“…even though its browser is now the dominant one, Microsoft’s
nightmares may only be beginning. The reemergent Netscape 6.0
browser, an open-source free offering with a powerful and modular
HTML/XML (Extensible Markup Language) engine, called Gecko, and at
least 15 other alternatives, Linux-based and mostly open-source,
have come out of the woodwork to hit the desktop. Off the desktop,
the embedded Internet appliance and smart wireless market is
brewing a seemingly endless list of browsers developed
independently of the Windows OS.”
“The immediate reason that Microsoft is in trouble, however, is
that just as it got caught by surprise by the growth of the
Internet and World Wide Web, it was similarly slow to notice the
remarkable growth of embedded Internet devices, Web-connected
information appliances and Internet-enabled wireless telephones.
Very early on, many embedded and PDA software companies moved
quickly into the market with their own Web browser
offerings…”
“While Microsoft has offered a version of its desktop Internet
Explorer for use in small-footprint applications originally in PDAs
and now in Web-enabled handheld devices, and more recently has
developed a much slimmer microbrowser implementation, the Mobile
Explorer, for the wireless space, competitors such as Ted Ladd,
lead evangelist at Palm, believe that the Redmond, Wash.-based
software behemoth still does not get it. “It is not just that
the footprint is smaller, the power requirements much more complex
or that the display will not accommodate a standard browser
GUI,” he said. “It is that the user requirements are much
different, as is the way that a traditional browser interacts with
a server or a remote Web page, and the way information must be
formatted to reflect this.”