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A comment on Bill Gates on his last visit with Steve Jobs . Parent comment

Re:Bill Gates on his last visit with Steve Jobs by sharan on Friday January 27, 2012 @06:46AM (#3517952)
> Gates got pissed when he realized he had lost the browser wars

Gates announced his retirement in 2006. At which point IE's world market share was between 85.33% - 90.01%

Hardly what I'd call having lost a war.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

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Re:Bill Gates on his last visit with Steve Jobs by commieneko on Friday January 27, 2012 @02:45PM (#3519831)
The writing was on the wall long before 2006.

Browser marketshare was only one metric for winning. Controlling the way browsers worked and how people used them was much more important. "Embrace, extend, extinguish" never got much farther than the first stage.

What's the point of doing all the work and paying for all the support if you can't control the game?

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Re:Bill Gates on his last visit with Steve Jobs by MatthewPhillips on Friday January 27, 2012 @06:53AM (#3517959)
It's more appropriate to say he lost to the internet. Even by 2006 it was obvious that OS didn't matter any more. Not that I agree with the grandparent.
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Re:Bill Gates on his last visit with Steve Jobs by waitwhat on Friday January 27, 2012 @07:19AM (#3518006)
And post 2007, smartphones have shown that the the OS really does still matter.
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Re:Bill Gates on his last visit with Steve Jobs by WayneDB on Friday January 27, 2012 @11:30AM (#3518826)
The OS has always mattered. Do you really think that all the businesses that run Windows could just switch away from it with no pain? Gimme a break.
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