[guelo]

I kept thinking of Bill Gates while reading this, and not just because both of them turned to philanthropy after building their empires. The only reason Bill Gates is not richer than Rockefeller is because of the anti-monopoly legislation that was invented to stop Rockefeller. Without the antitrust lawsuit Microsoft would have been able to kill off Apple and Netscape in the 90s and kept the web bottled up within Internet Explorer in the 00s.

[WalterBright]

> Without the antitrust lawsuit Microsoft would have been able to kill off Apple and Netscape in the 90s and kept the web bottled up within Internet Explorer in the 00s.

I used Netscape in the 90s. It was a crummy product that crashed if you looked at it. IE was much more stable. IE was better, much better. Opera was also available, but there wasn't much to recommend it.

As for Apple in the 90s, Apple nearly destroyed itself all by itself. Check any of the innumerable books on the history of Apple.

[narag]

Netscape was best until about version 3. It had some niceties that IE lacked, actually IE was not even acceptable. Netscape 4.7 was "not so nice" and IE 4 was faster so, although terribly unsafe, it dominated market for years.

Oh, and by the time Netscape 4.7 and IE 4.01 were released, Microsoft had already destroyed Netscape's business.

[WalterBright]

I don't remember which Netscape I used, but I started with it. It was awful in the constant crashing. I tried IE, and it crashed too, but only about half as often. If Netscape crashed half as often as Netscape, I would have stuck with it.

If you produce an obviously inferior product, it's a bit unfair to blame the competition for your own failures.

[cylinder]

Thanks for reminding me of how common crashes and other general frustrations were in personal computing only as recently as the 90s.

Someone who is currently 18 years old never experienced computing when it wasn't near seamless as it is today.

[narag]

Actually, no. That's not true at all. Crashes were as rare as today if you chose the right programs and were properly conservative with what you installed. I suffered very few crashes even with Windows 3. I won't say Windows 95 was rock solid, but I didn't see the infamous BSoD more than a couple of times a year... and I was a heavy user!!

Do you know what was different? A lot of people had very poor judgement about what to install and what to trust. Also faulty drivers, but this still happens today! No further than last night this very computer reset when starting Firefox :-/

I'm very surprised to see this revisionist version of computer history. I can't help thinking that there's some vested interest in this criticism. At the time it was some sort of fad among Linux fans against Windows dominance. I also liked Linux, but it was very annoying to see this kind of (reverse!) FUD.

Now it seems like it's some other "interest group" that's spreading it. Depressing.

[dredmorbius]

A fine story.

Other than being entirely contradicted by the court's findings of fact in DoJ v. Microsoft.

[WalterBright]

The FoF makes no mention of software quality issues that I could find. Nor did they prevent anyone from installing Netscape. Nor did they prevent Netscape from making a better browser than IE.

[dredmorbius]

Microsoft's actions in bundling a browser and attacking Netscapes various (likely poor) business models in multiple modes had a great deal to do with why and how Netscape started turning out shitty products.

This was part of Microsoft's strategy from the very beginning. Look up Andrew Orlowski's story "The Canonization of Saint Bill", in which a former Intel executive recalls an early 1980s meeting with Gates and Ballmer explicitly offering to carve up the IT market in a three-way split between IBM, Intel, and Microsoft.

I was in the industry from the late 1980s onward, and saw what and how Microsoft operated. Testimony and findings of fact from the DoJ case, the Novell case, the SCO vs. IBM case, and others, all paint the same story.

And yes, some of the competitors exhibited incompetence or limited vision. But "DOS ain't done until Lotus won't run", and similar variants, are very much part of the history:

The strategic side is: ... We put a bullet in the head of our would be competitors on DOS like DRI, Desqview, dos extenders etc. - Nathan Mhyrvold, Microsoft Corp., May 9, 1989. Business as usual.

http://www.maxframe.com/DR/Info/fullstory/factstat.html

[jghn]

Right. The browsers went back and forth for a few years, and then finally Netscape started to slide into oblivion

[hammock]

Netscape 4.0 was the peak as I remember. Came with a shiny new logo

[nostrademons]

I preferred 3.0.3 SE. The standard editions seemed more stable and faster than the gold editions, and I really didn't need the extra functionality. Unfortunately with the 4.0 series everything was folded into the Communicator suite.

One big problem a lot of people forget is how quickly the web was moving back then. 3.0 came out in mid-1996, and soon there were many sites that wouldn't work with 2.0. 4.0 came out in mid-1997 (technically before 3.0.3), and by late 1998 I had to upgrade to the 4.0 series, because a lot of the web didn't work in 3.0.

It was actually DoubleClick that made me switch to IE - they started serving Javascript that hung every version of Netscape, which broke a lot of the web.

[guelo]

Imagine if iPods hadn't been allowed to connect to iTunes on Windows, Apple probably would not have survived.

[WalterBright]

I wrote and sold applications on Windows for decades. I never asked for nor received permission from Microsoft to do that, and neither did any other vender I've ever heard of. Windows was never a "walled garden".

[rangibaby]

It's still amazing to me how huge iPods were about ~10 years ago, considering that they are basically museum pieces now. They gave Apple credibility with people outside of 90s Apple fan(atics). The ads with silhouettes of people dancing were Apple's best in my memory.

[CPLX]

They aren't really museum pieces at all. They added a web browser and a phone to them and now we all have them in our pockets 24/7.

[gnaritas]

> IE was much more stable

Until Microsoft stopped keeping up with everyone else. You're reinforcing his point, Microsoft would have put everyone else out of business had it not been for antitrust issues. Competition is vital even when it's sub-par because it won't always be.

[WalterBright]

> Microsoft would have put everyone else out of business

Nobody knows what might have happened. The point is, it didn't happen and never did. And today Microsoft finds it very difficult to compete in the phone, search, and cloud market, and none of that difficulty is due to the Justice Dept's actions.

[gnaritas]

> The point is, it didn't happen and never did.

Wrong, it did happen, to Netscape. Microsoft's bundling of IE for free destroyed Netscape as a viable business.

[WalterBright]

Every device I buy comes bundled with a free browser, along with a long laundry list of other bundled utilities. The idea that a browser is somehow special doesn't stand up, and special if it comes with Windows even less so. Linux also comes with tons of free software that is hard to compete with.

I know for a fact that Netscape was an inferior product to IE. I downloaded IE and uninstalled Netscape. I made an extra effort to not use Netscape anymore, because it was nearly unusable due to crashing. Maybe if Netscape had a better product, I'd be sympathetic.

It's not a conspiracy if an inferior product fails in the marketplace. Happens all the time.

[gnaritas]

The quality of Netscape's product is not relevant. It is only relevant that Microsoft used anti-competitive practices to try and put them out of business. As you can't seem to tell the difference, there is little point in conversing.