Microsoft- Is it getting a bad rap?

By James Andrews

It seems that everywhere you look today you hear something about Microsoft. Most of what you hear is bad, for that is the impression that people have about Microsoft. The question comes into mind on whether or not Microsoft deserves the reputation that they have of being the evil, mean company that everyone says it is. I think not. Most of what I have heard from other people has been rumors and utter nonsense. I will try to explain some of the nonsense below.

1. Netscape calling Microsoft a monopoly - Hello, before Internet Explorer, Netscape had its own little monopoly in the web browser market. It was only when Microsoft posed a threat to its monopoly that it went ballistic towards Microsoft. It even did its far share of dirty tricks to make people think that Internet Explorer was an inferior product. One of those tricks was to have sun to make a Netscape specific Java so that some of the Java out on the net would not work in Internet Explorer.
2. Microsoft wanted Macintosh to go out of business - One question remains here why would Microsoft want Mac to go out of business when it make the large percentage of software for it. Apple caused its own problems when it restricted the use of its OS and then made its own computers more expensive. Now, it has finally let people clone its computers, however it is not being too cooperative with them.
3. Microsoft wants to ruin Netscape with its plan to offer Internet Explorer with Windows 98. The reason Microsoft is doing this is so Windows 98 can compete more with the Net computers that has just come out. It would not have to worry so much but it started to charge for its browser not to long ago. They finally learned here recently that it would not work and is now offering their standard browser and Communicator standard edition free again.
4. The reason why Microsoft choose Direct X instead of Open GL. Direct X works with almost all video cards while Open GL works only with a selected amount of video cards. It's like the Open GL version of quake would not offer the advantages that it offered to non Open GL cards so there had to be two versions of the game instead of just offering one that worked on everybody's computer.
5. Bill Gates is the Devil - whoever said this originally is just jealous of where Bill Gates has gotten in his life. He is the richest man in the world, he involved with several companies. How he got there is that he worked his ass off and succeeded. He is a very good businessman and that is one of the reasons he is where he is today.

The bad publicity is one that the media loves to play up, and people have reacted to the thought of the computer industry having a villain. Other companies have played this up to their advantage. Through all the confusion what is lost is all the good Microsoft has done for the consumers in the computing market. Because it does put out good products with the features that people want it has force other companies to make better products in order to compete with the giant. No longer are they able to put out the bad stuff like they where putting out before Microsoft became the marketing leader it is today.

Read the other side of the story.