A short blurb from Wikipedia will suffice. Look for the rest on your own.
I will not waste time on a dead browser.
Too late.
)
"Netscape could not compete with this strategy. Meanwhile, it faced
increasing criticism for the bugs in its products; critics claimed that
the company suffered from 'featuritis' - putting a higher priority on
adding new features than on making them work properly. The tide of
public opinion, having once lauded Netscape as the David to Microsoft's
Goliath, steadily turned negative, especially when Netscape experienced
its first bad quarter at the end of 1997 and underwent a large round of
layoffs in January 1998."
So how come you didn't quote the previous paragraph that reveals the
strategy that Netscape "could not compete with" to be an anticompetitive
attack by the MS monopoly?
Here it is:
: Microsoft released version 1.0 of Internet Explorer as a part of the
: Windows 95 Plus Pack add-on. According to former Spyglass developer
: Eric Sink, Internet Explorer was based not on NCSA Mosaic as commonly
: believed, but on a version of Mosaic developed at Spyglass.[5]
: Microsoft quickly released several successive versions of Internet
: Explorer, bundling them with Windows, never charging for them,
: financing their development and marketing with revenues from other
: areas of the company. This period of time became known as the browser
: wars, in which Netscape Communicator and Internet Explorer added many
: new features (not always working correctly) and went through many
: version numbers (not always in a logical fashion) in attempts to outdo
: each other. But Internet Explorer had the upper hand, as the amount of
: manpower and capital dedicated to it eventually surpassed the resources
: available in Netscape's entire business. By version 3.0, IE was roughly
: a feature-for-feature equivalent of Netscape Communicator, and by
: version 4.0, it was generally considered to be more stable. Microsoft
: also targeted other Netscape products with free workalikes, such as the
: Internet Information Server (IIS), a web server which was bundled with
: Windows NT.
By 1998 Microsoft had already deprived Netscape of a considerable amount
of its "air supply" for several years, thus starving the company of
sales and thus the R&D funds necessary to implement features that could
compete in the marketplace with an already-bundled IE. In struggling to
stay alive, Netscape tried to implement the features necessary to compete
with IE, but lacked the R&D funds to follow through. These are the "bugs"
you refer to and were not the norm for the company in healthier times.
In other words, Microsoft was unable to compete technically with
Netscape until it had killed the company by back-door means. The period
you cite was just before the dregs were sold to AOL in November of 1998.
The anticompetitive means by which Microsoft strangled Netscape are well
documented in the DOJ antitrust trial. Only a few are mentioned in
passing in the Wikipedia article on the trial. Links on the actual
wikipedia page lead to more-detailed documents, testimony, and evidence:
:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft
:
: The trial started in May 1998 with the U.S. Justice Department and the
: Attorneys General of twenty U.S. states suing Microsoft for illegally
: thwarting competition in order to protect and extend its software
: monopoly. Later, in October the US Justice Department also sued
: Microsoft for violating a 1994 consent decree by forcing computer
: makers to include its Internet browser as a part of the installation of
: Windows software. During the antitrust case it was revealed that
: Microsoft had threatened PC manufacturers with revoking their license
: to distribute Windows if they removed the Internet Explorer icon from
: the initial desktop, something that Netscape had requested of its
: licensees.
:
: Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates was called "evasive and nonresponsive" by
: a source present at a session in which Gates was questioned on his
: deposition. [1] He argued over the definitions of words such as
: "compete", "jihad", "concerned", "ask", and "we". [2] BusinessWeek
: reported, "Early rounds of his deposition show him offering obfuscatory
: answers and saying 'I don't recall' so many times that even the
: presiding judge had to chuckle. Worse, many of the technology chief's
: denials and pleas of ignorance have been directly refuted by
: prosecutors with snippets of E-mail Gates both sent and received." [3]
: Intel Vice-President Steven McGeady, called as a witness, quoted Paul
: Maritz, a senior Microsoft vice president as having stated an intention
: to "extinguish" and "smother" rival Netscape Communications Corporation
: and to "cut off Netscape's air supply" by giving away a clone of
: Netscape's flagship product for free. The Microsoft executive denied
: the allegations.
:
: A number of videotapes were submitted as evidence by Microsoft during
: the trial, including one that demonstrated that removing Internet
: Explorer from Microsoft Windows caused slowdowns and malfunctions in
: Windows. In the videotaped demonstration of what Microsoft vice
: president James Allchin's stated to be a seamless segment filmed on one
: PC, the plaintiff noticed that some icons mysteriously disappear and
: reappear on the PC's desktop, suggesting that the effects might have
: been falsified. Allchin admitted that the blame for the tape
: problems lay with some of his staff "They ended up filming it --
: grabbing the wrong screen shot," he said of the incident. Later,
: Allchin re-ran the demonstration and provided a new videotape, but in
: so doing Microsoft dropped the claim that Windows is slowed down when
: Internet Explorer is removed. Mark Murray, a Microsoft spokesperson,
: berated the government attorneys for "nitpicking on issues like video
: production." Microsoft submitted a second inaccurate videotape into
: evidence later the same month as the first. The issue in question was
: how easy or hard it was for America Online users to download and
: install Netscape Navigator onto a Windows PC. Microsoft's videotape
: showed the process as being quick and easy, resulting in the Netscape
: icon appearing on the user's desktop. The government produced its own
: videotape of the same process, revealing that Microsoft's videotape had
: edited out a long and complex part of the procedure and that the
: Netscape icon wasn't placed on the desktop, requiring a user to search
: for it. Brad Chase, a Microsoft vice president, verified the
: government's tape and conceded that Microsoft's own tape was
: inaccurate.
:
: <snip>
:
: Judge Jackson issued his findings of fact on November 5, 1999, which
: stated that Microsoft's dominance of the personal computer operating
: systems market constituted a monopoly, and that Microsoft had taken
: actions to crush threats to the monopoly, including Apple, Java,
: Netscape, Lotus Notes, Real Networks, Linux, and others. Then on April
: 3, 2000, he issued a two-part ruling: his conclusions of law were that
: Microsoft had committed monopolization, attempted monopolization, and
: tying in violation of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, and his
: remedy was that Microsoft must be broken into two separate units, one
: to produce the operating system, and one to produce other software
: components.
:
: <snip>
:
: APPEAL
:
: On September 26, 2000, after Judge Jackson issued his findings of fact,
: in order to save time the plaintiffs attempted to send Microsoft's
: appeal directly to the Supreme Court. However, the Supreme Court
: declined to hear the appeal and sent the case to a federal appeals
: court. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously overturned Judge
: Jackson's rulings against Microsoft on browser tying and attempted
: monopolization on grounds, that he gave off-the-record, but
: nevertheless disclosed, interviews to the news media during the case,
: and that Judge Jackson having opinions about the defendant was
: improper. Judge Jackson's response to this was that Microsoft's conduct
: itself was the cause of any "perceived bias"; Microsoft executives had
: "proved, time and time again, to be inaccurate, misleading, evasive,
: and transparently false. ... Microsoft is a company with an
: institutional disdain for both the truth and for rules of law that
: lesser entities must respect. It is also a company whose senior
: management is not averse to offering specious testimony to support
: spurious defenses to claims of its wrongdoing." However, the appeals
: court did affirm in part Judge Jackson's ruling on monopolization. The
: D.C. Circuit remanded the case for consideration of a proper remedy for
: "drastically altered scope of liability" that the court had upheld,
: under Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly. The DOJ, now under the
: administration of U.S. President George W. Bush, announced on September
: 6, 2001 that it was no longer seeking to break up Microsoft and would
: instead seek a lesser antitrust penalty.
