Firefox market share bounces back 6683

Kind of a negative spin on the facts, ian! Microsoft was no different than any other company in creating software, setting a price, and promoting it to the public. Ideas, unless they are sufficiently novel to warrant a patent, are fair game. "Let's make a word processor! Let's make a microprocessor OS! Let's make a graphics UI!" are all valid ideas open to anyone to invent. You COLA folk are always seeking "choice" and "compebreastion" it seems and so how can you accuse anyone who enters the game of "stealing others ideas"? It is only stealing, it seems, if Microsoft enters the market segment. If Microsoft does the same thing, they are said to be stealing and copying some poor innovator's work. If an OSS group does the same thing, they are making the software "free" and "supporting standards". You are a bunch of hypocrites, AFAICT! LOL!!!

Your notion of "lock-in" is just as laughable, ian. There is not a single Microsoft format with any popular usage level, that has not been duplicated in some other commercial and-or OSS application. The lock-in occurs, as I pointed out, due to a satisfactory business relationship with Microsoft over a period of time, not by some technical blockage due to a secret format or API. You folk haven't a clue as to what to do with a customer. Microsoft will provide a beneficial solution and sell him on it. You will do a dance and bore him to sleep with a lot of techno-gibberish.

Microsoft has not taken a weapon to anyone to "kill them off", which presumably means convert their customers into Microsoft product users. They have done that by appealing to the customers and making MS wares more attractive. Period. The user will buy what he wants to buy. He doesn't want the stuff your side is offering.