widely supported reliable cross-platform video playback over the net, assuming the patent issues around the various codecs in the US can be worked out.
Recently, microsoft has jumped the gun, and all versions of windows 7 in the EU will not have IE at all. Since they will also not have upgrade versions, the prices in the EU are considerably higher than for the US. IE 8 will still be available via windows update, for windows 7 E versions. So companies like Dell and HP will no doubt ship OEM computers with IE 8 preinstalled, just like they do with all the other crap they put on - I can't imagine they'd fancy the support headache dealing with users who only know about the blue e asking where 'the internet' is. So the existing position of IE as the only default browser will continue in the EU, but microsoft can say 'nothing to do with us, gov'nor'.
What they're deathly afraid of is the EU's proposed solution; providing a choice after install of the various major browsers as default, with updates possibly even supplied by microsoft update - if they have to open up microsoft update to 3rd parties, that's a huge lever for the EU to mandate extra 3rd party apps choices down the road, such as openoffice.org.
IE is a great example of how a monopoly retards progress. After IE6, the team was disbanded - the browser was 'good enough', and given it shipped by default with every copy of windows, itself a monopoly, it remained the browser for the majority of users.
It was only after several years that phoenix/firefox was such a compelling free alternative, taking features that opera pioneered but putting them in an opensource browser, with features such as adblocking that firefox started to gain real marketshare. IE6 is a horror to code cross-platform websites for (you basically create a standards complaint site for everything else, then break it selectively for IE6) and many coders did write sites that only worked in IE6; many businesses today still mandate IE6, as their intranet apps only work on that, which of course ties them to windows too.
posted by ArkhanJG at 5:53 AM on July 13, 2009
The fear was that with codecs included in the monopoly desktop, web-developers would switch en masse to them for streaming audio and video over the internet, a nascent industry at the time. If they gained such a dominant position as they had already with windows and IE, it would cut off alternative OS users from vast swathes of internet access, and cement windows position going forward. Whether removing windows media player was the most effective solution remains debatable (windows N never gained traction in the wild, as EU OEMs still had access to the standard version at the same price), but in the end flash video, rather than wmv became the dominant web standard. With the video tag in HTML5, we may finally see widely supported reliable cross-platform video playback over the net, assuming the patent issues around the various codecs in the US can be worked out.
Recently, microsoft has jumped the gun, and all versions of windows 7 in the EU will not have IE at all. Since they will also not have upgrade versions, the prices in the EU are considerably higher than for the US. IE 8 will still be available via windows update, for windows 7 E versions. So companies like Dell and HP will no doubt ship OEM computers with IE 8 preinstalled, just like they do with all the other crap they put on - I can't imagine they'd fancy the support headache dealing with users who only know about the blue e asking where 'the internet' is. So the existing position of IE as the only default browser will continue in the EU, but microsoft can say 'nothing to do with us, gov'nor'.
What they're deathly afraid of is the EU's proposed solution; providing a choice after install of the various major browsers as default, with updates possibly even supplied by microsoft update - if they have to open up microsoft update to 3rd parties, that's a huge lever for the EU to mandate extra 3rd party apps choices down the road, such as openoffice.org.
IE is a great example of how a monopoly retards progress. After IE6, the team was disbanded - the browser was 'good enough', and given it shipped by default with every copy of windows, itself a monopoly, it remained the browser for the majority of users.
It was only after several years that phoenix/firefox was such a compelling free alternative, taking features that opera pioneered but putting them in an opensource browser, with features such as adblocking that firefox started to gain real marketshare. IE6 is a horror to code cross-platform websites for (you basically create a standards complaint site for everything else, then break it selectively for IE6) and many coders did write sites that only worked in IE6; many businesses today still mandate IE6, as their intranet apps only work on that, which of course ties them to windows too.
posted by ArkhanJG at 5:53 AM on July 13, 2009
Straight from the horse's mouth, The Halloween Documents, leaked Microsoft documents. (They are also, according to wikipedia, the source of the previously mentioned embrace, extend, and extinguish concept.)
posted by Brian Puccio at 6:11 AM on July 13, 2009
posted by Brian Puccio at 6:11 AM on July 13, 2009
Just because it's morally objectionable doesn't make it factually incorrect, Rhomboid. Slavery was to that period what mass production is today. Negative practices sometimes have positive effects, historically speaking.
