Thanks to John Martellaro
for this link.
“AOL just bought Netscape. They would like to put Netscape in
the hands of every one of their 15 million customers. But how are
they going to do that if Microsoft arranges it so that (almost)
every PC sold in the world has Windows 98 installed and Internet
Explorer so integrated into the OS that the user is almost
compelled to a) log on via MSN, and b) use only MSIE. Answer? AOL
gives away to its customers PCs with a non-Windows OS, like Linux.
(We’ve talked about this before. As the cost of PC hardware
plummets, the Microsoft asking price to OEMs for Windows becomes a
larger and larger (and more painful) percentage of the cost of a
PC. Market pressures are driving the cost of an OS to zero dollars.
Like, ahem, Linux.)”
“Now you know why Microsoft is going to declare war on AOL,
Linux, Netscape, and any cheap, consumer friendly system that puts
people on the Internet without a Windows OS.”