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

To: Schiz who wrote (15264)	12/20/1997 5:58:00 PM
From: Bill Fischofer	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24154

How do you think MSFT got the position it has today? By out-marketing the competition. Same as INTC, CSCO, EMC, ORCL, BA, or any of dozens of other companies who dominate their respective fields. Those who see conspiracy under every rock just don't get it. You are free to run a PC that doesn't run Windows. You are free not to run a Wintel PC at all. The reason you freely choose to do so is because you've concluded that it gives you the best overall value for your computing dollar. The reason Wintel dominates is that countless tens of millions of people around the world have come to the same conclusion. The notion that the computing world is being held hostage to some sinister force is patently absurd. MacOS and OS/2 were relegated to niche roles because the market decides the winners. Right now you are free to run whatever browser you choose. The fact that more and more consumers are choosing IE is because it represents a better value proposition than the alternatives. Before I get dismissed as a MSFT stooge, let me say I run plenty of non-MSFT software. I've run Eudora for e-mail for years but I note that Outlook Express is an impressive product which has clearly lit a fire under Qualcomm in Eudora 4.0 (I still use Eudora for now). Agent still runs rings around the MSFT newsreader. I ran Navigator until IE 3 hit, and ran both until IE 4 came out when I decided that Navigator offered no real advantage over the native product. If it did, I'd switch back. That's the nature of competition. But it's also true that technology becomes progressively more integrated over time. I used to run Trumpet but was glad to get rid of it once Windows 95 shipped with an integrated TCP/IP stack. Browsing capability is hardly a novelty these days and should be a basic OS function. The answer is not to pine away for the old days of disaggregation and roll-your-own piecemeal systems but to move up the food chain and compete on a higher functional level. That's the nature of the technology business.