DaveNet: Sunday, October 26, 1997; by Dave Winer.

Brad Chase on the DOJ Action

Brad Chase, bradc@microsoft.com, is Microsoft's Vice President, Internet Client, Tools Marketing & DRG.

Here are his comments in response to Moral Arguments, 10/23/97.

Brad Chase on the DOJ Action

Just because something is available on other platforms doesn't mean that it isn't integral to the OS. QuickTime is a perfect example of that. So is OLE, Outlook Express, browsers, DCOM etc etc.

The Compaq thing last week is confusing people. We have gotten a lot of feedback from customers that we need to make Windows simpler and more consistent. That is why we feel strongly about making the Windows experience a uniform one. No one would want or expect Apple to have every Mac look and work differently. That makes things hard for customers. No vendor wants to make their products harder for customers. Imagine if every user got a different version of DaveNet and you had no influence over that. It would make it hard for you to make your zine the product you want it to be.

It also makes things harder for developers because they want to count on certain platform features to be on the PCs they are build apps for.

Remember though that we allow any PC manufacturer like Compaq or any customer to customize and build on Windows however they want to. They can add Netscape Navigator or any program they want to and even put it right on the desktop if they want to. We never told them any differently (and in fact the Presario did ship Netscape too for awhile).

So in the end we are achieving a base consistency to make things easier for customers and also giving them flexibility to build on top of our product to make it work however they want to.

Another site

See this page for a link to a speech given by Mr. Chase on 9/30/97, as part of the launch of MSIE 4.0.