>Why was it a mistake, and what did you learn from it? I have my own ideas on this, but I want to hear what you have to say.
For Win31 it was a mistake to assume that Win95 adoption would ramp up immediately. For UNIX it was a mistake to outsource it. We learned that a)people upgrade their systems and software relatively slowly and backwards compatibility is important (something to keep in mind when talking about Java and NCs), and b)that if you really need something done, sometimes it's better to do it yourself.
>"Many firms had already installed Netscape's browser by June 1996, when Microsoft released the first version of a browser that could claim to work as well as the Navigator. The fact that Microsoft's software was free meant little to corporate systems managers: most saw no reason to replace one browser with another that was no better, especially when that meant reconfiguring hundreds or thousands of PCs and retraining their users."
Yep, that's why IE4 and shell integration are important. Look-and-feel will be very different from what Communicator provides. People will have more incentive to compare one product against the other. Still, note that most of the world has neither Internet nor PCs so there are plenty of users still left to capture. And in other markets outside the US (e.g. Japan) IE marketshare is more like 50%.
>Another factor that I think played a role is the perception that Microsoft's browser is not really free, or, it may be free today, but when Microsoft is through eliminating Netscape, it won't be free any more. Not that the people I talk to are a scientific sampling of the IT profession, but a recurrent theme is that, one way or another, Microsoft is going to get its money.
The browser is the Windows shell, so if you buy Windows or you already own Windows, you get a free browser. This is the same as the regular Win95 shell being free--we don't make money on the Win95 shell either, but in order to get the shell you had to have bought Windows at some point.
>I can't speak for Sun and Netscape, but I suspect one reason that they came out first with Win32 browsers (apart from the share of new PC sales occupied by Wintel machines) is that Java is a 32 bit application that had to be retrofitted to run on Win16.
This reasoning does not explain delays on Mac/UNIX platforms for both Communicator and JDK 1.1. See javaworld.com for a nice 7-month delay between the Mac and Win32 1.1 JDK. Some platforms are more important than others.
>My question to you is this: what are the factors that account for the late release of IE4?
More features than Communicator take more time than Communicator. I refer you to our web site for the specific differences.
>To what extent did the need to integrate IE with legacy code cause the delay?
Pretty much zero. If you run the March alpha preview, you can see where the bugs and incomplete features are and where they aren't. They are uniformly distributed across the entire product. If anything it's quite a testament to the extensibility of the Win95 shell architecture that something as complex as IE4 could be grafted onto it at a much later date.
>One thing I don't like about IE4 is how Microsoft is trying to use advertising to "freeze" the market in anticipation of the release of IE4. And, as in the past, they are taking forever to get it out. Do people really still fall for this old trick?
Damned if we do, damned if we don't: in your other post you were telling me how people are afraid that internal groups see things before external people do, this is just us letting people know what we're up to. Netscape has already announced their next upgrade for the end of this year and their Java browser for 1998. Preannouncing products is a practice that's not going away, customers want to have as much info as possible on what Microsoft and other companies are doing before making plans.
>One issue I think Microsoft needs to address is the issue of conflict of interest: Microsoft's controls Windows and its goal is to sell Windows. Therefore, Microsoft's products will be optimized for the Windows (specifically, Win32, since that's the upgrade path Microsoft wants people to take), and everything Microsoft says and does will be geared toward getting the customer to standardize on Windows, even if doing so is not really in the customer's long-term interest.
Well, hopefully we would never advise someone to do something that wasn't in their best interests, since that would lose us many customers in the long term. If we recommend our products (including Windows) it's because we sincerely believe that they are the right solution for a number of problems.
>Therefore, Microsoft is not the best source to turn to when seeking advice on what software is best for implementing intranets and other solutions in a cross-platform environment. For that, you need a company that is truly committed to writing software for the cross-platform environment. Or so the argument goes.
Hmm, no. For that, you need an independent consultant. If you go to a company, any company, whether they write x-platform software or not, they will tend to recommend their own products and bias things in their direction, if only because it's what they are most familiar with. People should take all vendor claims with a grain of salt and independently evaluate products instead of relying on one of the interested parties to make a decision for them. Microsoft is no different from IBM, Oracle, or any other company with more than one product.
--Carlos |
