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Technology Stocks : MSFT Internet Explorer vs. NSCP Navigator -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Daniel Schuh who wrote (14207)	11/18/1997 10:15:00 AM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 24154

NT 5.0 won't ship by mid-1998 news.com Not exactly news, as this was telegraphed in various places for a while. Now the question may be whether NT 5.0 gets out the door before the end of 1998. Some analysts have surmised that given the state of the first beta of the OS, the official launch could seep into 1999. Seep? The race is on. Which will ship first, NT5 or Mysterious Merced? Cheers, Dan.

To: Daniel Schuh who wrote (14207)	11/18/1997 10:46:00 AM
From: Gerald R. Lampton	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

>Well, maybe you can make the case that MSN and all that other stuff was "browser >technology", I suppose. I dunno. I would guess that "browser technology" is anything that can be included in a browser. If MSN technology developed in 1993 ended up in IE, I guess that makes it "internet-related technology." But I think the MSN analogy warrants some analysis from a marketing perspective as well. My recollection of all this is sketchy, but, as I recall, Microsoft was going to (and did) make the MSN icon part of the Windows 95 desktop from the beginning. Everyone got scared that having MSN on the desktop would cause AOL and Compuserve to just shrivel up and die because all the couch potatos would just click on that icon instead of going to the trouble of loading a disk in their CDs and installing the alternatives. So the Justice Department investigated, but at the end of the day they decided to do nothing. My question would be: Did DOJ object to this "bundling" arrangement under the Consent Decree? If so, why did they drop it? If not, why not? After all, MSN is as much a separate "other product" from Windows as IE is. Indeed, it is even more so, since, with MSN, you were getting all that "Great Content" Ballmer used to love to talk about in his presentations to analysts, whereas with IE all you get is the technology to access Content and information whether (to paraphrase their obnoxious recitation) on your local hard drive, the network or on the internet. Is there a principled distinction between the IE "other product" and the MSN "other product" that would cause bundling the one to be prohibited under the Consent Decree and the other not? I have not heard of one, but, as Ross used to say, "I'm all ears." >As you've said before, Microsoft could cave totally and it wouldn't make much >difference, just as the original consent decree on per processor licensing of the OS >made no effective difference And, in real terms, I still think that. Each and every thing DOJ is asking for under the decree is an utterly trivial request, a reasonable business practice that Microsoft should do as a matter of self interest. However, I now realize that there are benefits that could accrue to Microsoft from a victory over DOJ here. So I now understand why Chairman Bill is fighting this. To paraphrase George Orwell, "Appearance is reality" in the software business (as in most others). >Any thoughts on the Gary Reback interview? Yes. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but his opening comments look to me like an effort to put some space between his clients and the actions of the DOJ -- a smart move regardless of how the DOJ thing turns out. Maybe to him, it's too obvious to comment on, but I also looked for some indication of his point of view on what the intent of the parties was regarding the Consent Decree's treatment of IE and "internet technology." I didn't see any.