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Internet Explorer Turns 15

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the and-the-internet-has-never-been-the-same dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Software giant Microsoft's Internet Explorer turned 15 years old on Monday. The company recently said it would launch the Internet Explorer 9 public beta version on September 15, 2010. The software giant launched the first version of the browser, Internet Explorer 1, on August 16, 1995. It was a revised version of Spyglass Mosaic, which Microsoft had licensed from Spyglass Inc."

3 of 271 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Spyglass got pwned! by kevinmenzel · · Score: 3, Informative

    I thought that was only for the Win3.1 and Mac versions? I could be wrong, but I do know that the deals were different between the 95 version and the 3.1 and Mac versions...

  2. Re:IE turns 15... by jgagnon · · Score: 3, Informative

    Perhaps not, but most people are still using XP, hardly anybody has moved to Vista or Windows 7.

    I would agree that "hardly anyone" might apply to Vista, but it most certainly does not apply to Windows 7.

    --
    Remember to maintain your supply of /facepalm oil to prevent chafing.
  3. Re:It's hard to believe... by Mongoose+Disciple · · Score: 3, Informative

    I don't get it. IE became the defacto standard because it was pre-installed on MS Windows. And MS Windows became the defactor standard because it comes with every computer pre-installed.

    Ah no:

    1) Netscape came pre-installed by some (most?) OEMs at that time. I don't have numbers on this but it was hard to find a computer that didn't have it.

    2) Netscape was out first; a lot of people were settled into using Netscape before there even really was an IE. Netscape started with the dominant market position.

    3) While Netscape for a while was superior, later versions of Netscape were terrible -- as in, not as good as the previous versions of Netscape. Eventually even people who hated IE of that era (including me) started using it just because they were so damn tired of how buggy Netscape had become.

    I don't deny that Microsoft had a big and unfairly used advantage in having the dominant operating system, but in the grand scheme of things, that amounts to Microsoft trying to slip Netscape roofies while Netscape was busy firing a shotgun at itself as fast as it could.