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Microsoft Tried To Buy Netscape: Suppose They Had?
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?"
That's a pretty slippery slope. Obviously there probably would have been no Mozilla or Firefox, but who's to say that another browser wouldn't have emerged to start a war, or push open web standards? This is why "what if" scenarios are inherently stupid and pointless: they force you to suppose that nothing else will have changed, but that's not true. Likely another browser would have emerged to fill the void and encourage competition.
<marquee behavior=scroll width=100%><blink>SUCK</blink></marquee>
"Lame" - Galaxar
Learning from the past by asking "what if?" is important.
Maybe not to you. So ignore the story. But to others. Whose insights contribute to the world you live in. Sure, you're a freeloader, but at least don't get in their way.
Some nerds are really dumbdowners.
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My first reaction was to think that MSN (as they originally conceived it: a Microsoft-owned alternative to AOL and CompuServ) would have dominated end-users' online experiences in the 90s.
But Netscape was not the only other graphical browser available in those days. There was still NCSA Mosaic, which (despite its family connection to Netscape) would not have fallen into Microsoft hands and would have remained available for users. Even though in the real world Mosaic quickly stagnated, got licensed to MS after all, and died; in this alternate reality it could have become the nexus for development of the web that Netscape was. Or perhaps Opera might have, coming along shortly after.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
And we would still have Safari running on iPads.
The trenders these days are Chrome on computers and Safari on tablets (and to some extent Android Browser). IE and Firefox are on downward slopes.
Microsoft was buying Netscape just to screw it and shut it down. M$ evidently decided it was more profitable overall to just kill Netscape the way it did, with all monopolist crimes M$ was convicted of in 1999 - by which time Netscape was dead, because it worked.
But if M$ had bought Netscape in 1994, by the late 1990s the same people in and around Netscape would have been inspired to start a free, competing project like Mozilla - which would have produced something like Firefox as Mozilla did.
These "single turning points" are no match for the overwhelming flow of the rest of events. Which pressure the global Internet for alternatives to the main choice. That diversity and low barrier to entry are the main advantages to the Internet.
Even Microsoft isn't big, powerful or evil enough to stop that.
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It's only possible today because of the current state of the Web. A web locked-down by Microsoft from 1994 up to today would have resulted in a locked-down network where only Microsoft products are allowed to access it, ActiveX everywhere, etc.
Heck, don't people remember those IE-only websites? That wasn't even a decade ago!
Just be glad that Netscape didn't sell out.
KHTML=>Safari=>Webkit=>chrome
What exactly would an analysis of history lead us to believe that it wouldn't have happened?
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
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
How did it work out? Instead of taking Microsoft's lowball offer, Netscape had a $half-billion IPO, the biggest of all time, and the one that still defines "big IPO" a decade and a half (and two or three bubbles) later. Then Netscape was bought by AOL for even more scads of money, which let AOL do to Netscape what Microsoft wanted for less money. So, given the equivalent other results, turning down Microsoft made Netscape's shareholders (including the corporation itself) a lot more money.
But the results were not equivalent. Instead, Netscape forced the Internet to be cross-platform in ways that outlasted even Netscape Inc. According to its own agenda, not Microsoft's (extremely limited and lame one). And Netscape Inc lasted years longer, producing major innovations like Netscape Commerce Server and Netscape Directory Server (among others). Which again set the direction of the entire Internet for at least the next decade and a half (and counting).
In every way you can consider Netscape did the right thing. What could you possibly have been thinking was bad for "Netscape the Company" by turning down Microsoft?
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Thanks. But I've been letting it get to me just enough to righteously flame numbskull nerds since about 1998.
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It's only possible today because of the current state of the Web. A web locked-down by Microsoft from 1994 up to today would have resulted in a locked-down network where only Microsoft products are allowed to access it, ActiveX everywhere, etc.
Heck, don't people remember those IE-only websites? That wasn't even a decade ago!
Just be glad that Netscape didn't sell out.
A decade ago? How about an hour ago while I was in the office..... IE only websites are definitely NOT a thing of the past yet.
