Saturday, June 14, 2003

Scripting News in Manila: Winer on MS (again...)

Scripting News in Manila: "Roz Ho, the general manager of Microsoft's Mac Business Unit, has confirmed that no future versions of Internet Explorer will be released for the Mac.'
Sad to see the angst-filled commentary on various weblogs on this announcement. It's no surprise to me. Microsoft has been telegraphing this for years. They never wanted the Web. Never. They had to control it because it threatened them, or so they thought. Their strategy is to lock things back up to the way they were before the Web, in 1994 or so. Read what Bill Gates said then. 'The Internet is a great phenomena. I dont see how the emergence of more information content on a network can be a bad thing for the personal computer industry. Will it cause less personal computers to sell? I think quite the opposite. Less copies of Flight Simulator or Encarta?' Later, it became clear to Bill that my thesis was correct. The Internet had made all his complex technology irrelevant. He had been routed around. It was cool! It took him ten years to erase the Web as a threat. It's done now. He owns it, it's in the trunk (I know you don't like to hear this) it's locked, and they're driving it off a cliff into the ocean. It's weird to see people just figuring this out now. Don't go back to sleep, please. This is reality. What we all do next should reflect this. "

(Somebody call Oliver Stone; there has to be a movie in this somewhere...)

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