Over the course of Microsoft’s history, the company got one, and only one, thing right about the Internet on the first try. It figured Netscape would grow to be big enough to challenge Microsoft.
Ever since then, Microsoft has been bungling the Internet.
Their attempts at creating a web browser have been largely derided. Internet Explorer’s success came only by attaching it for free to the operating system that everyone was already using.
Like the recent Star Wars movies, IE was a terrible imitation of what came before, and the only reason either had any success was that they were firmly attached to their successful predecessors. On their own, both would have failed and been forgotten before the first run had been sold.
Using its leverage to force IE onto to the desktop of every PC, worked out in the end thanks only to a change in political administrations to one that didn’t really care about anti-trust or anti-competitive behavior. In Europe, Microsoft is still paying for its decision to "cheat" rather than build a better product.
Microsoft felt that the Internet was something to be contained and kept at arms length rather than something to be embraced as a new opportunity.
It’s browser software never bothered to implement any accepted practices or standards until virtually forced at gun point.
It’s horrific Internet Explorer 6 remains the bane of web developers everywhere who are compelled to use "hacks" and "tricks" to make IE 6 do what it was supposed to do in the first place.
While the company attempted to trumpet advancements in IE 7, most of them had long been available in other browsers, including Firefox. Finally, many analysts are giving the company credit for finally doing it right in Internet Explorer 8.
Unfortunately, by then millions of users had bolted away for "better" browsers.
Microsoft’s War with Google
Of course, the biggest strategic blunders have come in the years since Google began envisioning a better, more useful Internet.
While Microsoft was still trying to copy Yahoo into submission with its MSN content portal, the Internet began to find a better way.
Rather than working through an incomplete, and often out of date, directory to find a website that might have the information you wanted, users began to search directly for what they needed.
These search indexes quickly filled up with garbage as their parent companies sat idly focusing on their portals instead.
As more people began using Google to find information and data quicker and with less junk than before, the content portals constructed with untold millions of dollars began to wilt.
Microsoft ignored the upstart search engine and focused on its small offering of Internet services including its online email service, Hotmail. In the Internet game, Microsoft spotted its opponent several points.
By the time Microsoft began assessing its competitor, Google was dropping its atomic bomb on Hotmail and Yahoo Mail, offering email accounts with storage space that dwarfed the dominant players. By the time Microsoft responded, it had ceded the title of Number 1 Search Engine and Number 1 Email service to Google.
Microsoft went back to its old playbook and tried to run the Netscape against Google. Internet Explorer was released with a search engine built right into the interface. A search field that ran searches at Microsoft’s own search engine, of course.
If the move had come earlier, or if Microsoft hadn’t already pulled the same trick against Netscape before, it might have worked. Instead, it was forced to relent by users and legal threats. However, it prompted Google to not only defend itself, but to take the battle to Microsoft as well.
Microsoft has been trying to catch-up ever since.
Bing Search Engine and Microsoft’s New Online Strategy
Microsoft has long been the master of the if you can’t beat them, join them strategy.
Sometimes, joining them, means buying them out and absorbing their products, other times, it means duplicating their efforts until caught up, and then outspending on marketing or undercutting on price.
With Google, the strategy has been ineffective.
Google’s rate of innovation makes catching up difficult. It is also a company that knows how to buy out an upstart with a good idea.
Acquiring YouTube meant not having to fight with Microsoft, or anyone else, over the booming online video market; they just started at number one.
The company has also rolled out a number of initiates that have never made a dime, but whose purpose is not to make money but shake the ground beneath their feet.
It provided huge funding to Firefox to ensure that another browser (one that didn’t come pre-installed with Microsoft search) was not only being developed, but growing and improving faster than IE.
Google Docs was a direct shot across the bow of Microsoft. While everyone thinks of Windows when they think of the software giant, the reality is that Microsoft Office is the bread and butter of Microsoft’s business these days.
When OS sales all but dried up thanks to the flop of Windows Vista, Microsoft carried on unwounded, largely due to gobs of revenue courtesy of Office. Microsoft Office is so powerful that no matter how much Apple’s fans try to pretend otherwise, the entire Apple line of operating systems would be dead in no time if Microsoft stopped releasing Office for the Mac, something it continues to do only to avoid potential regulatory issues.
By releasing a free online set of applications that offer much of the functionality of Microsoft Office, Google exposed a weak spot in the Microsoft defenses. A fully functional, responsive, usable set of applications to replace Office would mean the end of Microsoft’s dominance in the business space for applications, and could be the first in a chain of downfalls all the way back to the Windows operating system itself.
Microsoft has responded by announcing that it will release its own Office Web Apps. Unlike Google Docs, Microsoft’s applications will be tightly integrated with both desktop installs of Office and with Windows.
In other words, Microsoft has stopped copying Google and started trying to do something different that consumers might like better than Google’s offerings.
Recently, Microsoft launched Bing, a new search engine.
At first glance, Bing appears to be more "me too" strategy out of Redmond, but after failing a handful of times to beat Google at its own game, Microsoft decided to change the game.
Instead of being blamed when searchers found "bad" results on Microsoft’s search engine and "better" results on Google’s search, Microsoft has stepped in to help users make better searches in the first place.
Bing offers up all manner of suggestions to users so that if the answers they are getting aren’t right, maybe they’ll realize that they are asking the wrong questions.
Doing so requires abandoning Google’s minimalist interface, but with computing and networking power growing so much in the last few years, maybe a giant search engine doesn’t have to be so basic.
Maybe Microsoft can win by doing what it has always done, adding more features until users find something they want. If early reviews of Bing are any indicator, Microsoft may finally have found a way to compete with "Plain-Jane Google." (Let’s see if that sticks.)
IE8 is still a dog compared to Firefox 3.5.
I use a system called WebFuser which is a web app design package.
In design mode it’s really slow in IE8 but in any other browser it’s really good even though it was primarily designed for IE.
Apparently it’s because Microsofts JavaScript engine sucks.
I don’t know enough to know if this is accurate but I do know I won’t use IE unless I’m forced because something won’t work.
Unfortunately I make my living from MS products like Reporting Services and Sharepoint and as you might guess they have issues in the other browsers, mainly because MS don’t stick to the standards.