AOL vs Microsoft

You know, I don't really see why it's illegal to offer a product for a lower price than your competition's. If that price happens to be free, then so be it. I like free stuff. Granted, distributing said free product with a monopolistic product seems a little shady, but until someone comes up with a comparable product to IE, I really have no sympathy. And anyways, since integrating the file and web browsers with the shell interface is the direction computers *should* be going (from a usability standpoint), and since Netscape (at least to my knowledge) has no exclusive patents for web browsers, they really have no ground to stand upon.

Here's just an observation I've made.

Out of most of the people I've seen using Netscape, most use version 4.x. They say Netscape 6 sucks because their pcs can't handle it, but they refuse to use Internet Explorer 5+ (which ran perfectly fine on my p200) because they want to maintain their independence from Microsoft. After speaking with them about this they say they use N.S 4.7 because "microsoft is evil" or something along those lines. It seems like an impression instilled in a lot of casual PC users by the mainstream media (often due to the anti-trust case).

I do believe Netscape 6 is a good browser, that's why I mention it to people that use 4.7. The casual ones make a stand with information they've gathered from various 'light' sources. If a website doesn't work in 4.7 it's not because their browser is obsolete, it's because the site their trying to view only supports proprietary Microsoft standards.

That's just my personal experience, mainly with teachers around at school.

I dunno which is worse: Microsoft domination of the browser market, or AOL's constant denial that Netscape is a flaming piece of shit...

Not to sound too uh, pro MS.

but having had to work in graphic design on the net, for both NS and IE. I'm here to say I'd use IE even if I had to trek to antarctica to install it. NS is a giant turd. It's 'attempts' to render even the most basic HTML are laughable, not to mention how slow it runs/loads.

Basically, I don't give a fucking rat's ass about NS, and I hope they die a painful slow death. If I never have to deal with their half assed implementation of a browser again, I'll be a happy man.

what iritates me is people are trying to tell a company how to make software and what they can and cant include in there software... i thought this was a free enterprise and free country, besides the fact that what are people going to do without a browser in a os that want to use something other than aol.. they certainly cant go out on the web to dl netscape or ie without a browser, i enjoy the fact that i dont use any aol products, and i hope i never have to use aol products... this is just another very stupid way to get people to buy product that is free, any intelligent person can see right through aol/netscape/timewarrner... agian i am disgusted with the government in being aol's plaything and doing what they wish... i applaud microsoft for fighting this because they could easily become so much more wealthy by saying "you want us to sell our popular browser, ok, let us make a couple billion that we werent going to make", in the end microsoft isnt as evil as most think.. they just have common sense

So many of you are approaching this with the minset of consumers, but in order to see why so many people are angry at MS you have to llok at this through the eyes of a producer. Imagine if you were Netscape and you found out that your largest competitor, whose base product was installed by default on 95% of all systems shipped to endusers, was telling computer manufacturers that they must not include a Netscape product on these systems or they would have to pay higher licensing fees. This is the sort of thing that happened for years and years in the computer industry not just with Microsoft and Netscape but Microsoft and a multitude of companies.

I work with a group of guys who came over from Compaq that used to sell systems preconfigured with Novell on WinNT. They would ship these boxes over to MS to have them certified and these boxes would come back for all sorts of inane reasons, including abbreviating words like 'corporation' on the paperwork. They said that boxes shipped without competing products would almost always come back without a problem.

You might think that this is an isolated incident, but there are stories like this all over the industry of people being burned just for trying to compete. Those guys at slashdot might seem insane for their hatred of one company, but alot of those people have worked for months on products just to find out that the competing product 'somehow' doesn't work with the new OS patches, or that it breaks with the OS upgrade. Just look at how Quicktime, AOL 6.0, RealJukebox, and Novell Client had to be patched to run on XP.

And there is so much more. This browser war is just the tip of the iceberg.

Leave it to AOL to complain about something being free. :)

-SmArT1

I remember the good ol' days of Mozilla .9 Beta.....

I also remember waiting for the next version of Netscape, when those crazy frames things would be implemented...

And how could I forget the BLINK tag??

BRING BACK THE BLINK!!!

Here's a challenge:

Find five (separate) web sites that are 100% HTML compliant that breaks Netscape.
Do the same for Internet Explorier.

First one to find five web sites for either browser wins.

Remember when you used to have to pay for a spell checker? This is analogous to Netscape and Microsoft. Most word processors did not include them in the early days and you had to shell out like 40 bucks to have one. Over time, the word processing companies realized they could provide more value to consumers and a competitive edge by bundling this with their products.

Is this anti-competitive to the spell checking companies? Of course not.

Technology progresses over time and continues to provide consumers with more value. It was the natural progression to include a web browser in an OS much the same way a spell checker is included in a word processor. Netscape was the victim of functional obsolescence and consumers are benefiting.

Netscape makes an inferior product and then sues. I hate to say this but I agree with Microsoft wholeheartedly on this one. They gave their browser away bundled with something. Netscape has done the same thing many times, just not with Windows. I have no little to no respect for AOL-Time Warner and Netscape, especially when it comes to this shit. If someone makes a more popular product, you don't sue them. These claims of antitrust practices are pretty lame and have been stupid for a while. IE loads quicker, I like the interface a lot more, and it supports more W3C standards(note not "MICROSOFT PROPIETARY STANDARDS"), so I don't use Netscape. Not because I have an IE icon on my desktop.

