How does Micro$oft make money off of IE?

[XZeroII]

Originally posted by: Palek

Originally posted by: MattCo
Microsoft just pads the price of their OS to cover the expenses.

-MC

This man speaks the truth. What other consumer OS costs $100-200 on a student discount? WinXP Pro costs at least $50 more than Win2000, even though the changes were mostly cosmetic. The reason: IE 6 and WMP 9. Simple as that.

Whoa! Where are you buying your stuff from? Windows has remained almost the exact same price even after close to 20 years on the market. How many products can do that? BTW: If it costs you $100-200 with a student discount, you need to have a talk with your technology advisor because you are getting the SCREW. It costs me about $15. Frankly, I don't see why people complain about the price. It costs lots of money to develop that software. Would you rather they charge $50 for the OS, then another $49 for IE (Isn't that what netscape was charging?), then another $25 for WMP, then another $50 for IIS, then another $7 for MSN Msnger, then another $xx for whatever other product? Heck no. Sure, maybe 5% of the population would like it, but most people would rather just pay one flat fee, get everything and be done with it.

You might think it would be great because you would simply use Mozilla instead of IE and not pay the $49. However, you forget that if MS never started making IE free, Mozilla wouldn't exist and there would be no such thing as a (good) free web browser. It's this little thing called cause and effect. Microsoft started a whole sequence of events in motion when it started giving IE away for free.

 

They don't even develop IE anymore outside of security fixes. IE is totally outdated in funtionality compared to almost every other browser.

 

[Cerb]

Firebird has now fixed the big table bug.
As of now, there is no reason to use IE aside from Windows Update.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: XZeroII

Originally posted by: Palek

Originally posted by: MattCo
Microsoft just pads the price of their OS to cover the expenses.

-MC

This man speaks the truth. What other consumer OS costs $100-200 on a student discount? WinXP Pro costs at least $50 more than Win2000, even though the changes were mostly cosmetic. The reason: IE 6 and WMP 9. Simple as that.

Whoa! Where are you buying your stuff from? Windows has remained almost the exact same price even after close to 20 years on the market. How many products can do that? BTW: If it costs you $100-200 with a student discount, you need to have a talk with your technology advisor because you are getting the SCREW. It costs me about $15. Frankly, I don't see why people complain about the price. It costs lots of money to develop that software. Would you rather they charge $50 for the OS, then another $49 for IE (Isn't that what netscape was charging?), then another $25 for WMP, then another $50 for IIS, then another $7 for MSN Msnger, then another $xx for whatever other product? Heck no. Sure, maybe 5% of the population would like it, but most people would rather just pay one flat fee, get everything and be done with it.

You might think it would be great because you would simply use Mozilla instead of IE and not pay the $49. However, you forget that if MS never started making IE free, Mozilla wouldn't exist and there would be no such thing as a (good) free web browser. It's this little thing called cause and effect. Microsoft started a whole sequence of events in motion when it started giving IE away for free.

As long as the standards are open and there is a need, chances are there will be open source software to use.

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: XZeroII

Originally posted by: Palek

Originally posted by: MattCo
Microsoft just pads the price of their OS to cover the expenses.

-MC

This man speaks the truth. What other consumer OS costs $100-200 on a student discount? WinXP Pro costs at least $50 more than Win2000, even though the changes were mostly cosmetic. The reason: IE 6 and WMP 9. Simple as that.

Whoa! Where are you buying your stuff from? Windows has remained almost the exact same price even after close to 20 years on the market. How many products can do that? BTW: If it costs you $100-200 with a student discount, you need to have a talk with your technology advisor because you are getting the SCREW. It costs me about $15. Frankly, I don't see why people complain about the price. It costs lots of money to develop that software. Would you rather they charge $50 for the OS, then another $49 for IE (Isn't that what netscape was charging?), then another $25 for WMP, then another $50 for IIS, then another $7 for MSN Msnger, then another $xx for whatever other product? Heck no. Sure, maybe 5% of the population would like it, but most people would rather just pay one flat fee, get everything and be done with it.

