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Comment by stormbrew | Hacker News Reader

I think they do these projects more out of a concern of being shut out of other OS' the way Netscape was effectively shut out of Windows. And that shows in which of those platforms they've placed the most effort: the one where their competitor is the most likely to shut them out.

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How was Netscape shut out of Windows?

Aside from the fact that IE being bundled made it far less likely for someone to go looking for another browser, they were shut out from being bundled by OEMs and ISPs through restrictive covenants[0][1]. It obviously wasn't impossible to install Netscape, but situations where Netscape was the user's first entry to the web became extremely unlikely.

This isn't really controversial, it was one of the major factors of the antitrust case against MS, and MS didn't argue they didn't do it, only that it wasn't illegal afaik.

[0] http://www.businessweek.com/1998/42/b3600109.htm [1] http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f2600/2613toc_htm.htm

Sure but calling this 'shutout' is pretty abusive of language to me. Is Chrome shut out of modern macs? Safari does come bundled after all. And I don't consider the DoJ case to have any merit so there's no authority in it.

Agree with the language or not, it's the kind of thing that Google fears. Though things have changed a lot since 1998 and being bundled is nowhere near as important as it was then. Hell, PCs and laptops aren't as important as they were then.

Really, the situation Google needs to keep pressure on, to prevent a modern equivalent to what happened to Netscape, was almost acted out with Maps on iOS.

As for whether the case had any merit.. ok? What I said doesn't rely on the case having merit. Like I said, MS admitted to doing this.

Exactly.

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