I last checked in December. At that time Linux had an all time high usage rate of 5.6%. For a platform that’s existed since the early 90s, 5.6% is the highest they’d ever achieved.
So I wouldn’t exactly say microsoft EVER pissed it away. They still have, and always have had, dominant market share of users. And they do so by charging hundreds of dollars as opposed to a free alternative.
The closest thing they had to internet explorer dominance is saying that it was manditory to be installed in every OS. The OS had market dominance, and you couldn’t uninstall internet explorer.
People who knew what they were doing with computers used Netscape until it died, those people went to Mozilla suite and then Firefox (well, Phoenix then Firebird then Firefox). But that was a shrinking minority of people on the internet at the turn of the millennium.
Practically everyone else used IE (90%+ of web traffic at its peak) and continued to do so until Google released Chrome and shone a light on how little Microsoft had been doing for nearly a decade.
Dominance was dominance however they got it, and they pissed it away through complacency, somewhat similarly to what they’re doing now.
I last checked in December. At that time Linux had an all time high usage rate of 5.6%. For a platform that’s existed since the early 90s, 5.6% is the highest they’d ever achieved.
So I wouldn’t exactly say microsoft EVER pissed it away. They still have, and always have had, dominant market share of users. And they do so by charging hundreds of dollars as opposed to a free alternative.
They had internet explorer dominance, they pissed that away
They had PC gaming OS dominance, they’re now pissing that away
The closest thing they had to internet explorer dominance is saying that it was manditory to be installed in every OS. The OS had market dominance, and you couldn’t uninstall internet explorer.
But actual usage? Everybody used Netscape.
People who knew what they were doing with computers used Netscape until it died, those people went to Mozilla suite and then Firefox (well, Phoenix then Firebird then Firefox). But that was a shrinking minority of people on the internet at the turn of the millennium.
Practically everyone else used IE (90%+ of web traffic at its peak) and continued to do so until Google released Chrome and shone a light on how little Microsoft had been doing for nearly a decade.
Dominance was dominance however they got it, and they pissed it away through complacency, somewhat similarly to what they’re doing now.
This is your rose tinted hindsight fantasy.