Also, comparing slavery to Microsoft's market dominance is fairly misleading at best. They seem to have backed away from many of their worst practices and, while they still have a very long road of ahead of them, I think their momentum is in the right direction.
posted by Phyltre at 8:15 AM on July 13, 2009 [1 favorite]
Also, comparing slavery to Microsoft's market dominance is fairly misleading at best. They seem to have backed away from many of their worst practices and, while they still have a very long road of ahead of them, I think their momentum is in the right direction.
posted by Phyltre at 8:15 AM on July 13, 2009 [1 favorite]
This is an interesting article I read yesterday that discusses some of Microsoft's anti-competitive practices to kill Quicktime, which included creating its own browser that wouldn't work with it. Pretty gnarly stuff.
posted by General Malaise at 8:19 AM on July 13, 2009
posted by General Malaise at 8:19 AM on July 13, 2009
It's kind of sad that the discussion here is about web standards; Microsoft did the exact same thing to programming standards, to earlier and greater negative effect. If Microsoft "hadn't become a defacto standard", we could have had actual standards instead. POSIX support might have meant more than "let's put in a crippled subsystem to slip through a loophole in government purchasing requirements"; instead it could have meant that networking, multi-user support, and all the other wheels that Microsoft has had to painstakingly and badly reinvent over the years might have been standard practice a decade earlier.
Hell, it wasn't until 1995 that Microsoft supported the protected memory features of the 80386 from 1985! Their real innovation is one that they fell into through dumb luck: a contract with the world leading hardware manufacturer, which became doubly valuable when IBM and Intel failed to prevent hardware cloning via the "lawsuit" strategy, and left Microsoft as the only Wintel gatekeepers thanks to the "embrace and extend" strategy.
posted by roystgnr at 8:27 AM on July 13, 2009
Hell, it wasn't until 1995 that Microsoft supported the protected memory features of the 80386 from 1985! Their real innovation is one that they fell into through dumb luck: a contract with the world leading hardware manufacturer, which became doubly valuable when IBM and Intel failed to prevent hardware cloning via the "lawsuit" strategy, and left Microsoft as the only Wintel gatekeepers thanks to the "embrace and extend" strategy.
posted by roystgnr at 8:27 AM on July 13, 2009
I think a large part of the problem is its size. These big companies have layers upon layers of legacy code and policies and procedures and departments that creative innovation is almost impossible. They just buy other companies instead and bundle those apps into the mess. But at the same time putting those companies which were actually doing creative stuff out of business, so no more creative for you once it enters the MS bureaucracy.
As a counter-point, Google encourages innovation and devoting a certain amount of time on pet projects. And it's still young enough that they can't have a ton of legacy code built-up.
Another thought, is MS's influence on the IT side of things. How many people use IE6 because IT is too scared to update the systems based on previous experience. Wait 5 years, maybe the new OS/Browser will be stable mindset so they don't have to constantly do support. Then the guys doing the intranet or company website have to spend time supporting IE6. There was a thread on Digg yesterday about their plans to essentially stop supporting IE6 so that they can spend more time on features.
Then there's the user interface standard. Most people expect their windows applications to look and behave as the built-in ones do. If it's different, they get confused.
posted by hungrysquirrels at 8:31 AM on July 13, 2009
As a counter-point, Google encourages innovation and devoting a certain amount of time on pet projects. And it's still young enough that they can't have a ton of legacy code built-up.
Another thought, is MS's influence on the IT side of things. How many people use IE6 because IT is too scared to update the systems based on previous experience. Wait 5 years, maybe the new OS/Browser will be stable mindset so they don't have to constantly do support. Then the guys doing the intranet or company website have to spend time supporting IE6. There was a thread on Digg yesterday about their plans to essentially stop supporting IE6 so that they can spend more time on features.
Then there's the user interface standard. Most people expect their windows applications to look and behave as the built-in ones do. If it's different, they get confused.
posted by hungrysquirrels at 8:31 AM on July 13, 2009
In 2003, Microsoft helped fund SCO during their legal fight over Linux.
In 2007, MS made noises about its patent portfolio, without actually showing anyone the list of patents. Fake Steve Jobs wrote Siooma, an entertaining look into the situation, highlighting the absurdity.
posted by Pronoiac at 8:54 AM on July 13, 2009
In 2007, MS made noises about its patent portfolio, without actually showing anyone the list of patents. Fake Steve Jobs wrote Siooma, an entertaining look into the situation, highlighting the absurdity.
posted by Pronoiac at 8:54 AM on July 13, 2009
Microsoft is rumored to be bundling into the OS free AV software. When this happens all the current AV software makers will wither.
Everyone's hands are dirty here: A secure OS shouldn't need this extra garbage and the AV companies mostly prey on paranoia. But you didn't ask about that.
posted by chairface at 9:44 AM on July 13, 2009
Everyone's hands are dirty here: A secure OS shouldn't need this extra garbage and the AV companies mostly prey on paranoia. But you didn't ask about that.
posted by chairface at 9:44 AM on July 13, 2009
This came to my attention from the Microspotting conversation: [[Criticism of Microsoft.]]
posted by Pronoiac at 5:25 PM on July 19, 2009
posted by Pronoiac at 5:25 PM on July 19, 2009
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posted by jragon at 10:49 PM on July 12, 2009 [1 favorite]