How the World's Top Web Browser Died
The year 1995 wasn’t just a turning point in the 90s, but also in the entire Information Age. It was the perfect storm of circumstances, in terms of technological achievement, attitude, and cultural expectations that led to the mass spread and adaptation of a whole new concept known as the Internet, “You’ve got mail!” the World Wide Web, the Cyberspace. Whatever you wanted to call it, it was no longer just a pipe dream in its experimental phases reserved only for those in educational or government domains. It was cheap, easy to use, and yours to explore anytime you wanted, from any place. “Where Do You Want to Go Today?” This ease of access to the internet
was made possible by many factors, with the most prominent being, of course, the release of Windows 95. It was revolutionary in its new design, practically built for navigating the web, but a premium program that came with this operating system, compounded this convenience even further: a new web browser known as Internet Explorer. With it’s incredibly unique design and business model, all you had to do was dial-up, log on, and you were now connected to the whole entire world. It worked its way into becoming the most popular web browser ever, becoming the standard for the next couple decades. But Internet Explorer’s debut and outreach to the public was not easy.
Although Microsoft was able to figure out a way to get their new product to the very top, even in the presence of competing programs like Netscape Navigator, it was a journey full of controversy, betrayal, and even legal battles. Things would get ugly, and eventually everything would come tumbling down. But the question is, how did that happen? [TUTORIAL MUSIC] Hi. I am Peter John, and this is a video guide on how you can make the most out of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. At just your fingertips, you can travel all over the entire world, through a WHOLE new medium, the CYBERWORLD. It is constantly changing and getting more innovative everyday, and here to
take us to the new millennium is, Hostinger, your friendly neighborhood website-builder. Let’s take a look at nationsquid.com, home to the latest in cutting-edge entertainment and the VERY first cyber-sitcom! Quite the feat. But it’s looking a little passe! Ross Perot called,
he wants his website back! But with Hostinger, I can create the website of the future in just minutes! I start by entering my brand name, selecting the type of website I want to make, and then describing what the site is about “the history of technology.” From all this information, Hostinger will put together a beautiful, fresh theme for my website which I can then completely customize. I can add my own pictures, create my own logos, even add an eCommerce section for my merch store! Or as all the cool kids are calling it, SWAG! And when I’m done, I can link it to a free domain and SSL certificate, making sure that my website is both easy to find and secure. I can also check on my website’s performance, and see where I can improve. And now you can create your own little corner of the internet today! Visit hostinger.com/nationsquid or use the code NATIONSQUID at checkout to get an exclusive 10% discount. Dot-coms
are the future! Hostinger: There is so much online real estate. Make it yours. While not instantaneous, there were three main things that Microsoft Internet Explorer significantly had in its favor: convenience, ease of use, and compatibility. Yes, believe it or not, there was a time where Internet Explorer was the better option, and it all has to do with the historical context and digital market of the time. Just to put things in perspective,
in 1994, about 2% of all households had access to the internet. By 1996, that number had jumped to 26%. A staggering difference that 2 years can make, and you could argue that the main force behind this was, of course, Windows 95. But at this time, people weren’t using Internet
Explorer on this new operating system. They were using another program called Netscape Navigator. The capabilities that Netscape had really goes to show just what kind of competition Microsoft’s new program was facing. In order to truly appreciate these capabilities, we first need to understand the differences between the Internet and the World Wide Web. Yes, there is a difference,
despite us using the terms interchangeably in everyday conversation. The internet is a huge network of computers “interconnected” that are able to talk to each other. The World Wide Web, is the software we use to make that communication easy to do, by using things like HTML, hyperlinks, and URLs, etc. And in the early 90s, a bunch of web browsers, like Nexus, Mosaic, started popping up left and right that made accessing the World Wide Web very easy for the average person. But because computers were still quite primitive, these browsers didn’t
always do a great job at loading things on a page. Often, you had to wait for everything to finish loading on a page before it would even show up on your screen. Netscape Navigator did something quite innovative. Improving on Mosaic’s code, it loaded some graphics and text before others! This created the illusion that your internet connection was faster. And for just $50, Netscape Navigator
would be yours and you could surf away on the net! Because they got a hold of this innovation quite early on, this allowed for their popularity to skyrocket, and by the time the other browsers caught up, Netscape was the industry standard for web-browsing, and when people got their Windows 95, they immediately installed Netscape on them so they could get online. Obviously, Microsoft was stoked about their Windows 95 computer program being popular, but they knew things could be better. They now had a big hold on the OS market. Perhaps now they could get a hold of the web browser market as well. This would be the start of what has become known as the “first Browser War.” In case you needed something nerdy to hear today, there it is. The browser wars
