This is ridiculous.

First of all Netscape at the time had a lock on the market. Those morons blew it by not updating a browser to modern standards. While the free MS distribution had some impact I think the main problem is simply an inferior product lost out to a better one.

Netscape never made any significant money of the $30 they sold the browser for. Heck it may have paid for support. They always boasted how the browser was only a sales vehicle for expensive servers...

Believe me, there are many more implications to pulling the browser from the OS, because it's everywhere in applications we build. Tons of tools use WinInet, MSXML, and other system components that rely on the browser technology in Windows. If IE gets pulled for whatever reason all that goes with it and there's going to be an outrage, and not only by Microsoft but software developers delivering real mission critical (read affecting the government) solutions.

+++ Rick ---


>>>>wow, that is cool. Is ther any more info on this?
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>>>Yeah, here's some more (sobering) info: If Judge Jackson gets his way, capabilities like these could go away! It is precisely because Microsoft has integrated browser technology as a set of components into the OS that this capability exists. Write your public officials and tell them that Judge Jackson is dead wrong, that the consumer has not been harmed by Microsoft, and that tens of thousands of programmers and millions of software users depend on innovations like this. (I'm not kidding. There's a LOT at stake here. Your future and mine probably depend on it).
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>>Sorry Mark I don't buy that. Unless you're saying the decision will prohibit M$ from incorporating any browser technology in their OS at all.
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>My understanding is that this is what the feds want. They see the web browser as an independent, free standing entity. Any incorporation of such technology into the operating system would be (in their mind) the equivalent of AT&T moving in on local telephone service... i.e., illegal. That's why I'm so concerned. It makes absolutely no sense to regulate software features the way one would regulate entities in the physical world (like wires and poles and pipelines). But the fed is trying to do just that, and the outcome will likely hurt everybody. Do you want Janet Reno telling your software vendor that a feature you need cannot be made available because it's against the law? That's what you're likely going to get unless Microsoft wins on appeal.
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>I can give you a real-world example of just how far-reaching these legal precedents can go in terms of their effect on everyone. Do you know what the Stark laws are?