DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

SF Chronicle tech columnist David Lazarus offers this skewed interpretation of the “browser war:”

Most of us would probably say that the browser war had been settled long ago, and that, for better or worse, Microsoft was the clear winner. … But AOL Time Warner’s Netscape unit apparently didn’t get the memo. …

But I have no problem acknowledging that Microsoft kicked Netscape’s butt the old-fashioned way — it built a better mousetrap. Internet Explorer is now sturdier and more functional that Netscape’s browser, and that’s why most users switched.

It is sad that this sort of misinformed opinion can get printed in a large regional newspaper. Lazarus’ view ignores critically pertinent facts, and draws a conclusion that is most likely untrue: he claims that users “switched” to IE, when in fact it is more likely that the vast majority never bothered to try Navigator in the first place, because it did not come preinstalled on the system.

One of the key complaints in the DoJ’s suit against Microsoft was that MS forced each of its system vendors to bundle IE with the OS, or risk losing their status as Windows licensee. (See Wired’s timeline of the US vs Microsoft trial, item 10/27/97.) In contrast, PC vendors had no compulsion to bundle Navigator, and according to some reports were pressured by Microsoft not to install Navigator.

Remember, too, that MS offered to sacrifice MSN to AOL if AOL would promote IE over Navigator. That alone accounts for a couple of million AOL users who probably didn’t have to “switch” to IE.

So, whether or not IE in 2002 (3+ years later!) is a “better mousetrap” than Navigator, Lazarus’ opinion is woefully underresearched, which is embarrassing given that Google turned up all the above-referenced documents within three search attempts.