would essentially be the first true public scandal Microsoft would find themselves in and is arguably still the source of the controversies they deal with today. With Netscape being so popular and having this new innovation to their advantage, it was going to be tough for Microsoft to compete with them. They knew this and weren’t exactly enthusiastic about it. It appeared that Microsoft wasn’t just looking to outperform Netscape, but obliterate its existence entirely. In fact the CEO of Netscape, James Barksdale, claimed that his company had some uncomfortable meetings with Microsoft, saying “I have never been in a meeting in my 33-year business career in which a competitor had so blatantly implied that we should either stop competing with it or the competitor would kill us.” Yikes. Despite these high tensions from the company, Internet Explorer did have some humble beginnings. After Microsoft, licensed a company called Spyglass to create it based on Mosaic code, the program was officially released just a month after Windows 95’s launch as part of a bundle called Windows 95 Plus!, which, like Netscape, also cost $50. But unlike Netscape,
this $50 also gave you extra stuff like better disk compression technology, special themes, Space Cadet Pinball, improved dial-up services, just to name a few things! But despite these extra features, it unfortunately just wasn’t enough for Microsoft to get people excited. Also, Internet Explorer was just generally slower to making big updates than Netscape was. Netscape’s larger market share gave it better support across multiple platforms, and it took much longer for Internet Explorer to start competing with technologies such as Javascript. Because of this, Microsoft’s web browser just wasn’t as good as Netscape. They would slowly start to make things better with incremental updates, but in 1996, things would truly start to change. It was at this time where Microsoft really evaluated its strengths and weaknesses relative to Netscape. If they couldn’t compete with the innovation just yet, they could just strike the
company’s Achilles’ heel. There was one thing that Microsoft had much more of than Netscape: capital. This means they could better afford to take risks that could significantly benefit them long-term. Microsoft started to operate hugely on economies of scale, the idea that spending more money now will create a lot more money later on. Netscape got nearly all its money from people buying their web browser for $50. So, what did Microsoft do? Well,
they released Internet Explorer 3 and made the browser completely free! Heck, they even bundled it with their next update of Windows 95! This is what made Internet Explorer incredibly popular. Microsoft essentially treated the product as a loss leader, because they knew the product’s exposure to so many machines would increase Microsoft’s exposure and strengthen their influence and presence on the internet! Was the browser 100% as good as Netscape? Not at all, but “free” is better than paying $50! Ultimately, this plan worked, and this version of Internet Explorer alone brought its market share from around 5% in 1996 to as high as 30% a year later. But there was another thing going on in the tech space that, oddly enough, indirectly skyrocketed Internet Explorer’s newfound success: the failure of Apple. The 1990s were not a good time for Apple at all. With Steve Jobs no longer in the picture, the company was bleeding money and was even projected to disappear entirely by the year 2000. But when Steve Jobs was hired back in 1997 after the company used most of the money it had left to buy his company NeXT, the two companies put together a deal. A very controversial deal,
considering the whole “Mac vs. PC” feud was still very much alive, even at this time. Apple was paid $150 million, to support a ton of Microsoft Office products as well as make Internet Explorer the default web browser for Mac OS. This announcement was met with quite the reaction. [SHOCKED AUDIENCE] Although this news generated a lot of mixed opinions in the tech space, it only strengthened the market share of Internet Explorer, because now it wasn’t just on Windows! It was even on the Mac! It would also be the default browser on Windows 98, and all these factors contributed to Internet Explorer’s convenience, compatibility, and eventually, the quality of the product itself. Now that Microsoft was developing a strong hold on the Internet, this gave them more time to innovate their product and further solidify its influence. This included creating their own competitor to
JavaScript, simply known as Jscript, similar extension-supporting technology, even adding their own communication services and media player support to the browser. In other words, it didn’t take long for Internet Explorer to become just as good, if not better than Netscape, and it was free. By 1999, Internet Explorer had 66% of the browser market share. As you could see, this was not looking for Netscape, because people now didn’t really have a reason to buy it anymore. As terrible as this appears on Microsoft’s end from just an optics perspective, they weren’t exactly doing anything wrong. The company was just privileged enough to be able to provide an equally capable product for free. But Microsoft then started to take things too
far and got kind of sour with everything. They started requiring PC manufacturers to include Internet Explorer as the default browser on their machines, otherwise they wouldn’t be allowed to install Windows at all. Because there weren’t really any good competitors to the Windows OS that could be licensed out at that time, these manufacturers basically had no choice.
Many people felt that this wasn’t technological innovation. This was just a straight up abuse of power. This created a controversy that got so big it ended up becoming a court case that was national news. There were now, for lack of a better word, internet memes making fun of Bill Gates and Microsoft as a whole. There was even a freaking pie thrown at Bill Gates’ face. And the Microsoft depositions became quite the spectacle, with Bill just behaving
very strange, uncooperative, and giving non-answers to the questions he was asked. “Who was at this executive staff meeting?” “Probably members of the executive staff.” “I don’t know what it means to be like that.”
