Microsoft Busting Its Own Browser+OS Myth 204
An anonymous reader writes "Longtime Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley used her Redmond magazine column this month to point out that after years of arguing that the browser is 'inextricably linked' to the operating system, the company's current push to get users to drop IE 6 for newer versions, plus IE's separate release schedule, are disproving its own argument. From the article: 'Microsoft has insisted that its browser is part of Windows, and, ironically, that's coming back to haunt the company. Customers can mix and match different versions of IE with different versions of Windows. ... But Microsoft has done very little to get this message out there. I'd argue this is because it makes plain the absurdity of the company's claims that IE is part of Windows.'"
Why should they care now? (Score:2, Insightful)
Damage has been done. Sure Firefox, Chrome, Opera and the lot are slowly regaining market share, but that was a tactic they needed when they wanted to drive Netscape out of the market, which they ultimately did. Companies like this don't create arguments that hold up to long term scrutiny, they don't need to.
Re:Why should they care now? (Score:4, Insightful)
What does this prove? Different versions of IE's can obviously provide the system and application wide libraries too, but there has to be at least one of them installed for it to work.
Then there is also the fact that countless amount of software uses IE's rendering engine, which has to be present in the system for those to work. Which again works with different versions of it.
I'm happy Steam changed to it's own WebKit, but it was just a few months ago and there still are thousands of other software that uses it.
Nobody believed it at the time (Score:5, Insightful)
A possible alternative headline could be "Obvious lie from MS turns out to be a lie"
Re:Um no... (Score:3, Insightful)
IE is not inextricably bound to the OS because MS has intentionally been keeping it split.
Which is the very thing that Microsoft told the court was not possible. So...ummm....yes, Microsoft lied.
Re:Nobody believed it at the time (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Um no... (Score:3, Insightful)
Did they tell the court that the browser is inextricably bound to the CURRENT OS or to future OS's?
Re:When is a line not a line? (Score:5, Insightful)
Were does one draw the line between OS and application (and let's not draw libraries into this).
The operating system manages the hardware, and provides an interface between the hardware and applications. Everything else is an application (including most libraries, since they're just reusable parts of applications).
That claim is almost 9 years old... (Score:4, Insightful)
Um, when Microsoft made that claim, they were referring to Windows XP and Internet Explorer 6 which are both almost 9 years old. At that time, IE6 was very likely tightly linked to the OS. They slowly "unlinked" it over the years which I'm sure was a lot of work. You can argue that they shouldn't have linked it in the first place (you may or may not be right). The fact that you could upgrade from IE6 to IE7 or 8 does not mean it was not linked - can you not upgrade certain pieces of the OS on Linux, Unix, or MacOS in small pieces? Isn't that what a patch is?
We are now to MAJOR OS versions later and Microsoft doesn't claim the OS and the browser are linked anymore.
IIRC (Score:2, Insightful)
Microsoft released a version of Windows without IE, and it was unstable, erratic, and unreliable.
IOW, indistinguishable from the regular version.
Re:Doesn't Matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore I don't think the author's argument makes any sense; she is not a programmer, she is an author and analyst. Any programmer will know that even if the browser were an integral part of the OS, it could still be replaced as long as those parts that are used by the OS remain (which can obviously happen when you upgrade your own browser).
She also tries to claim that Microsoft is trying to be consistent in its arguments, but Microsoft (like any competent spin-doctor) doesn't care if their arguments are consistent, they only care if they convince at the moment. Unlike geeks they feel no need to be consistent with arguments from 10 years ago that no one remembers.
Re:When is a line not a line? (Score:5, Insightful)
A web browser needs an internet-connection library, a display library, and a parser library for the data between them.
If you put that into your OS, other application developers may suddenly decide they want to use the internet library and some of the parser library, instead of whatever libraries the OS used to have, or whatever code they were planning to implement themselves.
Now someone says "we order you to remove the web browser from the OS."
You say "that is impossible. Parts of the web browser now serve as parts of the OS."
The only thing you can remove is the browser executable itself, which in the extreme case is just a call with particular arguments to a function in a library you can't remove. So you remove the browser executable and convince the issuers of the order that you have done their bidding.
Re:Um no... (Score:4, Insightful)
Good question.
At the time Microsoft was defending Windows 98, claiming their browser was integrated with it (which was true). Of course that OS was retired in 2001 (me was the last version). We now use a completely different OS called Windows NT 5.x (XP) or 6.x (Vista/Seven) so the old argument that IE is integrated no longer applies.
