Why Microsoft Really Hates The Web

"The new browser war may appear to be about the emergence of Mozilla and friends with their polished eye-candy interfaces, but it's really about Microsoft versus the W3C. Internet Explorer is Microsoft's blocking tactic--never to be properly web-compliant, never to give the W3C a day in the sun--and Longhorn technology is the big-stick alternative being built. One of the purposes of Longhorn is to destroy the web as we know it. The web is used to provide a variety of services and communities. Part of the Longhorn strategy is to extract from the web all of the services with any profit model at all: web magazines, auction sites, news, online retailers, and so on. ... It's the presence of standardized data in web content--whether current standards such as XHTML or some yet-unknown future standards, perhaps based on XUL--guaranteeing that the web will remain a global commons, an information highway, and a free marketplace. The alternative is a corporate Diaspora and a tollway. Organizations must wake up to the value of open and manageable standards-based web data, and cease being stupefied by irrelevant popularity arguments. Standardizing data should not be an act of penance; it should be about sustaining communities and markets--ones from which service agendas and profits derive. If organizations don't see the web as a useful global commons into which they can deliver their services, that global commons will vanish as a community and as a marketplace. In this new war, individual action is still important, so choose a standard compliant browser if you value the web, or if your job earns value from it." This is the last section of a six-part article by Nigle McFarlane which has been circling the news for a good number of days now. If you want to really understand why standards are key to the development and evolution of the Web, this essay is a must read.