And AOL accusing anyone of ripping off people who aren't acquainted with computers(this whole they use it cause it comes with their computer argument) is complete bullshit.

Wasn't there a lawsuit like that years ago already?

I just look at AOL-TW and MS going at each other like this:

Pot, this is the Kettle, you look kinda darkish.

Microsoft's anti-competitive strategies that are hurting AOL really start to shine when you look at the instant messaging war suck.

I'll just post my article again and leave it at that:

http://clem.mscd.edu/~yettern/ms_legal.htm

yay for the 2% other browser users!

"now it's 96% IE and 2% Netscape"

Any facts on the net to back this up? I need to show my boss (Netscape 4.7 on a Macintosh)

All you people complaining about Netscape sucking, explain to me their motivation for improving and further developing Netscape on a level that competes with IE? They use to make people buy Netscape to use it, and it was their primary product and source of revenue. Then MS realized how important browsers were going to be and put IE development into gear and bundled it for free with Windows. The only way Netscape could hope to compete was to make Navigator available for free. But then it doesn't make business sense to continue making it a primary product when they don't make any money off of it. So they let it slip, not doing anything because they don't feel they can fight MS in the courts. Now that they have the power of AOL Time Warner behind them, they decide to go after them. I think it may be a little late but I certainly don't blame Netscape for letting their browser lose it's dominance. What happens when there aren't any browsers besides IE? Say goodbye to HTML and any kind of open standard for webpages. Say hello to being forced to use Frontpage to design ALL your pages if you want to stay with the latest technology or have your site viewed by anyone using the latest version of Windows. But what does that matter? Hardly anyone uses Windows.

Don't get me wrong, I love IE and use it all the time, but I definitely think MS is abusing it's power and should be stopped. I'd gladly pay for IE separately. Industries stagnate under monopolies, competition drives innovation.

Maybe this is just a scam to make us believe msft and aol are enemies when actually there secretly merged and already have 3 of the 4 parts to regenerate the god of destruction.

Remember when Netscape rocked and IE sucked?

And all of the 100 of windows users not already with IE will have to be inconvienced by having to head to the overly convient Windows Update site to download IE6... and the AOL uses MSN for branding their Windows Update site into Windows, so Windows users can get IE easier than they can get Netscape.

Yeah, ok, AOL. Sad thing as 2% with Netscape are still running Communicator 4.7 or whatever it was. The one that pissed my mom off because it changed everything.

hehe, AOL are such dumbshits.

"lets sue Microsoft because they give out IE for free, when we sell AOL for over 20 bucks a month!"

Apparently they are too stupid to realize people still have to buy membership to an ISP. I don't think AOL is stupid, I just think they are trying to get some money and market share from the big guy. If AOL didn't have their head up their ass, maybe the would realize that they would get more subscribers if they lowered their cost. Of course, that's just not an option...

I'm just ranting, I hate AOL.

Maybe if Netscape kept up with current html standards AND there browsers were able to view all pages with tables correctly, they wouldnt have this problem of sucking. I find netscape 6.2 to be faster than IE, but it sucks at viewing a lot of the sites i go to.

>>now it's 96% IE and 2% Netscape<<

2% = Linux users :p

Irrespective of personal preferrence, I have never had a stable installation of Netscape. Nevertheless, I cannot speak for the 17% of users who steadfastly uphold the value of this product; brand loyalty is dead, consumers are intelligent enough to favour a product that is stable, and reliable.

I was a long time Netscape user, up until around version 4.7x something, when Netscape became a crashing pile of crap, while IE was greatly improving itself in both functionality and ease of use.

As Ronald Reagan may have said, "I didn't leave the Netscape Communicator, the Netscape Communicator left me."

Now, they want to sue because they had a crappy browser for awhile. Ain't America grand?

stats to my site:

Internet Explorer 6.x 80.6 %
Internet Explorer 5.x 19.4 %

Total 100.0 %


hehe

I hope they both lose.

the upgrade of Netscape 4.6 to 4.7 really change my heart about Netscape. In fact that was the release where they became known as Nutscrape.

It pains me to say thing, but adding a "Shop" button is not a fucking upgrade.

Just this weekend I resurrected a Power Mac 7100/80 that, amongst other things, had Netscape 4.0 loaded on it. I hooked it up to my cable modem, did some web surfing to check things out. Netscape was sooooooooo incredibly slooooooooooowwwwwww... It took a long time to render the page, and would reload the page completely if you resized the window. So, to see if IE for the Mac was any better, I loaded it up and * B A M * every site I went to was up in nothing flat!! And it had nothing to do with the OS, since MS didn't write it. Considering this is on a PowerPC 601 w/ 32MB of RAM, the difference is amazing. This is on System 7.6.1, which did not come with a default browser. I tried Netscape, and it failed. IE suceeded.

Scores
Internet Explorer: 7.3
Netscape: 3.6


imho

Stupid bloody netscape. If they want more users they should make a half decent browser. Even Lynx is a better browser than netscape.

IE is winning because it is a far better product, PERIOD.