Re:Nobody believed it at the time (Score:3, Insightful)
why would this even matter? It's a modified linux kernel, people would easily rebuild it without chrome if concerned.
Re:Why should they care now? (Score:3, Insightful)
They're not dying; they just moved. Quite a number of mobile sites do the same thing with Safari instead of IE, and Apple pushes its proprietary -webkit things as hard as MS ever did theirs (see the recent fiasco when MS felt like it had to implement -webkit-text-size-adjust, which is otherwise only implemented in Mobile Safari and apparently widely used to make web pages which will only render correctly in Mobile Safari, in its mobile browser...)
Different big company, slightly different technologies, same old tactics.
IE not connected, but limited (Score:4, Insightful)
The web would have resulted in the loss of MS profit if it had been allowed to grow freely. At that time many production machines were still using very simple systems that could be implemented on web based interface. Companies like Compaq were still competing hard and had non-MS offering that were less complex and more reliable than the PC. MS Office was not quite everywhere, and options existed. The fight was going over who controlled the application front end. If the application front end was platform independent, then people could run software on MS servers, but the desktop could be anything for the average worker drone.
This could not happen. So MS made IE into a application front end that would only run on windows. This meant that the servers and desktop had to run MS software. OEM could not develop intelligent terminals that would have saved huge amounts of administrative costs. OEM could not sell this intelligent terminal for the same price as a MS PC and pocket the profit.
In reality what happened, the lie that MS could make people believe, no matter who much they said it, is that there is a real benefit to having the server run the same software as the desktop. So people continued to use MS desktops, but many switched to linux servers. This meant the bombs that MS put in IE to connect it to MS Windows became a liability. They tried to stop *nix with ad campiagns, in the courts, but with IE 8, even if the propaganda continues, the effect is clear.
Which is also why there is so much activities over phones and tablets. The OEM is nevery going to make a fair profit with MS, neither are developers. That is why most of the cool stuff have been developed in places outside of the US. Google is sharing profits, and, no matter what any says, so is Apple. The App store has made it possible to make money. MS is now where Unix was in the 80's. An expensive albeit still relevant dinosaur. It is a matter of time until people look on our old desktop like we looked at IBM 360 of VAX. A little nostalgic, but happy we have something bette.
Try using an OS Without a browser... (Score:2, Insightful)
The last time I installed Windows 95 (the first release, which did not yet have IE) I then tried to get a browser onto it.
Since I was tech-savvy enough to know about FTP, I tried FTP'ing to various browser-software sites, including Microsoft and (iirc)Netscape. I was not successful, and could not get directions from any web sites, since there was no browser to get to the web sites with. I eventually was able to telnet to a *nix shell account, and use a text-based browser (lynx, iirc) to get a windows-compatible browser file.
As a car analogy, a web browser is like tires. If you managed to get an [car]/[OS] without [tires]/[browser], good luck getting to the [tire store]/[browser installer].
Who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nobody believed it at the time (Score:5, Insightful)
It was true when they said it, about Windows 98. Windows 98 couldn't (for all practical purposes) be run without IE-- even drawing the desktop depended on it. Moreover, there would have been no way for MS to remove the IE integration within the ridiculous time frame the court was asking about. (90 days, if I recall correctly.)
Here's a secret, one the article writer didn't tell you, that I'm about to reveal. You may want to sit down for this... ready? Ok, here goes:
THINGS CHANGE OVER TIME
Shocking, I know.
The reason IE isn't integrated into Windows anymore is because every version of Windows, from XP to 7, has been working to remove the integration that was previously present.
And you know what? IE aside, a HTML renderer of some sort *is* required by Windows-- just as it's required by OS X, most Linux distributions, and Chrome OS. So if you take IE to mean "iexplore.exe", then no it's no longer required. If you take it to mean "the Trident HTML rendering component", then yes it is required-- exactly as required as WebKit is in OS X.
MS was anti web browser (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nobody believed it at the time (Score:4, Insightful)
"It was true when they said it, about Windows 98. Windows 98 couldn't (for all practical purposes) be run without IE-- even drawing the desktop depended on it."
That argument would be more convincing if Windows 98 hadn't been made that way for the purpose of making the argument in the first place.
Re:Why should they care now? (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually on a current system the first 4 hex chars of a 64-bit pointer have to be 0s (or Fs in system space). The current generation of cpus only support 48-bits of actual address.