Re: The Netscape / Microsoft / Future Quagmire

 From: S.N.Brodie@ecs.soton.ac.uk
| 
| Scott E. Preece wrote:
| > 
| > It's a constant reminder that your choice has limited your access to
| > some provider's data.
| 
| It's a constant reminder that I *MUST* use a platform that is Microsoft's
| in order to access some providers' data. ...
|
| > The Web is a major step forward in platform-independent integration of
| 
| But it IS *NOT* platform independent any more!  If a page claims to be
| viewable only with MSIE, then I have to be running either Win95 or
| WinNT.
---

Well, non-Windows versions are supposed to be forthcoming, but, yes,
that's part of the equation.  It's a marketplace war.

---
| Will the Network Computer succeed?  It depends on Microsoft.  What's
| the betting we'll get some new "essential" features for the web which
| are hard for NCs to achieve?  eg.  extremely memory intensive and
| require a lot of RAM to work anything like quickly enough - and that
| the only such machines capable of running it will have a minimum spec
| of PPro 200 with Windows97 or Windows TNG or whatever the successor to
| WinNT 4 is going to be called.
---

Actually, I would expect Microsoft to simply plan to take over the NC
market, too.  Why should they care?  I don't remember the name of the
putative product, but I believe they've been talking about a
Windows-for-settops product already.

---
| > The Web is much to young for anyone to be saying "I've found my browser,
| > I'm going to stick to it, and I don't want to know what I'm missing."
| 
| But it _is_ at the stage of "I can't read these pages because Microsoft
| & Netscape have decided that my platform is not worthy of their
| support" and they are pushing their very latest extensions to content
| providers to ensure that their product is the #1 browser on the net
| by having no competition by forcing the competition out of business.
| It's called a monopoly, and it's what Microsoft has at the moment.
---

Actually, I'd say it's called competition and Microsoft and Netscape are
pushing it for all it's worth (and probably both doing better than they
would if they weren't both there).

scott

--
scott preece
motorola/mcg urbana design center	1101 e. university, urbana, il   61801
phone:	217-384-8589			  fax:	217-384-8550
internet mail:	preece@urbana.mcd.mot.com

Received on Friday, 18 October 1996 12:46:57 UTC