“What do you mean by internet software?” “Who’s doing the criticism in your hypothetical?” “The full breath of your question?” “It certainly relates to Java. Java run-time relates to Java! I mean, give me a break!” “What does it mean when you keep going in and out of quotes like that?” “Do you want me to define proprietary API or not—” “No! I don’t want you to define proprietary API! I didn’t ask you to define proprietary API!” Microsoft was found to be in violation of sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, and basically creating a monopoly in the web browsing space. In the year 2000, the company was ordered to split into two sections, one focusing on the development of Windows, and the other focusing on their additional software products. Microsoft then appealed this decision,
and won! Well, sort of. Instead of splitting the company, Microsoft agreed on a settlement where from now on, they would basically stop being as hostile towards competing third-party software. But by this time, the damage was done. By the end of the case, Internet Explorer had around 93% of
the web browsing market share, and Netscape Navigator was just old news. They finally started making their browser free (a luxury they initially only reserved for schools and non-profit organizations), but this drastically decreased their revenue, and Internet Explorer’s popularity was just too great for it to make a difference. Not to mention that Netscape was also one of the companies most significantly affected by the dot-com bubble just earlier that year, which drastically impacted the company’s monetary value. Netscape would continue to do some incremental
updates, but they would ultimately disappear in 2003. AOL had already owned the Netscape company at this point and they would release a sort of novelty update of the program in 2007, but it garnered pretty much no buzz, and so support for it was discontinued just the following year. So, by the early 2000s, let’s just say that Microsoft could…get comfortable. And that was actually part of the problem and would be the beginning of the end for Internet Explorer. You could say that Microsoft got a little too comfortable. Because there wasn’t really any stiff competition at this time, they no longer felt as much need to innovate. They weren’t updating Internet Explorer as frequently or introducing that many exciting features to it, and this would soon catch up with them. And at this time, the internet was rapidly advancing,
undergoing big changes, sites like YouTube were becoming a thing! In other words, the internet now required a lot more power and bandwidth than it did back in the 90s, and Internet Explorer simply wasn’t catching up with the times, and that was slowly, over time, affecting its performance. People were tired of settling for mediocrity, and started looking to new innovative approaches for web-browsing. By 2003, Apple was no longer obligated to make Internet Explorer the default browser for the Mac. So they create their own browser called Safari, which is reportedly much faster than Internet Explorer. That’s because it kept up with the times and used new innovative
techniques that allowed the program to run on less RAM and block unnecessary cookies and scripts from slowing down the loading of a page. It also used did something called “hardware acceleration” which basically let it make the most out of the machine’s parts in order to maximize performance. Naturally, Safari was a hit among mac users. So, other browsers decided to build something similar. And this is when Netscape essentially returns with a fiery vengeance. The source-code of Netscape Navigator became open-source, which basically allowed for people to legally take the code and do whatever they want with it. One company, pretty much just took Netscape Navigator and massively improved it. They made it up to date and run a lot like Safari. But the name Netscape was already
associated with the past, so they decided to rebrand it to Mozilla Firefox. Because Firefox is an open-source project, they make a lot of their money from voluntary donations and through deals with Google and Yahoo to implement their search engines built into the browser. For this reason, they can provide Firefox for free. Around this same time, Google all uses their capital, much like Microsoft did in the late 90s, to create their own browser called Google Chrome, which followed very similar design to Safari, and this browser was also free to download. And so, the second browser war begins! There was now intimidating competition for Internet Explorer, and worst of all, it was free. Microsoft was now facing their comeuppance and getting a taste of their own medicine. This is why people joke about Internet Explorer being
slow, because it quite literally runs on very outdated technology. The program would finally lose its majority market share to Google Chrome in 2012. But again, the damage was done. Internet Explorer continued to be slow to innovative updates and their reputation of being “the slow browser” stayed. They would never gain back their majority hold of the internet. It seems that Microsoft finally came to terms with this, and in 2016, they effectively rebranded Internet Explorer as Microsoft Edge. They built this browser off a system called Chromium, which is, sure enough, what Google Chrome uses. It took them a lot later, but Microsoft finally built a browser
that was with the times. However, since “e” stood for edge, they still kept the Internet Explorer logo, so people just associated it with that and continued to not use it. So Microsoft would eventually change the logo, and at around this time, their market share would actually improve.
Now, I couldn’t find any data to prove what I’m about to say; this is just a pet theory of mine, but I do believe that this logo change did help influence that growth. Much like how the “e” had a negative connotation with internet explorer, this new circular logo has a positive connotation with all the fast web-browsers, particularly chrome, that have a circular logo. I think that this psychological association allowed people to truly take advantage of this new chromium-based software and experience just how much faster it really is. And with all the backlash that browsers like Chrome are currently facing, maybe this is the chance for Microsoft to once again get back to the very top. Who knows, maybe we’ll have a third browser war. But until then, if one lesson could be learned from the tale of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, it’s that you shouldn’t demand too much of what you want, all at once, as you might not know what to do with it.
But you know what has proven to improve your internet speed? Supporting me on Patreon of course: patreon.com/NationSquid. Buying me a coffee also does that too…yeah. A special thanks to my patrons and channel members for making this video possible. Thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed this video, please subscribe, and click the notification bell, so that you never miss a future video!
2024-08-02 19:27