"Do you think Microsoft would have allowed Google to flourish?
" .doc formats in Word to force Office. MS excells at this (no pun intended) but the WWW is a different beast. As long as something is somewhat open alternative will pop out and once that happens the monopolists no longer writes the rules and controls the market.
You can't control the market of search providors like you can with Word. MS would have to rewrite w3c and lock html, encrypt it with proprietary protocols not based on HTTP, and do crazy shit to kill all competition. It is not like controlling the
There would be another browser if it were not for Firefox.
In 1994 there were 4 browsers out there. Some were as good as Mosaic too and I used one that I can't remember the name of which was made by a lawyer organization. Anyway, Netscape was the best one and it didn't win until the late 1990s.
What would have happened is another browser would have come by. IE 6 was ok in 2001, but security holes, and terrible development efforts to get anything done in it created the fuel for Mozilla Phoenix (later Firefox). Konqueror was created on Linux that was starting to become popular which is what webkit is based off of (engine of Chrome).
Mac users also would have used a different browser altogether as IE did not exist on the mac until 1998 if I recall. Was there even a MacOS8 or MacOS9 version before MacOSX? I do not recall as I was an NT user then. Someone can correct me if I am wrong as I didn't use macs then but it stands my point. Linux was more popular and so was Unix 10+ years ago in the workstation market and they would have used a different browser or a Gnu based one would come about that would be ported to all operating systems such as Konqueror. Universities were not all NT and Windows based like today and these CS and engineering students were most of the internet users anyway in the mid 1990s. Not the general public.
When MS had 90% of the market in the dark days of 2004 - 2006 demand for a way out corrected it. Many people do not like control by one company. Firefox was born. I just remembered Opera does exist and is popular in Russia and Eastern Europe. Perhaps, that would be the new norm? Demand exists outside of the workplace who do not want one company, one standard, one way of doing things etc.
IE 6 did make much of the web proprietary and started the intranets that can't be upgraded today that we all loathe, but MS attempts at proprietarization failed. Too many people need the net on many devices which means standards and more browsers hence the race for HTML 5.
http://saveie6.com/
It isn't learrning from the past. It is making stuff up and then launching into wild conjecture from that fictional starting point.
The problem is that this "what if" is extremely dumb and started from a flawed premise "no browser wars, no open Web standards", At the time this all started up there was a miriad of browsers out there, however between the 2 propriety browsers of Microsoft and Netscape they killed them all off, the truth is we will never know whether the browser wars were beneficial or detrimental to the web eco system, perhaps without that war all the other browsers would have have flourished into a vibrant and stable eco-system bringing about a web nirvana instead of withering and dying, we will never know and don't have enough information to make usefull "what if" statements to learn from the past in this case.
It's usually modded down to -1.
Usually.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
We would have had a $50 web browser with web technology protected by 73 Netscape patents acquired by Microsoft (including blatantly obvious patents they could exploit elsewhere, such as one for just making a menu bar hide, or showing how complex a password is while you type it in - used by many sites right now)
1994 had more browsers than 'Netscape' - far more, and the web was completely open at the time. Yes, things would have been very different if MS had bought Netscape then, but the web != Netscape, even back then.
But the results were not equivalent. Instead, Netscape forced the Internet to be cross-platform in ways that outlasted even Netscape Inc.
The Internet and the Web were cross-platform before Netscape. What do you think Netscape contributed, out of curiosity?
So speculating on the past is a waste o time, but watching h a fictional account of time traveling robots isn't?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"In 1994 linux users had to use something, whether konqueror, opera or any other browsers rose, a niche existed to be filled for a better web browser."
In 1994 there was hardly any Linux users. 1.0 was released that year and Slackware was the only player. Also the few Linux users out there did not "have" to have a browser. The web was just not that well established and Gopher was still popular.
In many ways the web was crucial in the history of the FOSS community and there is no guarantee we'd have Konqueror without Netscape. KDE wasn't founded until 1996 and the first release of Konqueror was years later than that.
