"Our analysis focused on Microsoft's first two internal browser development projects, comparing their performance to a sample of Internet software projects completed at the same time. We discovered that Microsoft's projects exhibited significantly higher productivity than the sample average. Furthermore, we found that the resulting products were rated as equal to or higher in quality than competitive offerings. These results often surprise people, given the perceived wisdom that incumbents have difficulty responding to major technological changes. "

WTF

Unless I am missing the point, MS developed a browser for blackbird that never came to market & thus nobody ever saw it apart from demos of MSN as they envisgaed it, back in 1995.

MS 2nd Browser was stolen by decietful marketing from Spyglass - "Give us an exclusive license & we will pay you x% of all sales from now & forever" - poor idiots spyglass never dreamed that MS of all companies, would give their product away & thus never pay royalties. (Yet another famous example of fools thinking they could do serious & honest business with the thief's in chief).

During the early days Netscape was always ahead of MSIE until they started giving it away & both products had reached Ver 3.x levels & Netscape realised they couldn't compete with an MS freebie - also MS made bloody sure by defying Judge Jackson & integrating MSIE & claiming Windows would break if the intergration was reversed. That was the coup-de-grace bullet in the head to Netscape & anyone like them.

I don't dispute the professors praise of early MS developments & their ActiveX component approach (ideal for use in LANs). VB was a winner & MS OLE & ActiveX controls did help MS & MS developers to create a windows app industry but from about 1998 on - a lot of MS innovation was directed at 'cutting off the air supply' of other innovators by using every dirty trick & deed in the book (plus a few new innovations at bastardry and aggression).

Overall the article is true up until MS stopped innovating & switched to murder as a means of protecting their now sluggish & bloated technologies especially in relation to light weight controls & widgets that were needed for good web app dev.

Doug Marker