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

To: Daniel Schuh who wrote (17808)	3/4/1998 6:15:00 PM
From: Daniel Schuh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

First The Browser. Next The Kitchen Sink? zdnet.com Beloved ilk sister Mary Jo Foley at it again, with a properly sardonic take on various stunts being pulled to promote the "ham sandwich defense". What do you want in your operating system today? According to a recent survey conducted by a Los Angeles market researcher at the request of Microsoft, you want everything but the kitchen sink. Telecommunications Research Group surveyed 200 ISVs randomly selected from a list (provided by whom, dare I ask?) of 4,000 software vendors and found that 85 percent thought integration of Web-browsing technology into Windows would impact them positively. The ISVs did not come to this conclusion on their own. Before the software vendors got to respond to the handful of survey questions, the TRGtelemarketers read them a little script, or "rationale," as Microsoft prefers to call it, stating Microsoft's reasons for backing browser integration. By building into the OS networking, help format and other "user services," read the script, operating systems vendors could provide software vendors with "a larger standard set of system services included in the operating system, just as when other network protocols such as TCP/IP were integrated into Windows." Hmmm. TCP/IP is a curious example for Microsoft to cite. It was just last week that a software vendor who has managed to avoid being steamrolled by the Microsoft marketing machine reminded me about Microsoft's evolving position regarding TCP/IP. First Microsoft insisted it was a Unix-proprietary protocol that had no place replacing NetBEUI. But by the early 1990s, when it was impossible to ignore that TCP/IP had become a defacto networking standard, Microsoft came out with its own TCP/IP stack, integrated it into Windows and put a TCP/IP vendor or two out of the networking business in the process. But I'm sure Bill and company can come up with the proper revisionist history where it was always going to be integrated, if Microsoft didn't invent TCP in the first place. Be sure to look for the true story in the next edition of Encarta. Anyway, Microsoft may as well put in the proverbial ham sandwich with Windows, a cheaper way to fill up that box of air that the Windows CD comes in than pesky printed documentation. More easily biodegradable, too! Cheers, Dan.