Perhaps the best example of the negative effect of closed systems on companies is Microsoft and Internet Explorer 6. Microsoft arrived late to the start of the Internet explosion, and when they did, they used their market power to convince large numbers of developers to create web applications that relied on Internet Explorer. This hurt Microsoft years down the road as they released later versions of the Windows operating systems. Since so many enterprises were stuck in an older version of IE that isn’t supported in current versions of Windows, adoption of Microsoft’s subsequent operating systems has been much slower. Today, Microsoft is now spending considerable money and effort collaborating with open source communities, marking a significant change in strategy.
