Nice letter, Tom. I have zero respect for Gilmor. When he's not bashing Microsoft, all he does is regurgitate what more knowledgable people are saying in the trade journals, kind of a Readers Digest pablum version of techie opinion.

Perhaps next time you should get a broader range of opinions from more than one expert in the computer industry, and one without an axe to grind.

The Microsoft-bashing seems to be a habit left over from the days when the Murky was a member of an anti-Microsoft lobbying group, ProComp, and Gilmor was paid to write those diatribes by people threatened by Microsoft's success. Maybe he's come to believe it, after all these years, but I can't forget that he's a mercenary whose opinion was bought and paid for. In any case, Gilmor's opinion represents the official position of the Murky-News and Knight-Ridder. They don't want objectivity.

Since you picked up on AOL's taste in browsers, there's more. AOL actually did try to use Nagivator, shortly after buying Netscape. That was the missing number in the Nag series, 5.0. It was such a disaster that they had to upgrade everybody (back) to IE, and they removed all references to the fiasco from their official history.

There's a new AOL coming out, 7.0, which might use Mozilla instead of IE. I can't find any details. Although Netscape packaged Mozilla--badly--and called it Navigator 6, it's still by no means a Netscape browser.

Both browsers are free for the taking, which makes the concept of "market share" a bit tentative. It's not like Microsoft is making money hand over fist with IE. Both browsers can be downloaded by anyone. What is the financial value of a monopoly in a product that doesn't cost anything? How do you compensate a "competitor" for this?

Netscape and Microsoft have always marketed their browser using similar tactics--CDROMs, bundling with other products and ISPs, etc.--with one exception: Netscape tried, for a while, to peddle Nagivator as shareware. Which, as a practical matter, is the same as giving it away, since on the honor system the number of people who send in the money never rises above single-digit percentages. What AOL has to do is make a "what if?" case, arguing that without Microsoft's "interference" they could have grown Nagivator into a real commercial product that people would pay real money for. Tough to do, after the 4.0 debacle, when Netscape "ruled the desktop" and a bad case of hubris led their programmers to just phone it in, resulting in a sloppy and bug-riddled Nagivator 4.0. People switched to IE in droves at that point. Netscape brought failure on themselves, and ensured the success of IE.

It'll be interesting to see what your letter looks like when it's published. I gave up writing letters to the Murky because of clearly malicious editing. I'd write a reasoned discourse, with a premise, evidence and logic in the middle, and a conclusion; but they'd rip out the middle, leaving me to, apparently, make wild and unfounded assertions. They edit for sensationalism, not objectivity or clarity. Good luck!

--Robert