6 ms·
Internet Explorer is EVIL! (2002)
- veave 3y ago[flagged]
- adamrezich 3y agosubmission title needs "(2002)". previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23013001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23013001 (April 28, 2020 — 118 points, 75 comments)
- kdklol 3y agoThanks, I couldn't find it on the page. And I was a bit tipsy yesterday too :)
- syndicatedjelly 3y agoI thought that for a second, until I actually went to the page. Lol
- TheRealPomax 3y agoIt's the same page. This post needs [2002] in the title.
- adamrezich 3y agoit actually is from 2002 though https://web.archive.org/web/20021001000000*/http://toastytech.com/evil/index.html https://web.archive.org/web/20021001000000*/http://toastytec...
- dang 3y agoAdded. Thanks!
- disillusioned 3y agoI know enough about the antitrust situation wherein Microsoft essentially forced IE on everyone in a bid to drive Netscape (successfully) to irrelevance, but I guess I don't really understand _why_? Can someone with more of a sense of history elucidate me as to what Microsoft's motivation was around this, since IE itself was always free? I guess I need this expanded out to a greater understanding of the context of the _why_ behind the browser wars in general: was it all part of a long game that leads to Microsoft hoping they can drive relevance and revenue from ancillary upsells like Bing/Bing Ads/Bing Cash/whatever? None of that was even on the horizon... so was it part of some bigger recognition that the computer and operating system was going to be essentially a pure vehicle to a browser and thus reduce the dependency and importance of the OS itself? I mean, that's what happened anyway, I'm just asking for what drove them to insanity with IE dominance?
- javcasas 3y agoIE successfully killed Netscape, then proceeded to do nothing for 10 years, not improving, not fixong bugs and vulnerabilities, showing that the only effective way of constructing applications would be desktop applications. I mean, windows-only desktop applications. Or maybe ActiveX windows-only webpages. Then Firefox came from the ashes of Netscape.
- code_duck 3y agoIt’s very simple: at the time, MS controlled the market for consumer and office computing. There was no such thing as Bing and Google was just getting started. Apple was not doing well, and mobile phones as we know them didn’t exist yet. They understood browsers to be a platform that could replace desktop software, potentially making Windows irrelevant, and they wanted to hold back and/or control the web platform.
- KnobbleMcKnees 3y agohttps://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/week/0716microsoft.html https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/cyber/we...
- KevinMS 3y ago> Can someone with more of a sense of history elucidate me as to what Microsoft's motivation was around this, since IE itself was always free? MS saw the web browser in general as a potential "platform" and direct competition to their OS monopoly and they wanted control of it by crushing competing browsers. It sounded a little crazy at the time, but years later, here we are with chromebooks and google apps and other examples that run everything in a browser.
- echelon 3y agoWe're better for that competition. It led to the rise of Apple, Google, and so many other companies. The antitrust folks need to do the same to Google Chrome.
- 3y ago
- Daub 3y agoPart of the same site is an excellent GUI museum... http://toastytech.com/guis/index.html http://toastytech.com/guis/index.html
- Dwedit 3y agoIt is still possible to use Internet Explorer. You just need to remove the BHO that's responsible for auto-closing the program and redirecting you to Edge.
- aio2 3y agoThe question is: who still wants to use Internet Exploder?
- tamimio 3y agoJapan!
- Kwpolska 3y agoOr, for one-off usage, you can activate IE via COM and make it visible (in two lines of PowerShell or VBS).
- PaulCarrack 3y agoI would love to see the PS or VBS example of this
- Kwpolska 3y agoIn PowerShell: $ie = New-Object -ComObject "InternetExplorer.Application" $ie.Visible = $true
- Dwedit 3y agoDo you get the real MSIE, or some weird embedded MSIE? I remember when I was trying to log into GitHub to activate Visual Studio 2019, the embedded browser looked like a historical version of Internet Explorer, and it kept generating endless dialog boxes complaining about script errors on the page.
- Kwpolska 3y agoYou get the real deal, a real IE window using the usual IE engine.
- dang 3y agoRelated: Internet Explorer is evil (1996) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26399746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26399746 - March 2021 (80 comments) Internet Explorer Is Evil (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23013001 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23013001 - April 2020 (75 comments) Internet Explorer is evil - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4740890 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4740890 - Nov 2012 (10 comments)
- krembo 3y agoReminds me of the story that Microsoft could kill Google in its early years of it would just add an ad blocker to IE. Those days G was heavily, almost totally, profiting from adwords/adsense.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago> Those days G was heavily, almost totally, profiting from adwords/adsense. Er, isn't that still the majority of their income?
- krembo 3y agoStill the majority but nowadays they have other cash streams to stay alive.
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoAhh, different times. Any reason for the share? Some discussion from 2 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26399746 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26399746
- johnea 3y agoYes, and chome is MUCH worse...