If it was 1996 or 1997, perhaps not too much different. But in 1994, that would change everything. That predates HTML 2, the first attempt at standardizing it. It predates Apache, Javascript and CSS. Late 1994 predates the web presences of Amazon, Craigslist, the New York Times, and Dell.
The only well-visited site I can think of still in existence was the whitehouse.gov, and it was extremely primitive. Here's a mirror:
http://www.iterasi.net/openviewer.aspx?sqrlitid=lqkszdizgkk3n6kga5zzja
Basically, if Microsoft was able to redirect web development that early, they'd go for something very similar to what ActiveX was for vendor lockin. HTML would remain primitive, broken, and discarded. To make anything more than what was available, you would basically use Microsoft systems over HTTP.
Instead of HTML, you'd use something like Visual Studio to create forms and graphics via drag-and-drop and upload .rc files with Access/VBScript like background controls. Video would be embedded as Microsoft Media Server (MMS) and would run locally.
Taking that out to 2011, it'd probably be similar but sandboxed, and using a lot more XML. But nevertheless, you'd basically only be able to browse the web from OSS with something like WINE -- basically, a emulator/compatibility layer developed from a lot of reverse engineering that wasn't 100% reliable.
IE version 9 is an excellent browser.
And in their day, IE 4 and 5 beat Netscape like a red headed step child.
Microsoft needs pressure from competition: then they produce good stuff.
What would have happened if Microsoft didn't drop support for Mac when the they did? Safari came in to fill a void. The ones people are mentioning are just a few of the many out there. Beyond those, there are little projects people have done to make their own. I'd bet quite a few of us have said "how hard could it possibly be to write a rendering engine?" :)
If MSIE and Netscape never existed, would we have something now? Who knows. I can guarantee, if there's a profit to be made somewhere, someone will try. The web browser market is tough. In itself, there is no money to be made any more. People don't generally pay for their browsers. They don't pay for support. They expect a tool that does what they tell them to, and if they don't like it, they'll pick another free one. To enter and hold the market now, you have to have an alternative income source, and that income isn't going to come from the browser market, nor can you hope donations will keep it going.
MSIE is funded by Microsoft (obviously). Chrome by Google. Safari by Apple. Opera by Google (funny that, huh?). Konquorer is funded by KDE e.V. by member fees and donations. For MSIE and Safari, having a browser of their own enhances their product. Can you imagine an OS not coming with a web browser any more?
I guarantee, in 10 years, there will be new browsers in the game, and some will likely have dropped out.
Quite a few years ago, I had a boss tell me that he wanted the sites tested in "every web browser". We had a customer who complained our main site didn't look good in some browser that no one had ever heard off. I went on a quest to find "all" the web browsers. I had a beautiful collection of them, or at least those that weren't just skins on another browser. My desktop was full of icons for many of the browsers. It was horrible trying to keep up with them. At least my boss realized that "all" wasn't a reasonable request. "all" became "the major ones our customers use", so I was able to trim it down to the current versions MSIE, Netscape, and Opera. We then told the complaining user "go get a real browser." Honestly, the one he used was horrible, and didn't render anything right. It was a fun way to spend a week not doing any real work and getting paid for it. :)
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
And the whole thing misses the fact that back in the day Netscape was the proprietary anti-competitive browser. When MSIE came around many webmasters praised it for using standards and not having their own proprietary tags. In fact, we could had have way more standard web if Microsoft would have actually bought Netscape and stopped the bullshit they did. In those days MS was the frontier of open web standards.
The web went to all that state it did just because Netscape played it dirty and kept using their own proprietary stuff. But MSIE made Netscape look like shit, and it really was. It was only going slower and more bloater by every release. But let's not get facts get in the way and just hate MS because that's what all the cool kids do and don't know about history of what they're actually talking about.
This I strongly doubt. Google started with an innovative search engine. It didn't depend at all at any advanced HTML features; indeed their interface was cheered for its simplicity. All that Web 2.0/XmlHttpRequest stuff came later.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.