Another Bedtime Story
By Jean-Louis Gassée
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In the past, when Microsoft has pointed to us as a
"competitive threat," I called the statement a "DOJ bedtime
story." As befits a hot political issue such as the impact
of mighty Microsoft on consumers and on the industry, the
bedtime story is told in two courts -- in Judge Jackson's
court in Washington, DC, and the court of public opinion
beyond the limits of judicial review.
In both courts, Microsoft diligently depicts itself as a
company under constant threat from dangerous competitors,
such as Linux and the BeOS. For two recent examples of the
"beleaguered Microsoft" bedtime story, see Chairman Gates'
statements at the company's annual shareholders meeting
before Christmas, or the statement made by Paul Maritz in
District Court Monday last week.
We would feel validated, as we say in California, if we
didn't have to wonder why a minuscule company like ours is
held in such high regard by the giant. But there's more -- a
new bedtime story, from Monday this week. This one is about
an integrated browser, which BeOS has, just like Windows 98.
See, the story goes -- Be does it too.
Our thanks for the plug, but alas, our NetPositive browser
isn't integrated. In fact, we're doing our best to let other
browsers -- BeOS versions of Opera and Mozilla, to name two
-- flourish on the BeOS platform without playing games with
OS features, or with commercial relationships. Our browser
is an application, just like a word processor, and it is
removed just as easily. I recall us jokingly referring to it
in one of our press releases as "DOJ-approved."
When you remove the NetPositive browser, all you lose is the
ability to read HTML documents locally or on the Web. One
might object that other applications, such as a mail client,
are affected. If you remove NetPositive, clicking on a URL
no longer takes you "there." Right. If you remove the
printer, the word processor no longer prints. This doesn't
mean the printer or the driver is "integrated" in the OS in
the sense that removing Explorer would cripple Windows 98.
In Microsoft Word, you can paste a "live" Excel document
into your text. But that doesn't mean Excel is integral to
Word. If you remove Excel it doesn't cripple Word -- it just
stops you from doing a "live" paste of a spreadsheet inside
your text document.
Microsoft's ignorance of the difference between their way of
integrating Explorer and our simpler way of offering
NetPositive as a true application puzzles me. The
information is there -- it's plain and accessible. Microsoft
has purchased many copies of our product and, on Monday last
week, they claimed in court they had taken the time to
browse our Web site in order to analyze our business. If
that claim is true, they should revise the browser bedtime
story.
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