# The Great Browser War of the Nineties **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 17, 2009, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-browser-war-of-the-nineties/489718 "2009-03-17T03:46:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Anaglyph](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Anaglyph](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaglyph)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2009, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-browser-war-of-the-nineties/489718/21 "2009-03-17T14:04:36Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > It’s interesting that the one browser that continued to charge for its software back during the browser wars is still going strong: Opera. Which is clearly the most innovative browser out there (Firefox cribs all its best ideas from them). Alas, no one designs for it, so there can be problems. > > Netscape started out charging; if you got it free that was because it was paid for by your ISP. Once MSIE came along, they realized they had to give it away, too, and it wrecked havoc with their business. Actually, it was around Netscape 4 when Netscape was bought by AOL when it started charging. before, Netscape Navigator was free. After AOL took over Netscape, Mozilla was split off to continue the free version. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2009, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-browser-war-of-the-nineties/489718/22 "2009-03-17T14:13:27Z")
Netscape (Navigator) is still around beyond Firefox in the form of AOL’s “proprietary” browser, for the (few) people who still use AOL and the AOL Desktop. ---
**Author:** ![Blaster\_Master](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/cab0a1/32.png) [@Blaster\_Master](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blaster_Master)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2009, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-browser-war-of-the-nineties/489718/23 "2009-03-17T14:29:58Z")
> [@Hari\_Seldon](#): > > I never did understand why it was important to MS to “win” a war over free software and I still don’t. This was touched on upthread, but I want to add more to it because I think it’s important to understanding it. Compare Internet Explorer, not to other Microsoft products like Word or Excel, but products like Word Viewer, which is also free (though I’m not even sure if it’s still out there. The point was, that whoever won the browser war would subsequently have the deciding hand in developing the language that that browser used and, thus, could control the tools used to develop the web. So, while many products were using the open standard and charging something for their browser, Microsoft came up with the brilliant idea of giving out their product for free to run the others out of business. Once they got an overwhelming marketshare, when new technology would be developed, they would be able to determine how it was implemented and, thus, be the only ones with the tools that could add those features to websites. That is, they realized that by giving up on the $20 or so from the consumer, they could charge webdevelopers TONS more money for tools, updates, and support. Besides, as has also been mentioned, they started incorporating Internet Explorer into Windows, so, in a roundabout way, when you bought that version of windows, you were paying for IE anyway. But that’s why the anti-trust suit against Microsoft was such a big deal because they were leveraging their control in one market to get a stranglehold on another. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2009, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-browser-war-of-the-nineties/489718/24 "2009-03-17T16:05:17Z")
> [@Bluffcityguy](#): > > Some of us still do. I want my data on my local computer where it’s accessible to me regardless of whether the network is up or down. > > Since the one fundamental law of the universe is Murphy’s, it’s occurred _way_ too often in my life that I’ll have a desperate project that needs to get done yesterday, and the only way I can get it done is via a web-based application, and that’s the very moment that the network crashes and simply can’t be brought up until the deadline for my project is past. > > Whereas, I’ve _NEVER_ had to wait for my local copy of Excel to come back online. > > 😃 > > Cheers, > > bcg I know exactly what you mean, when I first started telecommuting, we were having remote server issues and I would have these immense 10K line spreadsheets so first thing in the morning I would email myself the spreadsheet at the home email address, in case the work server went down. I could pretty much pick it up on my personal copy of office, and when the server came back up i could email and merge the 2 spreadsheets and keep working without having lot time or data. ---
**Author:** ![davekhps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@davekhps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davekhps)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2009, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-browser-war-of-the-nineties/489718/25 "2009-03-17T17:46:28Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > At the time the concept of the “Net computer” was still very much alive - Larry Ellison went so far as to say that a PC with installations of software on its own hard drive was “stupid” and would soon be dead. That turned out to to be not such a great prediction but that is what people were thinking the computer would turn into. RickJay-- does your IE allow you to access Google? 