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

To: damniseedemons who wrote (15817)	1/6/1998 9:52:00 AM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

Sal, Alan Buckley brought up this argument before. As I said then, I muchly doubt it. This all assumes Microsoft is pretty stupid and puts more stock in random comments from cocky executives that in what's happening in the real world. You think Bill & Co. didn't notice that MSN wasn't particularly going anywhere and the internet was booming? Netscape, as far as I remember, never had much of a marketing presence (as opposed to a business/investing presence, of course), yet it became the #1 selling PC software, despite the fact that it was always available for free. Held that position until "free" IE hit rough parity with version 3. But Microsoft never noticed any of that, it was the rude comments from some cocky Netscape guys that woke them up. Of course, this point of view has to contend with the non-revisionist history of the times, much less the revisionist history before the courts, where Bill was on top of things right from the start. I mean, IE was always meant to be "integrated" with Windows, right? They said it in court, it must be the truth! As for Java, we all know it's a fraud anyway:-). It's sort of odd for a big fan of the masters of megahype marketing to be accusing others of overhyping their products, but we all have our perspective. On the Java front, I've been an advocate, but I've never said it would displace Windows. Mostly, I've said it was a good idea that deserved to live and die on its own technical merits, not on how successful Microsoft was on that little front of its "embrace and demolish" war. Meanwhile, you want to take a crack at this one, news.com ? I'd prefer some sensible free market/rational economics thing, but any explanation other that the usual "business is war" will do. Cheers, Dan.