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Technology Stocks : Netscape -- Giant Killer or Flash in the Pan? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kal who wrote (3138)	5/14/1998 2:45:00 PM
From: Bearded One	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4903

Kal, I think you're right that Microsoft is going to continue its move towards further integration. I also think, however, that this will not help Microsoft as much as everyone thinks, nor will it hurt Netscape as much as everyone thinks. Software design is an intensely difficult problem. Most of the advances in software engineering in the past years have been in the form of 'modular design' techniques, which has lead to 'object-oriented design'. Integration is the opposite of this. Basically, the more Microsoft integrates into the OS, the less innovation it can come up with later. How can they add a new cool function to IE without checking how it's going to effect every piece of code that IE is 'integrated' with? This is already a serious problem for them-- Notice how 3 years after Windows 95, the best they can come up with for a new OS is essentially a bug fix with some new device drivers and a browser. Meanwhile, Netscape can come out with a new browser every 6 months-- precisely because it is not integrated.