🙂 > **[Google Workspace](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Apps)** > > Google Workspace (formerly G Suite and Google Apps) is a collection of cloud computing, productivity and collaboration tools, software and products developed and marketed by Google. It consists of Gmail, Contacts, Calendar, Meet and Chat for communication; Drive for storage; and the Google Docs Editors suite for content creation. An Admin Panel is provided for managing users and services. Depending on edition Google Workspace may also include the digital interactive whiteboard Jamboard and Th... > **[Cloud computing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing)** > > Cloud computing is defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on demand". It is commonly referred to as "the cloud". > In 2011, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) identified five "essential characteristics" for cloud systems. Below are the exact definitions according to NIST: > By 202... > **[Netbook](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netbook)** > > A netbook is a class of small-sized and inexpensive laptops; the term was used throughout the late 2000s and early 2010s, designed mostly as a means of accessing the Internet and being significantly less expensive than full-sized laptops with lower or cut-down specifications. > At their inception in late 2007, as smaller-than-typical laptop computers optimized for low weight and low cost, netbooks began appearing without certain then-standard laptop features (such as an optical drive), and with... Ellison may be/is a jackass, but in this respect, he was a visionary: cloud computing may not be THE future, but it most definitely is A future. It just took a while to get here. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-browser-war-of-the-nineties/489718/26 "2009-03-23T03:33:40Z")
thanks for all the comments, folks. This comment from **RickJay** , with **davekhps’** response, helped me the most to understand it: [QUOTE=RickJay] At the time the concept of the “Net computer” was still very much alive - Larry Ellison went so far as to say that a PC with installations of software on its own hard drive was “stupid” and would soon be dead. That turned out to to be not such a great prediction but that is what people were thinking the computer would turn into. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-browser-war-of-the-nineties/489718/27 "2009-03-23T04:03:01Z")
> [@](#): > > Ellison may be/is a jackass, but in this respect, he was a visionary: cloud computing may not be THE future, but it most definitely is A future. It just took a while to get here. If by “a while”, you mean “1970”. We’ve developed well past that point by now. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-browser-war-of-the-nineties/489718/28 "2009-03-23T05:17:32Z")
It’s amazing what’s changed in the last decade or so. Here’s a couple of paragraphs from the _Newsweek_ article alluded to by the OP: > [@](#): > > EVEN THOSE TECHNO-SAVVY few who thought they understood the balance of power between companies like Microsoft, Netscape and America Online found themselves, at least temporarily, in a vertigo of confusion last week. The trouble came with apparently conflicting reports of deals cut between the three firms. On Monday America Online, the biggest commercial online service, agreed to license software made by Netscape, the start-up company currently setting standards for the Internet while obsessing Wall Street with its roller-coaster stock price. Everybody assumed this meant that AOL’s 5 million customers would be surfing the World Wide Web with Netscape’s Navigator **browser, the tool that lets you hop around the Net with simple clicks of a computer mouse**. But the very next day AOL’s chairman, Steve Case, teaming up with Microsoft’s towheaded leader, Bill Gates, explained that the Netscape deal was relatively limited. Instead, it would be Microsoft’s browser, **the Internet Explorer** , that would have the honor of being integrated into the AOL system. (Those wired-up AOLers who want to surf with Netscape can do so, but they must replace Explorer with a downloaded copy of Navigator.) > > \ > > The raging browser competition may determine the ultimate rulership of the Internet. “Browser share is important to us,” says Microsoft’s Internet general manager Brad Chase. Understatement alert! The company’s main goal these days is integrating the Explorer with its Windows operating system, then getting millions of people to adopt it; this will ensure continued life for Windows as the computing world increasingly becomes Net-oriented. But currently the **Netscape Navigator is the king of cyberspace, claiming 70 percent of the market**. The 'scapers are so far ahead that when pundits talk about “the Bill Gates of the Internet,” they mean Marc Andreessen, the twentysomething cofounder of Netscape. The AOL deal may help change that perception, not so much because of the deal’s outcome, but because of the way it underlines Microsoft’s self-described “hard core” effort to win this critical market, including a willingness to exploit its unparalleled resources as the ruler of desktop. > > Stephen Levy, “Blood in the Browser War,” _Newsweek_, 3/25/96, Vol. 127 Issue 13, p. 44. Bolding mine. Back then, they still called IE "the Internet Explorer, " and they also felt the need to describe a browser as a “tool that lets you hop around the Net with simple clicks of a computer mouse.” ---
**Author:** ![RaftPeople](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/6f9a4e/32.png) [@RaftPeople](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RaftPeople)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-browser-war-of-the-nineties/489718/29 "2009-03-23T15:12:54Z")
> [@davekhps](#): > > Ellison may be/is a jackass, but in this respect, he was a visionary: cloud computing may not be THE future, but it most definitely is A future. It just took a while to get here. I don’t want to take anything away from Larry Ellison because he’s clearly a smart business man, but the idea that it was a pain in the ass to administer software on each PC was known by everyone in the industry long before Larry started talking about the network station. ---
