The browser wars!
What is the browser wars? The browser wars points to a period of intense competition between Netscape Navigator and the Goliath Giant “Microsoft”, to see who would come to dominate the browser market in the mid 90’s. Although Microsoft’s IE (Internet Explorer), trailed far behind Netscape during most the browser war period, it eventually took down Netscape in the late 90's.
In early 1989 the world wide web was created, and it consisted of nothing but line after line of boring text. It continued like this for a few years into the 90’s. You really had to be a big time “Geek” to get excited about this, lucky for us one of those “Geeks”, a computer science student, Mark Andreessen had a crazy idea. He imagined a future where everyone would use the web as part of our daily lives. In 1993, Andreessen and a couple of his programming buddies began to work on making the web easier and more user friendly, adding images, pictures, audio, and video capabilities. Andreessen and his pals created Mosiac, this was the worlds first graphical web browser.
Andreessen started off by sending Mosiac to 12 people who had agreed to try it out, soon after that number grew, and in a matter of about 9 months that number was at about a million people. Mosiac was growing in popularity, and fast. This caught the eye of Jim Clark, the former founder of silicon graphics, and he was convinced this was the next big thing. He quickly contacted Mark, telling him he was interested in starting a new software company and if they could get together to talk. Soon after Andreessen and Clark put a team together and began working on what is possibly the beginning of the browser wars.
Although Clark had grasped the idea that the web browser would change the world, most people did not, including the one person you would have expected to get it, the CEO of Microsoft, Bill Gates! Microsoft had controlled the computer industry for almost two decades. Bill Gates wanted to be the most powerful figure in tech, and in 1994 Andreessen and the his team would throw a giant roadblock on Bill Gates dream. Netscape Communications was launched and it was the fastest growing software company the world had ever seen. Soon after came Netscape’s new browser “Navigator”, at this point conflict was pretty much inevitable. This was because the internet age had begun and it had nothing to do with the almighty Microsoft.
Taking the world by storm, Netscape Navigator was all alone in the browser race. The Microsoft team would not sit back and let someone else take all the glory. Gates declared the internet to be the single most important development in computing since the PC and that Netscape was a new competitor born on the internet, and that they needed to match and beat this new competition. Gates got his team together and set up a meeting with the Netscape guys. There is a lot of controversy on what went on in that meeting, Microsoft claims the meeting went well and they just talked about how they could work together in the future, but the Netscape guys claim that was not the case. According to Netscape, Microsoft came in Godfather style and threaten them, they offered them money and pretty much said you either take it or leave it. Of course Netscape did not take the offer.
In December 1995 Bill Gates announced he had Netscape in his sights, Microsoft was getting ready to launch a web browser of its own “Internet Explorer”. This was a move to destroy what Gates saw as a threat. Microsoft’s strategy was to mimic Netscape’s every move, and release version after version of internet explorer, chipping away at Netscape’s lead in the browser market share. Gates had his group of salesmen at his disposal and they had a way of manipulating people into buying their product. It is said that Gates and his men threatened pc manufacturers to stop promoting Netscape, or he would cancel their windows license. Pc’s wouldn’t be in business without that license so they stopped distributing Netscape’s browser.
Microsoft had one last trick up its sleeve, it included Internet Explorer on their windows operating system for free. This was the downfall for Netscape, since it was still a fairly new company it could not afford to give it out for free, and had to charge for its browser. By September 1997 the browser war was over, Microsoft had over 80 percent of the browser users and Netscape was on the ropes. Eventually Netscape was bought out by AOL for $4.2 billion. Microsoft was later sued by the US government for using its windows monopoly, to prevent consumers from accessing Netscape products, and leading them to their doom. Microsoft was found guilty and the judge ordered the company be split into two, later an appeals court decided the verdict was too harsh and rescinded the order to split the company. Gates ended up handing over his position as CEO. And as it currently stands the browser wars is said to be going on right now but with a new Goliath giant known as “Chrome”.
