Andreessen: IE faces one-two punch

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Not exactly.....row

The difference between the ultrahyped "browser wars" of the 1990s and the issues being raised today are completely different. Like many other things in the '90s, the "wars" were about marketing, customer lock-in and review-checklist items that weren't used by the masses. What's going on today is a debate over the question of ownership. Simply put, who owns the Web and the millions of sites on it - the site owners/authors, or Microsoft?

If the Web is to remain an open medium, and the creators of intellectual property, the copyright holders and so on, are to retain ownership of their works, then open, vendor-neutral standards like XHTML, CSS and so on remain "the language of the Web" and compliance with these standards becomes a market differentiator. A guarantee is implicitly given that any browser which correctly and fully supports the relevant standards will be able to correctly render your information. This jams open the door to competition and portability: no longer is your Web site held hostage to a particular version of a particular browser running on a particular hardware and software system, but any application, now or in the future, that correctly implements the relevant protocols can use your data. Whether or not your users are locked into a monoculture becomes less relevant than the fact that they don't have to be, nor do you as a content provider particularly care if they are.

The alternative is to declare not just copyright law but national sovereignty dead - since Microsoft owns all data by virtue of ownership of the only delivery system, any data delivered by that system can be broken, blocked or modified entirely out of the control of the content originator. This would have disastrous effects on the future openness and vitality of the Web.

People need to get used to the fact that one application, no matter how good or deeply entrenched, will stay around forever. Anybody who isn't sure about that may be interested in a few copies of WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS.

Posted by: jeffdickey   Posted on: 10/15/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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