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Date:      Wed, 04 Nov 1998 18:38:57 +0900
From:      "Daniel C. Sobral" <dcs@newsguy.com>
To:        Drew Baxter <netmonger@genesis.ispace.com>
Cc:        freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Internet Explorer and UNIX
Message-ID:  <364020B1.A21D6174@newsguy.com>
References:  <199811031907.MAA02861@usr05.primenet.com> <4.1.19981103170405.00a94280@genesis.ispace.com>

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Drew Baxter wrote:
> 
> Microsoft also bought into Web Browsers.  By basing their product off of
> Mosaic, they enter yet another market where there is already a more capable
> company (Netscape) producing a product that is their sole reason for
> existance.  Netscape makes products for the web and having to do with the
> net and the web.
> 
> I would buy a toaster from Proctor-Silex, not from the Seiko Watch Company.
>  People and corporations need to learn to have a DISTINCT existance in a
> market, and leave the one-level marketplaces alone, ESPECIALLY Netscape.
> It's one thing to make a product to compete with a company that isn't
> fulfilling their end of the bargain, it's another to try to eradicate them
> with the ability of hiring a ton of programmers and submerge them with
> their 86%(?) Home OS Power..

Now, come on! Microsoft had very good reasons to compete in the
browser market! If Internet-based client-server applications became
too important, the operating system you were running wouldn't matter!
That meant Microsoft needed things like FrontPage (sp?) and that
horrible alternative to Java they have that I have even forgotten it's
name (no, don't remind me!). And, if they wanted that, they needed a
server *and* a client. A client they could control, of course.

Moreover, at the time MS decided to get into this market, it was
widely claimed by the press that "browser" software would *replace the
desktop UI*. That *is* a very serious treat to Microsoft. If the
public can't see it, it doesn't matter. That's why Windows 95 is an
"operating system", instead of a GUI over an operating system.

You may hate them, and they may have been _illegally_ unfair, but it
was *not* something out of the blue.

-- 
Daniel C. Sobral			(8-DCS)
dcs@newsguy.com

	You can't modify a constant, float upstream, win an argument
with the IRS, or satisfy this compiler

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