Windows Computing In The Late 90's (Microsoft Goes Nuclear: The Internet And The First Browser War)

Microsoft Goes Nuclear: The Internet And The First Browser War

One time, I ran across this 500 page book about the Internet that was published in 1994. It was interesting to see what PC users prioritized when it came to the Internet back at that time. It seems that most of that book covered email. There was also a very sizeable section about FTP followed by a smaller section about the Gopher protocol. However, the technology that would eventually define the Internet was covered in roughly 40-50 pages. The World Wide Web was a small bleep on a massive radar that was consumed with mostly email and FTP. While the WWW got a big break with the release of the Mosaic web-browser, it's stake wasn't exactly guaranteed either as the Gopher protocol, which was mostly like the WWW minus images, still had a massive following though a huge stretch of 94. It wasn't until late in that year that it would be a given that the WWW, through the use of the HTML programming language, would dominate. 

It would be natural to assume that there would be strong market potential for web technologies. Thus, one of the developers who worked on Mosaic at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champagne, Marc Anderson; left so he could strike out on his own and create a tech company that would release its own web-browser. Called Netscape, it became an instant hit. Netscape became the dominant web-browser on any platform that it was released on. On IBM's OS/2, Netscape would dominate on the Macintosh and various UNIX systems as well. And of course, Netscape would be a runaway success on Windows.

The rise of the WWW caught Bill Gates off guard. It kind of ironic that the person most surprised about the rise of the Internet was a tech visionary of all people. However, he needed to respond. Creating a web-engine takes time. Trident, Microsoft's next generation web-engine, wouldn't be ready for some time. Until then, Microsoft licensed out the Mosaic source code, made tweaks to it, and released it as IE 1.0, which was bundled to the Windows 95 Plus Pack released in early 1996. The release was largely panned and mockingly called Mosaic Plus. 

IE 1.0 couldn't hold a candle to Netscape, which was at version 2 by this point. Microsoft quickly followed up with IE 2.0, which was better received. It was bundled with Windows NT 4.0. The first release of Internet Explorer with the completed Trident engine was 3.0, released in 1997. This was around the time that Microsoft's fortunes started to change. IE started to gain a sizable amount of users. IE 3.0 was the first version of IE that was feature-wise on par with Netscape. Yet, within a short-time, Netscape version 4 was released, and Microsoft had to play catch-up again. Eventually, IE 4 was released. This was the most controversial version of IE and for good reason too.

It's War!

Microsoft knew that if they wanted to kill Netscape's chances of success, they needed to integrate IE into Windows. In fact, Microsoft was doing this with the beta releases of NT as well. However, Microsoft had an easier time incorporating IE into the followup version of Windows 95, code-named Memphis, which would be released as Windows 98.

With this release, IE was no longer a browser, but a "OS component". Not surprisingly, IE's market-share exploded. Netscape quickly filed a anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft. One of the things that has to be noted is that in this country, monopoly's are legal (unfortunately). At the same time, it's against the law for a monopoly to abuse it's position, which is what Microsoft was doing here. 

Microsoft had a monopoly within the desktop PC market. x86 PC's made up over 90% of the home market, with all the other platform combined (including the Apple Macintosh platform) making less than 10%. It was around this time that Microsoft bailed out Apple as well with the Redmond giant promising to support the Macintosh by releasing IE on that platform along with Office and Windows Media Player (Is it really "Windows" Media Player if its running on a Mac?). Microsoft was in the position to nuke Netscape, and they were going to make the most of it. With its vast war chess, Microsoft could simply outspend and out-hire Netscape.  

It didn't help though that Netscape itself was in a very vulnerable position. Netscape, in supporting the latest web technologies, became very bloated. Netscape took awhile to load pages, and it would crash on a semi-regular basis. To deal with this issue, Netscape decided to make the Netscape code open-source and created a nonprofit, the Mozilla Foundation, to manage that code. When the Mozilla developers examined the code, they came to a stark realization, it would take years to rewrite Netscape and make it optimal. Sure enough, it did take years, but eventually, their work would bare fruit. That fruit would become the greatest browser ever, Mozilla Firefox. That is a story for another day.

However, Netscape needed a fast, light-weight browser NOW. This wasn't good with IE constantly improving. However, the very late 90's was a very odd time in the browser space indeed. It was the only time in history that IE was actually a very decent browser. In my opinion, the Mac port of IE was even better than on the PC. IE loaded pages quicker than Netscape and felt more stable and more responsive. However, this still doesn't justify Microsoft's action in the marketplace. IE won the first browser war because Microsoft abused it's monopoly position, not because of fair competition in the marketplace. 

Microsoft's "ethically questionable" business tactics have been occasionally explored on this blog. Microsoft's change there approach to OS/2 following the "IBM/Microsoft Divorce" around 1990/1991. At that time, many people sided with Microsoft because IBM was seen as a visual representation of the 1950's military industrial complex with old geysers in fancy suits plotting their quest for world domination while Microsoft was seen as this cool, hip company led by a army of programmers wearing jeans and t-shirts that were out to make a dent in the universe. Essentially, Microsoft was seen as the new kids on the block.

Yet, by the time of the first browser war, people's perceptions of Microsoft have largely changed much more for the negative. When the DOJ did there fact-findings to make there case, it was discovered that Microsoft strong-armed the OEMs into signing less-than-favorable agreements if they wanted Windows at a discount. Microsoft could make such demands knowing that the OEMs like Compaq and HP would have to bend because the demand for Windows as so great. Microsoft was extremely harsh to IBM. One could almost liken Microsoft to a drug-dealer in that regard. 

In there quest to dominate the desktop market, Microsoft became IBM. Netscape was that new upstart ready to stake its claim in the world while Microsoft became that evil empire akin to the Soviet Union or Putin's Russia. 

This is one of those situations where Netscape could have done everything right, and they still would have lost simply because Microsoft controlled the marketplace. This is similar to what happened with IBM with OS/2. Yes, like IBM, Netscape made many blunders in the marketplace that certainly didn't help the situation. However, Netscape was always going to fail simply because Microsoft ordained it. Microsoft could hire far more employees than what Netscape could afford. Microsoft could throw far more resources into IE than what Netscape could ever do with there browser. Microsoft had the capability to give away there browser for free because they knew that they could afford there loses. Netscape couldn't. Netscape was dead by 2002-2003. 

When Villains Try To Paint Themselves As The Victims Freedom To Innovate Network (Microsoft) : https://web.archive.org/web/20001018182944/http://microsoft.com/freedomtoinnovate/default.htm

Internet Explorer is EVIL! (Toastytech) : http://toastytech.com/evil/index.html

MICROSOFT IS GUILTY!!!! (Toastytech) : http://toastytech.com/evil/fof.html

The Register - MS, DoJ lawyers out in force for IBM witness : https://www.theregister.com/1999/06/04/ms_doj_lawyers_out/

Finding The Facts - The United States of America Vs. Microsoft Corp. : http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/~richard/findfact.html

BBC News - IBM chief: Microsoft killed OS/2 : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/368660.stm

MS GOT MAD, THEN EVEN, WITH IBM (Wired) : https://www.wired.com/1999/05/ms-got-mad-then-even-with-ibm/

OS/2 1990: Breakup (Wikipedia) : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2#1990:_Breakup

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