If you haven’t already heard by now from the millions of voices on the web - AOL decided to kill Netscape. According to Mozillazine:
“AOL has cut or will cut the remaining team working on Mozilla in a mass firing and are dismantling what was left of Netscape (theyíve even pulled the logos off the buildings).”
As sad as this is, it’s really not much of a suprize. It’s something that we’ve all saw coming ever since AOL signed a deal with Microsoft.
It’s not really a huge deal for me because I use Safari on MacOSX and Opera on my Windows machines. Sooner or later I’d like to try out some of the other Mozilla Foundation but I’ve got a lot of web work in-between me and the other “things I want to do” me.
On top of this issue I can pretty much guarantee ya that you’ll have to start paying for your browser(s). I give it a couple years but no more than 5 with how fast things have been progressing. Right now you already have to pay for ad-free Opera ($35.00) and I’m pretty sure other companies will follow this same business practice.
We’ll soon have to buy our browsers in packages along side our office applications and virus protection software. In the mean time people will continue to just use whatever they are given on their new computer - never even thinking about other options and ones that could make their over all user experience a much better one.
posted on July 16, 2003 | 9:40 AM EST
Add to the discussion.
I’d have to say that I disagree. Microsoft is already making IE a seamless part of Longhorn. I think the concept of an “Internet Browser” will be long extinct in 5 years.
You might think that MS will just make their OS’s more expensive, but with Linux as such a competition, they are already lowering prices.
In the end, thanks to linux, we win.
In what way do you disagree? You mean, you don’t think people will have to pay for browsers? If so then you just stated above how Microsoft is forcing people to buy their browsers. They aren’t allowing you to get a new version of IE unless you purchase a whole new OS.
So you go and purchase this new OS and get the new, upgraded browser - problem is - next time you want to upgrade browsers yet again, you have to wait until they come out with another version of Windows and then go purchase that.
That sounds to me like their charging ya.
As for Microsoft lowering their prices - I haven’t seen that at all. In fact I’ve seen just the opposite. “A California judge on Friday gave preliminary approval to a landmark settlement under which Microsoft will pay $1.1 billion to settle a class-action suit that claimed it overcharged consumers for Windows. “
I see what you are saying with the whole OS purchasing thing. Yea, we do have to pay, if we want a new OS. I would like to think that MS will provide updates through windows update, as they already do.
I will have to reinforce what I said about the browser going away. I don’t think that the average computer user will even understand the concept of a browser, because it will be so tightly integrated with the OS. And besides, there isn’t a whole lot of demand for new browsers anyway. I can understand your frusteration as a web develper, but to the common computer user, IE 5.5 is more than enough to meet their needs.
joel Says:
I’d have to say that I disagree. Microsoft is already making IE a seamless part of Longhorn. I think the concept of an “Internet Browser” will be long extinct in 5 years.
You might think that MS will just make their OS’s more expensive, but with Linux as such a competition, they are already lowering prices.
In the end, thanks to linux, we win.