Microsoft has never made much secret of the fact that keeping rival browsers down is a key part of its business plan.
Way back in 1996, Steve Ballmer (then still only the deputy CEO) cheerfully proclaimed: "Every minute of every day, we'll ask every Microsoft employee to ask themselves, 'Have I done anything to increase our share of the Internet browser market?' That's the business we're in; driving up our share is incredibly, incredibly important to us."
When it suits, of course, Microsoft likes to look like it's playing nice. Hence the jaunty tone of a recent post on the official Windows Vista blog, announcing that users of Firefox -- the biggest threat to Microsoft's browser share since, well, a decade ago -- are now going to be fully allowed into the Windows Media world.
View: The Full Article @ APC Mag
Way back in 1996, Steve Ballmer (then still only the deputy CEO) cheerfully proclaimed: "Every minute of every day, we'll ask every Microsoft employee to ask themselves, 'Have I done anything to increase our share of the Internet browser market?' That's the business we're in; driving up our share is incredibly, incredibly important to us."
When it suits, of course, Microsoft likes to look like it's playing nice. Hence the jaunty tone of a recent post on the official Windows Vista blog, announcing that users of Firefox -- the biggest threat to Microsoft's browser share since, well, a decade ago -- are now going to be fully allowed into the Windows Media world.
View: The Full Article @ APC Mag
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2. Big deal.
3. It's called WINDOWS media player for a reason.
4. People should already be on SP2 with WMP11.
5. Big deal.
This news article is, by no means, worthy of being on main news pages of Neowin. It's FUD and nothing more.
1. Plug-ins, like Flash, Acrobat, Quicktime, are not downloadable as XPI extensions, because Firefox considers them 'plugins' not extensions. This WMP add-on is a PLUG IN
2. This is irrelevant, Microsoft will fix things up in a day, its not a reason to say they're not interested. This was just included in the list to embarrass Microsoft.
3+4. Windows versions prior to Vista should be able to play Windows media in Firefox. Apparently, with WMP11 some legacy capability was removed so they have to ship a plug-in to allow it. If browsers on other OSs were able to play Windows media before, they should be able to now.
5. A lot less people care that much about windows media content on Firefox than using iTunes on Windows.
But the clue that the article would be FUD was in the opening statement "Microsoft has never made much secret of the fact that keeping rival browsers down is a key part of its business plan." Translation: "Microsoft is in the browser market, so part of its business is increasing its share in the market" This doesn't necessarily mean they have to 'keep rival browsers down', just do better than them, even if the management sometimes confuses the two, though it looks like they're caring less about that.
It's time to play Grand Theft Browser VII without Microsoft in the driver seat. Such violence might make Balmer throw a chair.
BTW, this shouldn't be front page material.
How that made it to front page I do not understand. I thought opinions do not classify as news? At least I have been told so for a few submissions...
sure you will be able to install most media formats with k-lite, but at the cost of stability,resource and speed.
Install FFDshow and you have one filter that does everything K-lite does, isn't illegal and won't eat resource or slow your computer or create dll problems down the line. and with FFD-show it's not just hard to find a movie that won't play, it's next to impossible.
sure you will be able to install most media formats with k-lite, but at the cost of stability,resource and speed.
Install FFDshow and you have one filter that does everything K-lite does, isn't illegal and won't eat resource or slow your computer or create dll problems down the line. and with FFD-show it's not just hard to find a movie that won't play, it's next to impossible.
Do you actually have any proof of this, or is this something you heard from a friend of a friend of a friend?
It works.
Oh yeah, and it's warez.
It works.
(Again, I love the people at Voxware - that's just a bad codec that does bad things to memory, though.)
(speaking for myself only as always)
Netscape as a product could be bankrupted. Firefox as a geek amusement cannot be broken.
Microsoft probably also has discovered that having a 80 percent share in browsers has led to certain problems. The "biggest target" one specifically.
I could see the market settling as something like
30% IE6 (Win2000 and below users, pre-SP2 users, pirate copies, etc, will not be going for IE7)
30% IE7
20% Firefox
10% Safari (especially given the lack of IE for Mac support)
10% Opera (Wii, mobile phones, etc.)
and that's better for everyone-- the value of exploits will go down as the user base becomes more diffuse.
Considering the quote is 11 years old, this article isn't really that great.
Yeah, sure, Microsoft are evil. Grow up.
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