This is a fascinating read, but this one line stuck out to me:
> Scott told me that the IE team had over 1,000 people
What on earth could they possibly have had those thousand people doing?
> Scott told me that the IE team had over 1,000 people
What on earth could they possibly have had those thousand people doing?
Hell, Apple forked KHTML in 2001, a few months before the release of IE6, and had 5 whole years to develop Safari (and WebKit) with essentially no significant (Sorry Opera) commercial competition. In fact, between 2001 and late 2004 (FF 1.0) no Netscape progeny had significant share, so Microsoft had no real competition of any sort. If MS had kept their foot on the gas we may never have seen an opportunity for Chrome to dominate.
The US DoJ's Janet Reno was a major factor. She forced Microsoft to sign a Consent Decree (1995?) that prevented Microsoft from tying separate products to Windows but allowed it to provide integrated improvements. The DoJ followed up with an anti-trust suit (on Netscape's behalf) over browser tying.
Microsoft won the browser case by 2-1 on appeal. However, all this bloodletting may have been a factor in Microsoft putting off the next browser, which eventually appeared in Vista. Which was late, following the Longhorn debacle, which prolonged XP's life, which enabled IE6 to get entrenched, which caused web designers so much pain.
The world might be a better place if the DoJ hadn't interfered, but we'll never know....
Otherwise, I'd have picked his first Bill Gates review as one of my favorite articles of all time...