In exchange for Microsoft offering 30 browsers from what seems every little developer out there the case against their control of the browser market has been dropped.
Netscape a friend of Bill and TheAlGore (the creator of the Internet) brought an antitrust case against Microsoft over ten years ago and just prior to President Clinton leaving office such pressure was placed on Microsoft that there was an implosion of the stock market while then elected president bush took office….
Yes there was shock waves felt long before 911 took out the stock market and if you were invested in or watching the tech sector you know months before the terrorists struck… the Clinton Administration launched their attack on US Technology.
Not to be left behind the European Union decided to get in on the extortion game and threatened microsoft by pushing linux on desktops in government buildings long before it was reasonably feasible to replace windows on workers computers.
Gripes about forcing hardware suppliers to actually pay for every copy they shipped and back room deals that gave discounts on Windows OS that allowed technology to enter not just businesses or affluent homes but average people who could scrape up $500 in hopes of being retrained after losing all of the jobs that were outsourced to China, India and Europe in the 80’s and 90’s….
Well who won? It seems like the only people who lost were the average people like you and me…
Everyone knew they could go download netscape if they wanted it .. or go download any other browser… or linux or bsd… And if you didnt have good internet back then you could get CDRs that were sold at flea markets for $5 with everything you could ever want on it…
But who knew that in the very beginnings Netscape code came from a government project?
Did you ever hear about a browser called Mozilla?
It is the same core that started the Firefox browser most people use if they are not using Microsoft IE… Heck I am using it now.. ON WINDOWS…
But Mozilla was an open source project started at a college that got taken by its developers and marketed into a commercial venture…
WAIT! WHAT?
Yes thats right all the money Netscape made was because Federal Dollars paid computer scientists to develop Mozilla.
Why do I remember this? Because I remember logging on to the internet on telnet… and then using Archey and Veronica and Gopher and … well does it matter?
I personally installed the first copies of many of these aps on systems located in colleges and universities from Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, Haveford, Villanova to UPENN and Princeton, Penn State.
I did this back in the 80’s before AOL was connected … before IBM had a .com and only had a .us domain… back when most people used Usenet for conversations and not Binary Downloads…
When the best sites on the web were in Finland and Sweden and a few corn fed schools in the midwest…
When DEC was still a thriving company and Sperry who’s offices I often visited on RT30 & 320 had not yet become Unisys.
Yea, a few of us know the truth behind all of this… everyone seems to keep their mouth shut about it though because the computer industry was changed by Microsoft…
People were really frustrated at that point and wanted to attack the Giant Microsoft instead of innovating and dropping prices and opening their OS to developers… Something Apple has yet to do.
Well look at what has happened…
Microsoft is now a dieing company BUT linux is no where near ready after 15 years to replace it… Apple has moved to BSD code and everyone who started this crap back in the 80’s… 90’s now has kids who can’t get jobs… maybe they lost their jobs too…
Then again these lawsuits beat the crap out of our industry while making a lot of people that did not deserve it … rich.
I invite everyone that reads this to go google MSFT and view the stock market plunge that the Clinton administration created between the year 2000 and the time he left office in January 2001 and then try to think about what happened on 911 to the economy and how it had already begun at least a year before Bush took office…
Its the truth no one wants to admit … especially TheAlGore … The Creator of the Internetsss.
