Glad to see that I can be downgraded into oblivion while I'm away for the weekend.
@Christopher1: I knew they'd done that for MS-DOS vs. PC DOS, but I didn't know they'd also done it for IE. Good to know.
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@[rest]: Quick clarifications. I wasn't trying to say this:
So you want the "option" to pay for IE?
I was trying to say that - at least until recently - IE got installed whether you wanted it to be or not. Even today, Windows 7 installs IE by default for the US vresion, IIRC. Unless perhaps you're an advanced user, you really don't have an obvious option
not to install IE during the standard lay-person Windows 7 install. Not all Windows users are Windows experts, and those are the ones who will "roll down hill" rather than take an extra step to configure an alternative browser.
And as for this:
Option to what? Set another browser as default? Cause that's certainly an option...
Yes it is indeed an option. Today. At one time, it was not an option to set an alternative browser as the default
during the O/S install process. While I haven't seen the "choose-a-browser" install feature made for Europe first-hand, I understand that it is an option today. And again, I was referring to the "roll down hill" behavior of the masses, not frequenters of such tech sites as THG.
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How many of you think MSFT
doesn't want the market and revenue stream that FB currently enjoys? How many of you think their BoDs is happily and peacefully ignoring that space, and telling MSFT not to focus any energy or resources on it?
(To be clear, I'm not trying to M$FT bash and say that they are up to some Macchiavellian, diabolical plan to take over the world. In fact, I suspect they'd do a better job of protecting private information than FB does - just my opinion and you are entitled to your own of course.)
But if you assume that MSFT wants that (FB) space, then what strategy should they employ to try to win it? What obstacles do they need to overcome? What barriers to entry exist? I see the broad dispersion of Skype as being one way to overcome some of those barriers - namely having a large fraction of the global computer / smart phone / tablet user population in possession of user IDs in the same user space (Skype; not Skype + Google Chat/Voice + MSN Messenger / MSFT Live + AIM + Yahoo! IM + XBOX Live + whatever). I find it much harder to believe that MSFT
didn't have some such plan in mind when they bought Skype. Was Skype bought for the intellectual property, the infrastructure, or the user base? That's the core question I'm posing.
If you think my theory is flawed, as I'm sure it is, please poke some holes in it. I could be wrong that MSFT wants the FB space. I could be wrong that Skype is being leveraged in part as a vehicle to achieve that goal. I could be wrong that Skype
can be used to achieve that goal. But at any rate, food for thought. Dine away.