Microsoft Ordered to Delete Browser

No, it's more like the car manufacturer making it so your car won't run if you remove the factory stereo, so anyone who wants that spiff Blaupunkt, that doesn't cause the electric doors to randomly unlock when you tune into some stations, has to mount it on the dashboard. Meanwhile, the POS factory stereo sits there and takes up space.

Oh yes, that's right... When you install Firefox, all sorts of stuff on your computer stops working, and of course, you just can't ever get rid of that icon from your desktop, the quicklaunch bar, or your programs group. And the program and associated libraries take up so much space on your 5MB Winchester drive... And the same is true with Thunderbird, so you if don't want to use LookOut Express to get your POP email, and to use as a news reader (my favorite is still 'rn'), you've just turned your computer into an expensive paperweight. You don't like my analogy, then a better one was given with custom wheels. The simple fact is that it's fashionable for people to hate Microsoft, because they're the biggest...

Well, guess what. There are a lot of reasons to NOT LIKE Microsoft, and their bundling of IE with Windows really have never been one of them. It's nothing more than some companies that had miserable business plans who couldn't make money, trying to come up with another way to do so, sort of like how that consortium of lawyers, SCO (and I remember when they were a great software company!) tried to extort money out of software manufacturers, IBM, and Linux users. Have you ever tried to figure out just what Netscape's business model was? They decide to give away their web browser to home users, and sell it to businesses. And they decide to sell their servers to businesses, who are already using free web servers that come as part of the OS that's already installed on the servers! Who the hell thought up THAT idea?

You want to hate Microsoft, go right ahead. But you might want to think about doing so for reasons other than sour grapes, and bad business decisions by others.

Mark

I see nothing in your screed that is anything more than shrewd business practices and serving my needs by providing me with the best ideas out there. I do agree that bundling IE for free killed the Netscape browser. I however had already moved from Netscape to IE when I decided that Netscape was a pain to load, set up, and keep paying for upgrades to it. The conveinience of a functioning browser embedded in the Microsoft product is what won me over.

I don't give a red hot damn for Bill Gates and I would love to see another OS attempt to take on the Microsoft Goliath, but please, no more whiny Apple fans complaining about how Mac-tastic the world would be without the Satanic Bill Gates and his "inferior, stolen" products.

BTW Izzy, I'm not specifically referring to you in that last paragraph, I don't even know if you have an Apple or a PC.

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