**Author:** ![HorseloverFat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8e8cbc/32.png) [@HorseloverFat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HorseloverFat)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-browser-war-of-the-nineties/489718/30 "2009-03-23T15:20:38Z")
I really doubt it. Microsoft’s revenue generators are Windows and Office, not to mention their assortment of server products, especially Exchange. Lets say the industry standardized on Netscape. The MS revenue generators would have been largely unaffected. I guess there’s an argument to be made that if NS won then IE would be ignored, but considering MS’s industry push and large install base, whatever plugins or advances made in NS would quickly find their way into IE. I doubt anything would have change. Both companies seemed intolerant of web standards and were aggressively developing proprietary extensions. ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-browser-war-of-the-nineties/489718/31 "2009-03-23T15:48:51Z")
> [@Ximenean](#): > > So for a couple of years [Microsoft] had this attitude that if you could run a browser in any old operating system you liked, they were screwed. In the long run, they were probably right, but they underestimated the timescale drastically. I mean, nowadays, you can sorta kinda do most things in a web browser. But people still seem to like having full-blown OSes and the heavyweight apps that they support. **slaphead** ’s comment is pretty accurate: Microsoft worked very hard to limit the damage the web could do to their business, by making Internet Explorer just a little better than Netscape (and just incompatible enough) and then, when they had the 80% or so market share, they more or less stopped development on IE, halting adoption of improved standardized (that is, **portable** ) web technology for years. And where they saw an actual use for “real” online applications, they pushed their own standard for plugins, which was more or less impossible to run on anything but Windows. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-browser-war-of-the-nineties/489718/32 "2009-03-23T15:58:16Z")
Yes, this was an attempt by Microsoft to stop any development of a desktop competitor. Microsoft wasn’t really playing for the web interface - they were preventing anybody from making an OS-neutral cover which could run programs above. It wasn’t Netscape they cared about, but rather what it might become. They later kneecapped Java in the same way. Today, of course, MS might just buy out the company or let it play its gimmicks. Strictly speaking, of course, that wouldn’t have been the end fo their businessness, because you can theoretically put any number of increasingly-annoying “layers” onto your computer. (The Hardware, the OS, the Browser, the Java… ) but it wasn’t really going to help them. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-browser-war-of-the-nineties/489718/33 "2009-03-23T16:22:18Z")
The Browser Wars ended in 2001 when MSIE won. (This coincides with the last update of MSIE prior to Firefox, version 6.0.) But its victory was incomplete because it didn’t allow MS to dictate standards to the rest of the Internet, and it certainly didn’t lock other browsers out of the Web. Embrace and Extend, the strategy where MS embraces a standard and then encumbers it with nonstandard extensions to lock out competition, failed totally. Firefox is a whole new conflict that has more to do with how MS reacts to Open Source and software that can’t be bought because it isn’t owned by a company or, indeed, any single entity. About new markets: Do any of the common handheld Internet-capable computers run Windows? _That_ is already the new market, and MS hasn’t made any significant showing. (In fact, Symbian is the most dominant contender in that arena.) ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-browser-war-of-the-nineties/489718/34 "2009-03-23T17:49:04Z")
> [@Anaglyph](#): > > Actually, it was around Netscape 4 when Netscape was bought by AOL when it started charging. before, Netscape Navigator was free. > > After AOL took over Netscape, Mozilla was split off to continue the free version. Uh, no. Before MSIE, Netscape was always a paid program (at least, for most users – it may have been for colleges), maybe about $30 as a stand alone. ISPs often would bundle it as part of the service, paying Netscape out of your subscription. MSIE forced Netscape to become free to all. OTOH, Mozilla WAS Netscape – the internal name for the program. ---
**Author:** ![Deeg](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/deeg/32/2955_2.png) [@Deeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deeg)\ **Post date:** [March 23, 2009, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-browser-war-of-the-nineties/489718/35 "2009-03-23T17:50:48Z")
If I recall, another point of the browser war was to control the server-side software (this was before Apache became the standard). Whoever could dominate the browser war could then introduce proprietary changes to their web-server and dominate the server market as well. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2009, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-browser-war-of-the-nineties/489718/36 "2009-03-24T01:15:37Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > MSIE forced Netscape to become free to all. > > OTOH, Mozilla WAS Netscape – the internal name for the program. These are both absolutely true, and they lay the groundwork for understanding where Firefox comes from: In 1998, Netscape knew it was losing the Browser Wars. It also knew that if MS was allowed to win totally, the market for Netscape servers would dry up totally and the entire Netscape corporation would no longer be sustainable. So it did the Hail Mary of all Hail Marys and released the source code of the Netscape browser package under an Open Source licence. The internal name for Netscape had always been Mozilla (“It’s spelled ‘Netscape’ but pronounced Mozilla”, according to the development team.) so that’s what the Open Source project and product was called. That is so important partially because it proved to the business world that Open Source could be a valid business model, just like it was in the 1960s and 1970s, and that it could be used to avoid total vendor lock-in. History has validated both of these positions. But Mozilla had problems: The source code wasn’t the best, leading to a large, balky, and unstable browser that languished in an unfinished state for far too long. I used Mozilla under both Windows and Linux in the late 1990s and I didn’t really like it or its memory-hungry ways. That lead, in the early 2000s, to Firefox being spun off from the Mozilla project as a very simple, very lightweight standalone browser. And it was good. And it was popular. And lo if MS didn’t feel a fire under its ass for the first time in years. 