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A-M$: Recent Microsoft Behavior



  Found at:
  www.macosrumors.com
  however, it will be placed on:
  www.macosrumors.com/archive107.shtml
  on December 2 and the following days.
  
  Evidence of anti-competitive efforts by Microsoft in Internet products....?
  
                After sifting through over 1,200 messages sent in by readers
  over the past several days since Rumors ran with an update
                story on the topic of possible efforts by Microsoft to develop
  ways to underhandedly build market share for its Internet
                Explorer (MSIE) and Internet Information Server (IIS) Products,
  the conclusions seem inescapable: Microsoft appears to
                have indeed implemented at least two ways in which it can make
  other companies' and organizations' web browsers and
                servers seem slower and less compatible, when in fact it may be
  Microsoft's own products causing the problems in a
                fashion that is extremely suspicious.
  
                      Now, before Microsoft rains legal Death from Above upon
  us, we must say that no hard evidence of these anti-competitive
                      functions in MSIE and the IIS server can be truly had
  without reverse-engineering the products or obtaining the source code
                      to the products, neither of which have been done at
  present. What information we do have is simply speculation on what
                      appear to be the facts based on a preponderance of reader
  reaction and experience with the products in question. We're simply
                      relating the contents of a large volume of recent e-mail,
  and making limited conclusions from the information contained in
                      them. We welcome reactions from our readers and from
  Microsoft.
  
                With that said.... The reaction from our readers was
  overwhelming. One Thousand, Two Hundred and Twenty-Eight of
                our readers wrote in about this topic in particular -- and, out
  of that huge a pool, only about forty had something to say
                other than that they had experienced the same problems we had
  spoken of (Microsoft being the only browser which
                consistently had problems downloading Netscape products from
  the Web when cookies or specific Javascripts were
                involved, yet not at any other site), or had evidence to relate
  regarding previous rumors of Microsoft's IIS server giving
                clear preference to its own MSIE browser over all others.
  
                Out of the 1,228 readers who wrote in, approximately 850 had
  had a similar experience with MSIE causing problems of
                all descriptions when attempting to download Netscape Navigator
  or Communicator, virtually any version, from the Web
                (directly connecting to Netscape FTP servers appears to be
  problem-free, although that means little). Here's an excellent
                example:
  
                      After reading your article so much clicked into place. A
  while back, I had DL'd a copy of IE3.01 to use when I preview my
                      HTML (I do a lot of web work). After a while, Netscape
  went corrupt (my fault, shutting down manually and stuff), and I
                      had to try to download it using IE. After a few hours of
  trying and failing, trying and failing (this over our T-1 connection)
                      for one of maybe ten totally different reasons, I gave up
  and tried sifting through the Netscape FTP servers with Fetch,
                      which finally worked.
  
                      I have now trashed IE and hope that the DoJ nails MS to
  the wall. This is just BS. What do you want to bet that Nav. went
                      corrupt in the first place from that bug that people keep
  talking about where after installing MSIE, Netscape starts getting
                      messed up?
  
                More insidious, however, were the stories of Microsoft's IIS
  Web server handling incoming connections by responding
                to queries from MSIE before any other browser:
  
                      A friend and I, both long-time Apple, Microsoft (yeah,
  yeah) and Linux developers, read your article and decided to sit down
                      and try out MSIE, Navigator 4.03, Lynx (on Linux 2.x),
  MacLynx, OmniWeb 3.0b3 (on Rhapsody Dev. Release), and a
                      copy of Mosaic, and connect to two servers set up on our
  local network (and later, across the Internet, about four hops):
                      MS's IIS latest final release, and Apache 1.0.5, both
  running on Pentium 200MMX's with 96mb of RAM and Fast/Wide
                      SCSI-3 drives.
  
                      What happened? Well, by using our router's monitoring
  utilities and a little packet tracking hack we whipped up (definitely
                      not all our own work), we watched the browsers connecting
  repeatedly (using scripts we wrote for all the apps on the Mac
                      OS, and manually with Lynx and OmniWeb). MSIE got packet
  replys before all the others from the IIS server, every time
                      the server had requests from several browsers incoming at
  virtually the exact same time. When we tried it with
                      Apache...results were pretty close for all the browsers,
  although Lynx seemed to have a small advantage there (could have
                      been the speed of the machine it was on, a Quad Pentium
  Pro <g>).
  
                      Something's rotten in Denmark.
  
                All in all, the information received by Rumors does not suggest
  that the claims of possible anti-competitive behavior on
                Microsoft's part are groundless. In fact, when two Microsoft
  employees who wish to remain anonymous read the original
                article, they commented simply, "We've noticed the same things.
  Around here, though, you learn to ignore that kind of
                thing and keep your eyes on your own monitor. Sometimes it
  feels more like we're working at the CIA, instead of a
                software company."
  
                Copies of the most poignant messages are being passed on to
  legal authorities through a third party.