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Microsoft Tried To Buy Netscape: Suppose They Had?

Posted by Soulskill on from the alternate-e-history dept.

Glyn Moody writes "In an interview, Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript and currently CIO at Mozilla, reveals that Microsoft tried to buy Netscape at the end of 1994. They were turned down because the offer was too low, but imagine if Netscape had accepted: no browser wars, no open Web standards, no Mozilla, no Firefox. How might the Web — and the world — have looked today if that had happened?"

3 of 246 comments (clear)

  1. The web would by Crudely_Indecent · · Score: 4, Informative

    <marquee behavior=scroll width=100%><blink>SUCK</blink></marquee>

    --


    "Lame" - Galaxar
  2. Re:Another browser would've shown up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Opera existed before Netscape did

    "Netscape...was originally founded under the name, Mosaic Communications Corporation, on April 4, 1994... The company's first product was the web browser, called Mosaic Netscape 0.9, released on October 13, 1994"

    "Development of Mosaic began in December 1992... Marc Andreessen, the leader of the team that developed Mosaic, left NCSA and, ...started Mosaic Communications Corporation."

    "Jon von Tetzchner, the CEO of Opera Software, and Geir Ivarsøy began coding the original desktop Web browser in April 1994."

    "Opera began in 1994 as a research project at Telenor, the largest Norwegian telecommunications company. In 1995, it branched out into a separate company named Opera Software ASA. Opera was first released publicly with version 2.0 in 1996"

    emphasis added

  3. Re:Fallacy by Scoth · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is the point so many fans of modern Firefox and other open source browsers forget. Netscape wasn't about open web standards and cross-browser compatibility until relatively recently - probably after the fall of Netscape itself and beginning of Mozilla/Gecko. Way back in the mists of time, Netscape 2.0 was roundly criticized for introducing a bunch of proprietary tags (many of which were later adopted but at the time weren't) and Microsoft Internet Explorer 1.0 was praised for adhering to standards. I can't find it now but recently I stumbled on an ancient page that urged a boycott of Netscape 2.0 and explained in great detail what proprietary tags it had and which were safe to use.