😉 These days, Firefox has a marketshare substantial enough the majority of web designers _can’t_ develop to MSIE alone. (Yes, maybe you can. You aren’t a majority. You’re one person.) Moreover, the popularity of Firefox has forced MS to upgrade MSIE for the first time since 2001. MSIE 7 isn’t Firefox and it’s a long way from being Firefox (no ad-blocking, no Javascript blocking, none of the other Add-Ins) but it _is_ more standards-compliant, meaning it’ll work in websites designed by people who don’t especially care about MS or MSIE. _That_ means lock-in will never happen, at least for the foreseeable future. And there was much rejoicing. ---
**Author:** ![CaveMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cavemike/32/16379_2.png) [@CaveMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaveMike)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2009, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-browser-war-of-the-nineties/489718/37 "2009-03-24T05:43:30Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > About new markets: Do any of the common handheld Internet-capable computers run Windows? _That_ is already the new market, and MS hasn’t made any significant showing. (In fact, Symbian is the most dominant contender in that arena.) MS has Windows Mobile that attempts to compete with Symbian. They also have various versions of Embedded Windows XP which shows up in a surprising number of places (gaming [gambling] consoles, ATMs, car computers, etc.). I don’t really know what their market share is, although it seems to be growing. Of course, there is the XBox which was a market they entered and found success in (for certain definitions of success). ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2009, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-browser-war-of-the-nineties/489718/38 "2009-03-24T05:54:03Z")
> [@CaveMike](#): > > MS has Windows Mobile that attempts to compete with Symbian. They also have various versions of Embedded Windows XP which shows up in a surprising number of places (gaming [gambling] consoles, ATMs, car computers, etc.). I don’t really know what their market share is, although it seems to be growing. I was focusing entirely on _handheld_ devices, not ATMs or video gambling, and that likely skews the percentages. > [@](#): > > Of course, there is the XBox which was a market they entered and found success in (for certain definitions of success). The XBox mainly succeeded in showing the world that even when MS controlls the hardware and the software, determined people are still going to get through the security and do what they want with the system. It kind of takes the luster out of their whole Palladium initiative. ---
**Author:** ![CaveMike](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cavemike/32/16379_2.png) [@CaveMike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CaveMike)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2009, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-browser-war-of-the-nineties/489718/39 "2009-03-24T15:34:01Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > I was focusing entirely on _handheld_ devices, not ATMs or video gambling, and that likely skews the percentages. ATM and gambling were examples. If you don’t want to include them in your point, then don’t. But Windows Mobile and Embedded XP are Microsoft’s OS for “handheld Internet-capable computers run Windows”. Market share for Windows Mobile is around 12% compared to Symbian’s 47%. Microsoft’s market share is not all that great considering iPhone’s is around 10% and has only been out a few years. Microsoft did get into the PDA and SmartPhone market early. They competed very well against Palm, who had the entire market to themselves. Frankly, I think Microsoft’s success had more to do with Palm’s meltdown than anything else. ---
**Author:** ![HorseloverFat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8e8cbc/32.png) [@HorseloverFat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HorseloverFat)\ **Post date:** [March 24, 2009, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-browser-war-of-the-nineties/489718/40 "2009-03-24T16:02:44Z")
\>OTOH, Mozilla WAS Netscape – the internal name for the program. Right, it stands for Mosaic Killer. Mosaic was the first real browser that displayed images inline. It was the first browser I used and it was free. Andreeson left UofI to start Netscape to make a non-free browser and to add proprietary extensions to html. MS competed with them and forced them to release NS for free when they realized no one wanted to pay for a browser. Whats ignored is that Mosaic was free and the world could have standardized on it, but instead the world went with a commercial route. Ironically, it took MS to give us a free browser again. NS is just a business, nothing more. All it did was reluctantly give up its code when it realized it wasnt marketable, thus the Mozilla project, which was a bloaty mess almost strictly for unix users, and the much later Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox product which is alive today. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-browser-war-of-the-nineties/489718.md?page=1)