I am sure a bit of scratching under the surface will show that Internet Exploder is stil part of the OS
It is there in spirit if not in name.
It is. In spirit and name.
We at MS have consistently innovated new ideas and such that we have had to be deliberately understated in our naming conventions so as not to dazzle you with our sheer brillience. As such, the thing that navigates the files on you computer is called "Explorer" - it is the SIAMESE twin of something we call "Trident" which is integrated into a lot of apps that use the OS to render HTML elements of their apps. I know we were naughy, but we only did this because of the Netscape threat.
Aah, the Nestcape threat: It started with those pesky geeks at CERN that craeted a little mindless project and gave the source code away (that slaps me in every capitalist two-face that I have) and that started a snowball that those irritating bastids at Netscape latched on to ... in a Very Big Way. But here at MS, we didn't quite realise what this "browser" thing was, we had no idea what an internet was, and couldn't see the potential impact until they also threw in JavaScript. Then the pieces fell into place, we realised that this could become an Operating System unto itself and had to integrate the next-OS into our existing-OS. Hey, we OWN the OS, no-body is going to take that away from us.
So, getting back to that "Explorer" thing for your files, we then did what Netscape did: made a port of it to also "explore" pages on the internet. But we already had an Explorer, so we couldn't call the new toy "Explorer" too, but we like the name sooo much. It took us 3 years, 21 sub-comittees and a truck load of coffee to come up with that name, so it had to stay.
In these dot-com boom of the ninties, we bought a couple of those internet hob-nob yuppies to tell us a thing or two, and they had the solution: We re-branded and launched the variants:
- File Explorer and
- Internet Explorer
Remeber that I said we liked the name? Well, we liked it soo much we called just about every tool "Explorer"
- System explorer
- Network explorer
-etc.
It got so bad internally that we started dropping the "explorer" bits for the not-so-well-known tools, we then referred to "Network Admin" in "Control Panel" and that solved two birds...
Anyway, you can see the spirit of Explorer has never left, although we've dropped explorer from some of the names, all our explorer toosl are still integrated into the DNA of futuire computer because of the donkey called Trident. (Hey, that's our work-horse, only we are allowed to kick it.) We did good on that note: we integrated the engine of the browser into every app and into the OS itself, so whine all you want about IE6, it's engine is still in the circuit board. And then the USA gov slapped us in the face.
...
But I am sure you are well aware that we are changing those old erronous ways, Open Source is not so bad after all, we even own a couple of our own OSS licences. Bill is gone, Steve is still sweating, life will be good again. But those insignificant Opera people have bloodied our noses over in Europe with a hectic fine (Vista was a nice retalliation-in-kind, wasn't it?), and we're still playing catch-up on the browser wars ... hey, I thought we won the browser wars?!?!? ... We eliminated the Netscape threat.... browser ... Gecko, Webkit ... This is the new Operating System - Oh, my Fruck.
Microsoft has never stopped you from installing another browser. Less people were using Opera before because they didn't know about it. Why is it Microsoft's job to advertise other people's products?
