The setting: The main stage at MIX06, the regulation Microsoft love-in. Onstage, O’Reilly Books chief Tim O’Reilly emcees an up-close-and-personal with Desktop Emperor Bill Gates.
O’Reilly breezes over a sore spot: The demise of Netscape, the first widely adopted web browser… the software that made the web browsable. O’Reilly has the temerity to suggest that Redmond cut off Netscape’s air supply to kill the product.
Gates smirks, “Actually they were giving it away. There’s a lot of these so-called fights where the other guy really knocked himself out.”
Oh really?
Browser Usage:
Mozilla Family vs Internet Explorer,
1994 - 2006
Time to roll the tape. When Marc Andreessen announced the release of Mosaic Netscape 0.9 Beta in October 1994, he noted that the beta was free:
Subject to the timing and results of this beta cycle, Mosaic Communications will release Mosaic Netscape 1.0, also available free for personal use via the Internet.
Andreessen’s press release indicated that, at that time, a non-personal version of Netscape was not yet available.
By the time Internet Explorer came out ten months later, Netscape owned over 80% of the market. Internet Explorer, which was shipped as part of the Plus! option for Windows 95, received a chilly reception. Despite Microsoft’s virtual ownership of the desktop, Internet Explorer did not pass Netscape in usage till after the release of Internet Explorer 4.0 in October 1997. Just three months later, Mozilla.org was founded and Netscape code was unleashed as open source.
With the release of Internet Explorer 5.0 Final in March 1999, the browser wars should have been over. But Windows Live developer Dare Obsasanjo says 5.0 was the last innovative version to be had. Following the rules of monopolies, Microsoft all but dismantled its IE team and moved on.
That’s how the Mozilla project managed to survive. And because they were underdogs, they knocked out code like wild animals.
The result: While Internet Explorer core development languished, Mozilla and Firefox users have been treated to a thicket of features and functions, from tabs to extensions, limited only by an individual developer’s imagination.
Marc Andreessen’s original dream of a browser-driven, operating system-independent world is quickly coming to pass… and teams at Google, IBM, Sun and every flavor of BSD, Linux and Unix are working hard to help it along.
That’s one of many reasons Microsoft pumped fresh funds into the new Internet Explorer 7.0. Redmond’s hoping it has crafted a new Mozilla-killer. How cool is it? IE7 even has tabs, along with a plug-in environment that is allegedly developer-friendly, just like Firefox.
Meanwhile, Obasanjo worries that, once IE reaches feature parity, “I expect that history will repeat itself.”
That is, unless Redmond transfers further IE development to a crew that depends on it, like Obasanjo’s team at Windows Live.
Like Gates said, “There’s a lot of these so-called fights where the other guy really knocked himself out.”
Email Battles Backgrounder:
2 comments
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March 21st, 2006 at 7:35 pm
squint
All Microsoft provided was the sucker punch.
March 30th, 2006 at 8:36 am
mick4394
Historically, there have been three ways Microsoft has dealt with problems like Firefox.
1. Spend them into the ground.
2. Buy the competition.
3. Copy the competition.
The open source beast they currently face is invincible to these attacks. You simply cannot buy or outspend this type of competition. Copying the competition is out of the question, as opening up the code would basically open up Windows.
Given these circumstances, there is only one solution to this problem. Microsoft needs to make us think we need something that we don’t need. How do you do that?
Hypnosis.