Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by cccc4alll 1954 days ago
My guess is MS had plans for web dominance. Use Windows to push IE and VBScript and become gatekeeper to the web. Tightly couple Windows and web and have Windows become the web platform.

Until, US anti-trust investigation and law suit against MS. Which hampered MS enough to open the web business to smaller competitors, like Google, Apple, etc.

The fact that Apple now completely owns iOS and is gatekeeper to mobile app store is ironic. And, Google owns online ad services and is gatekeeper to online ad space is also ironic.
1 comments
BrendanEich 1954 days ago
No need to guess, from

https://thisdayintechhistory.com/05/26/bill-gates-internet-t...

to all the material discovered during US v. Microsoft, we know MS's plan was exactly what you said, after killing Netscape to avoid it becoming the new cross-OS runtime for apps.

Good point about MS leaving the Web fallow, which missed big opportunities Google and Apple (iPhone original app model was Web-only; native came almost a year later for games and for want of WebAssembly :-/).

link