Sorry, Nick, you've got it wrong.
First, my company is an IPP, not an ISP. We're not involved with distributing browser software at all. I speak as a browser consumer here. I have both IE and a paid-for copy of Navigator and at this point see no advantages to continuing to pay for Navigator. I'm sure I'm not alone.
Second, you can read about the ISP situation in the July issue of Boardwatch Magazine (available online at boardwatch.com). To quote from the cover article:
"Netscape has had the upper edge with many Internet Service Providers, from the large to the small, bundling Netscape software with their packages. But Netscape, hungry for revenues, has been charging a bit for the privilege. Most deals for Netscape 2.0 have been in the $12 to $15 per USER range. AT&T, for example, opted to include Netscape 1.2 largely due to a special $0.80 per user fee for the obsolete version. They've since paid the price in pain as of the 600,000 people requesting software, only 150,000 have signed up. And of those who do, the most common support question is about how to upgrade to Netscape 2.0"
"Microsoft, on the other hand, has a pretty interesting price position on bundling Internet Explorer with packages from Internet Service Providers - no charge. And most of the small ISP's, struggling to simplify the process of helping their customers make the connection, are biting - hard. FREE is still a powerful word on the Internet."
So again, the key is not to look at the past but to focus on the forces which are unfolding into the future. Regarding the cross-platform story, I assume you mean that IE doesn't run on UNIX yet. It seems to me recent reviews have given IE on MacOS some pretty high marks. |
