Microsoft used bundling to drive many of its competitors out of business: Wordperfect, 123 etc. Before Microsoft IBM did the same thing to many of its competitors. So bundling is one of the strongest technology strategies that there is.
Why don't the separate competitors to MS web products gag together on ensuring their software makes it to the desktop?
For example if you download flash -> it prompts you to download acrobat, firefox, java and realplayer.
Or you download acrobat 7.0-> it notices your flash is out of date and prompts you to download flash + firefox, real etc
Anyway, I'm sure you get the point. There is a "suite" of web oriented free applications that together could ensure that they are all installed and reasonably up to date.
Microsoft has competing products for all these
Flash ->MS Sparkle, "The Flash killer"
Acrobat -> MS Metro, "The Acrobat killer"
Java -> MS DOTNET (ActiveX), "The Java killer"
Firefox -> MS Internet Explorer, "The Netscape killer"
Realplayer -> MS Media Player, "The Realplayer killer"
Google, yahoo -> MSN, "The yahoo or google killer"
Each one of these products is better than their MS counterpart. Microsoft is attempting to kill them with bundling, FUD, and divide and conquer tactics. The only way to counter these tactics is to work together.
Posted by Anthony at October 12, 2005 11:20 AM