You might think it would be great because you would simply use Mozilla instead of IE and not pay the $49. However, you forget that if MS never started making IE free, Mozilla wouldn't exist and there would be no such thing as a (good) free web browser. It's this little thing called cause and effect. Microsoft started a whole sequence of events in motion when it started giving IE away for free.

no such thing as free. the price we paid for ie was the death of a competitive browser market. MS isn't going to give away new versions of IE anymore. they've stopped work on outlook express altogether.

and, in comparison to the rest of the computer, windows keeps taking a larger and larger chunk of the pie. sure, they can always say that they've kept their pricing the same, but its gotten to the point that on many computers the windows license is the most expensive part.

 

[dullard]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
they dont, but it keeps netscape from making money off of it so it serves its purposes

But Netscape was free too. So they weren't able to make a profit either.

 

Originally posted by: dullard

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
they dont, but it keeps netscape from making money off of it so it serves its purposes

But Netscape was free too. So they weren't able to make a profit either.

Netscape used to cost money before Microsoft introduced IE for free thus killing any need to pay for Netscape.

 

[XZeroII]

Originally posted by: ElFenix

Originally posted by: XZeroII

Originally posted by: Palek

Originally posted by: MattCo
Microsoft just pads the price of their OS to cover the expenses.

-MC

This man speaks the truth. What other consumer OS costs $100-200 on a student discount? WinXP Pro costs at least $50 more than Win2000, even though the changes were mostly cosmetic. The reason: IE 6 and WMP 9. Simple as that.

Whoa! Where are you buying your stuff from? Windows has remained almost the exact same price even after close to 20 years on the market. How many products can do that? BTW: If it costs you $100-200 with a student discount, you need to have a talk with your technology advisor because you are getting the SCREW. It costs me about $15. Frankly, I don't see why people complain about the price. It costs lots of money to develop that software. Would you rather they charge $50 for the OS, then another $49 for IE (Isn't that what netscape was charging?), then another $25 for WMP, then another $50 for IIS, then another $7 for MSN Msnger, then another $xx for whatever other product? Heck no. Sure, maybe 5% of the population would like it, but most people would rather just pay one flat fee, get everything and be done with it.

You might think it would be great because you would simply use Mozilla instead of IE and not pay the $49. However, you forget that if MS never started making IE free, Mozilla wouldn't exist and there would be no such thing as a (good) free web browser. It's this little thing called cause and effect. Microsoft started a whole sequence of events in motion when it started giving IE away for free.

no such thing as free. the price we paid for ie was the death of a competitive browser market. MS isn't going to give away new versions of IE anymore. they've stopped work on outlook express altogether.

and, in comparison to the rest of the computer, windows keeps taking a larger and larger chunk of the pie. sure, they can always say that they've kept their pricing the same, but its gotten to the point that on many computers the windows license is the most expensive part.

Something has to be the most expensive part. As a software engineer myself, I now realize how much work goes into designing an actual working system. Believe me, they deserve their $100 for Windows.

 

[Mermaidman]

IE is not for making money--It's for the consumer's convenience by having everything in one package.

 

[FeathersMcGraw]

Doesn't IE point to MSN as its default web page? That means that page (and its associated advertisers) get views from anyone who isn't savvy or energetic enough to change the default to something else. Not that this guarantees a revenue stream or anything, but the person who controls the portal sure has a better chance of monetizing it than his competitors.

 

[Rob9874]

Originally posted by: edro13

even though IE blows they still dedicate people and resources to developing it

Huh? You DO realize that it holds somewhere around 85% of the market when it comes to browsers, don't you?

That's like saying... Pepsi sucks, yet Pepsi Inc. thinks it's a good idea to develop it!

Yes, but Pepsi charges for their product. If you give your product away for free, it doesn't matter if you have 100% of the market segment, you're still making $0.

