The True Story of the Internet- Browser Wars Part 1

In 1993, the world wide web was sparsely populated by plain pages of text and was primarily used by academic researchers and scientists. Marc Andreessen foresaw a future where the internet was accessible and useable by all people, not just academics, and started to work towards that future with his fellow students at the University of Illinois. Together they created the first graphical web browser called Mosaic, that allowed pictures, videos, and audio to be interacted with in a point-and-click fashion. This openly available software spread quickly and caught the eye of Jim Clark, a bigshot in the Silicon Valley who saw the potential and had the capital to pursue this new web browser program as a business venture. Jim Clark contacted Marc Andreessen and together they recruited student from the University of Illinois to form Netscape Communications. They made a rival of Bill Gates, a giant if not the king of personal computing at the time, and his Microsoft Network, MSN. Microsoft had toppled many other companies in its rise to the top and aggressively sought to keep its place.

On October 13, 1994, building upon Mosaic, Netscape released their new web browser, Navigator, and its popularity was immediate. This disrupted Microsoft’s hold of the personal computing market by providing access to a neutral platform in the World Wide Web, which would circumvent the strict need of using the Microsoft Windows platform. This caused Bill Gates to immediately shift the priorities of the Microsoft to working on competing in the new frontier of the Internet, thus beginning the Browser Wars. Microsoft’s first move was to send an envoy straight into Netscape’s headquarters in 1995. While both sides provide conflicting views about the nature of the meeting, an offer was made by Microsoft to purchase all of Netscape’s technology for one million dollars. Microsoft’s version of the meeting is an amicable consultation about how Microsoft and Netscape could move forward cooperatively. Meanwhile, Netscape’s interpretation was a threatening corporate encounter, bordering extortion, and saw it as anti-competitive behavior from a computing giant with a vice-grip on the market. Netscape had famous anti-trust lawyer, Gary Reback, pursue an anti-trust suit against Microsoft.

Netscape’s popularity and faceoff with Microsoft garnered much attention from the business world and launched an Initial Public Offering(IPO) which promptly set off the Dot Com Boom with soaring capital gains. With many public jabs taken at Microsoft by Netscape’s higher ups, Microsoft fought back with the release of Internet Explorer and related products set to fight on every front with Netscape. Microsoft was fully committed and used every resource, from coders to shady salesmen to the extreme amounts of capital available to them, to compete against Netscape. Finally, Microsoft was able to find the edge by integrating their web browser, Internet Explorer 4.0, into their Windows operating system, which most computers used, completely free in 1997. After this Netscape had lost and faded quickly until being acquired by AOL.

Despite their victory over Netscape, Microsoft and Bill Gates now faced an anti-trust lawsuit started by Netscape’s famous anti-trust lawyer, Gary Reback. Bill Gates’ deposition was filmed as he was questioned about how Microsoft leveraged their position to force their influence on the fledgling company, Netscape. Bill Gates’ avoidant attitude did not inspire confidence and Microsoft was found guilty and ordered to break up causing massive losses in Microsoft’s stock value. An appeal would see Microsoft not be forced to break up but still found guilty and not long after Bill Gates would step down from his position as CEO to focus on the Gates Foundation instead.

Disclaimer:

This is a summary of a video written by an inept college student and is subject to change and/or being completely wrong.