Introducing The Hoover Operating System
By Michael Floyd
Though you may not remember his name, you've likely spent countless hours at the water cooler discussing his ruling. His name is Thomas Penfield Jackson and he is the U.S. District Court judge that issued the recent restraining order preventing Microsoft from forcing OEMs to load Internet Explorer onto Windows desktops. The problem for the Redmond company is that the ruling came swiftly and was extended to cover "successor products." Microsoft had hoped to delay any such rulings until after shipping the next version of its operating environment, Windows 98. It's no secret that the Windows 98 user interface will be more browser like. It's also reasonable to expect the new operating environment to include network-enabled features. So, the strategy was that because the browser would be part of this new OS, the browser issue would be rendered moot.
All of this jockeying raises the question, "What is a browser?" Part of the current definition is that it's a portal, or window to the Web. Another part of the definition is that it's an application. But the anticipated features of Windows 98 demonstrate the advantages of being an operating-system developer -- it allows you to add software components as features of the operating system. And it is this strategy that will potentially change the definition of the browser. While it might still involve a user interface, it may no longer be a standalone application.
I'm tempted to dub Windows "the Hoover of operating systems."
