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

To: Keith Hankin who wrote (21379)	11/11/1998 5:37:00 PM
From: Reginald Middleton	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 24154

NSCP had a big lead with Nav. And with one fell swoop ("partnering" with Spyglass), they were able to get within reach of competing. Couple this with putting 800 people to work on the code, and it was only a matter of time where they would catch up. Just because they catch up from a coding perspective does not mean they will catch up in the market. NSCP had the chance to make thier browser as proprietary as Windows, it was already as ubiquitous, its just that you started to limit access to the corporate crowd and certain retailers by charging. In order to do this you would have to have been on equal footing with MSFT, which you were not. Even if MSFT caught up in functionality (which they did) they would never have been able to meet yoru proprietary aspects and interface, if you would have desinged these barriers to entry in, as did MSFT with Windows and Office. I do hope you guys are paying close attention to Office 2000, it is going to hurt the NSCP client market significantly. Please explain. This sounds dangerous. Office 2000 allows Office users (practically everybody these days) to embed thier office documents directly into web pages simply by hitting a save command on the menu. These documents are embedded in the web page as small applets, and retain their FULL functionality, as well as any custom VB/VBA code that may have been added. They are very, very lightweight, and as you may have guessed, can only be read by IE. The threaded discussion groups and other goodies avialable directly in the new office documents can only be used through an IIS server. No more dancing applets, full power powerpoint presentations and excel spreadsheets available through web pages by anyone who has Office. This is a very good example of using proprietary extensions to erect a barrier to entry for the competition. This is what NSCP should have done when they had 90% market share. You did good with the Javascript since MSFT had a problem replicating it despite thier "800 bodies" on the job, but you didn't go far enough fast enough. Proprietary extensions such as these should have permeated the client and the server. As long as the result was increased functionality, your paying clients would not have complained,,, much. This is why I think MSFT is going to win this anti-trust trial, no matter what it is that they are accused of, they definitely upped the ante in terms of performance and simultaneously lowered price significantly. RCM rcmfinancial.com