08.29.08
Microsoft is Losing the Web, But Promise of Interoperability is Already Broken
Timely reminder of why Microsoft’s promises are worthless
Apache
Here is why Microsoft is so desperate to intervene with Apache’s direction [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. The latest report from Netcraft suggests that Microsoft continues to fall, perhaps having exhausted its ability to pay/influence large hosts like GoDaddy, which help the gaming of statistics.
In the latest report, everyone can see that Apache and other FOSS-based servers are up, whereas Microsoft’s IIS is down.
In the August 2008 survey we received responses from 176,748,506 sites. This month’s overall growth of 1.3 million sites reflects Apache’s growth of 1.2 million and Google’s gain of half a million sites, but a loss of 760 thousand sites using Microsoft IIS.
Opera, Inter-Opera-bility and Antitrust
This situation was previously discussed in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. Antitrust action if how far the war against Microsoft has come. Microsoft has, for many years, deliberately and knowingly ignored and/or subverted Web standards. As soon as the legal burden appeared, Microsoft suddenly made some promise of compliance. To nobody’s surprise, Microsoft seems to have lied. It broke its promise.
This week, the promise was broken. It lasted less than six months. Now that Internet Explorer IE8 beta 2 is released, we know that many, if not most, pages viewed in IE8 will not be shown in standards mode by default. The dirty secret is buried deep down in the «Compatibility view» configuration panel, where the «Display intranet sites in Compatibility View» box is checked by default. Thus, by default, intranet pages are not viewed in standards mode.
Should people trust Microsoft with its vague ODF promises [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]?
Compatibility Issues (the ‘Vista Effect’ equivalent of Web Browsers)
Just like Windows Vista, as soon as IE7 came out, software that worked perfectly well with predecessors and other Web browsers simply ceased to work. It’s a backward compatibility nightmare and the same thing is now happening with IE8, by Microsoft’s own admission.
Microsoft Corp. yesterday warned users of Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3) that they won’t be able to uninstall either the service pack or Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) under some circumstances.
The warning was reminiscent of one Microsoft made in May, when Windows XP SP3 had just been made available for downloading. At the time, the company told users they wouldn’t be able to downgrade from IE7 to the older IE6 browser without uninstalling the service pack.
The following one is a better story:
It may be a Microsoft creation but it doesn’t play well with other Microsoft products.
Bugs, Competition (E.g. Firefox)
Yesterday we wrote about Microsoft’s reinvention of the browser privacy ‘wheel’. It’s already failing.
Privacy feature in Internet Explorer 8 leaks private data
[…]
Forensic experts however found it trivial to retrieve the history, according to a test by Webwereld, an IDG affiliate in the Netherlands, and Fox IT, a Dutch firm specializing in IT security and forensic research.
Microsoft’s products are designed to eavesdrop and enable forensics [1, 2], so this may be no accident.
DRM: Poison on the Web
Just have a look at what Microsoft wishes to do to our precious Web.
Will W3C Accept DRM For Webfonts?
[…]
Microsoft has submitted Embedded OpenType (EOT) to W3C and a slimy campaign for EOT has been launched. EOT is a DRM layer on top of normal TrueType/Opentype files; EOT ties a font file to a certain web page or site and prevents reuse by other pages/sites.
Microsoft labels DRM technology using the word “Open”. How familiar.
The above is a “slimy campaign” by all means. The campaign cited contains nothing but glorification of DRM and IE. Another example of pseudo-grassroots support? If Microsoft cannot replace (X)HTML with XAML, it wishes to at least ruin the standards and ‘extend’ them its own way. █
“The Internet? We are not interested in it.”
–Bill Gates, 1993
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.