However, I think it's not as simple as that. I think it's indirectly related to profit somehow. Same with the WMP, why do they spend money developing that if it's free?

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: XZeroII
Believe me, they deserve their $100 for Windows.

hard to say that in a very monopolistic market. ms has made noises from time to time that they are concerned with the fact that windows is taking a larger chunk, anyway.

 

[Ameesh]

you guys are all stupid, IE is a platform on which MS can push their technologies out on their terms.

 

[kenshorin]

Its all about the market share.

 

[Palek]

Originally posted by: XZeroII

Originally posted by: Palek

Originally posted by: MattCo
Microsoft just pads the price of their OS to cover the expenses.

-MC

This man speaks the truth. What other consumer OS costs $100-200 on a student discount? WinXP Pro costs at least $50 more than Win2000, even though the changes were mostly cosmetic. The reason: IE 6 and WMP 9. Simple as that.

Whoa! Where are you buying your stuff from? Windows has remained almost the exact same price even after close to 20 years on the market. How many products can do that? BTW: If it costs you $100-200 with a student discount, you need to have a talk with your technology advisor because you are getting the SCREW. It costs me about $15. Frankly, I don't see why people complain about the price. It costs lots of money to develop that software. Would you rather they charge $50 for the OS, then another $49 for IE (Isn't that what netscape was charging?), then another $25 for WMP, then another $50 for IIS, then another $7 for MSN Msnger, then another $xx for whatever other product? Heck no. Sure, maybe 5% of the population would like it, but most people would rather just pay one flat fee, get everything and be done with it.

You might think it would be great because you would simply use Mozilla instead of IE and not pay the $49. However, you forget that if MS never started making IE free, Mozilla wouldn't exist and there would be no such thing as a (good) free web browser. It's this little thing called cause and effect. Microsoft started a whole sequence of events in motion when it started giving IE away for free.

Americans are in a very privileged position, then. I live in Japan, and here the student discount price for XP Pro is about $190 and $120 for the vanilla XP. If you're very diligent and search around at online PC vendors, you might come across a business that sells the OEM XP Pro package for $170, but only as a bundle to a piece of hardware, of course. Windows 2000 can be had for about $130. Where did that $40-60 price difference come from? Did the green "Start" button cost that much to design?

And frankly, yes, I would rather pay $100 for the OS instead and spend the extra $70 or so on MY CHOICE of browsing/e-mail/media software. I was never given a choice, however, and so I feel robbed. IE/OE/WMP are worthless pieces of junk to me, so I paid money for a good e-mail client and a real browser, anyway. The fact that most people would rather just pay once for the entire package does not mean that everyone should be forced to do the same, does it? Or are the 10,000 or so programmers at Microsoft so inept that they simply cannot offer a little choice in their OS'es? I like Windows and would like to continue using it, but I would also like to be given some freedom with how I use the it, instead of being forced to pay for MS appendages. It's exactly this kind of bullyish, dirty business practice that is antagonizing more and more of their knowledgeable users, and will eventually result in Microsoft losing the entire professional market (the real source of income) and getting stranded with AOL users as their only customers.

Open source browsers would have come into existence with or without Microsoft and IE, Microsoft simply accelerated the process. Besides, they did not give away IE for "free" to repay the generosity of its loving customers, but to kill off Netscape, and they succeeded.

 

[Indolent]

Originally posted by: FeathersMcGraw
Doesn't IE point to MSN as its default web page? That means that page (and its associated advertisers) get views from anyone who isn't savvy or energetic enough to change the default to something else. Not that this guarantees a revenue stream or anything, but the person who controls the portal sure has a better chance of monetizing it than his competitors.

Yup. There are plenty of people who don't even know they can change the homepage.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Something wrong with your S key?

- M4H

 

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
Something wrong with your S key?

- M4H

That dude has a web page:

http://jacobschatter.blogspot.com/

 

[Pokey007]

Originally posted by: Ameesh
you guys are all stupid, IE is a platform on which MS can push their technologies out on their terms.

That's the best explanation yet!