[JosephRedfern]

> .. and become the preferred information delivery mechanism for business and entertainment because the internet was "just a fad."

Was it not as much a case of network limitations making such delivery impractical, rather than the internet being considered a fad? I was just about on 512Kb DSL at that point (if not, dial up). Downloading games and streaming movies would have been totally impractical.

[reaperducer]

Was it not as much a case of network limitations making such delivery impractical, rather than the internet being considered a fad?

The internet being a passing fad was just how Microsoft thought in those days. Remember that Windows didn't get built-internet access until around Windows 98, while Macs were on the internet almost a decade earlier. I used a Mac to access USENET at a college in 1989/1990.

It wasn't about bandwidth limitations, but about Microsoft's long-term goal of moving everything to a subscription model. MS was preaching the virtues of "recurring revenue" decades before most of the rest of the tech industry figured that out. Microsoft's philosophy was that people would subscribe to information services like Encarta, that would deliver regular updates on optical disc via the mail.

A lot of people, at the time, believed that Windows would eventually go to a full-subscription model where you'd pay a monthly fee to use Windows, even on your own machine. The notion was that people don't like paying $200 for the next version of Windows, but they would be less unhappy paying $20/month, or even $10/week.

That was ruined by a number of factors, including free Linux, Apple delivering operating system updates for free, and of course, the internet delivering the equivalent of Encarta and all of Microsoft's other planned information subscriptions for free.

[zokier]

> Remember that Windows didn't get built-internet access until around Windows 98, while Macs were on the internet at least half a decade earlier.

IE came bundled with Windows since 95 OSR1, and I'm pretty sure 95 had built-in tcp/ip stack since launch. In contrast Macs got bundled MacTCP in System 7.5 (1994), and Apples early web-browser forays (Cyberdog) were notably short-lived.

Furthermore MS invest heavily on stuff like MSN pretty much from the get-go. And of course can't forget IIS/ASP, one of the most popular web platforms during its heydays.

More relevantly to the topic at hand, Xbox launched with Xbox Live pushing console internet connectivity and multiplayer well ahead the curve.

Are these really signs of company thinking internet being a fad?

[reaperducer]

IE came bundled with Windows since 95 OSR1,

IE wasn't built-in to Windows 95, it was part of the Plus Pack — an optional add-on.¹

I'm pretty sure 95 had built-in tcp/ip stack since launch.

Winsock was an add-on. It wasn't included with Windows until Windows 98².

Apples early web-browser forays (Cyberdog) were notably short-lived.

Apple's Cyberdog is irrelevant. There's a lot more to the internet than web browsers, and people on Macs were there.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer

² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winsock

[zokier]

I can link to wikipedia too:

> Windows 95 OEM Service Release 1 was the first release of Windows to include Internet Explorer (version 2.0) with the OS. While there was no uninstaller, it could be deleted easily if desired. OEM Service Release 2 included Internet Explorer 3. The installation of Internet Explorer 4 on Windows 95 (or the OSR2.5 version preinstalled on a computer) gave Windows 95 Active Desktop and browser integration into Windows Explorer, known as the Windows Desktop Update. The CD version of the last release of Windows 95, OEM Service Release 2.5 (version 4.00.950C), includes Internet Explorer 4, and installs it after Windows 95's initial setup and first boot are complete.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95#Internet_Explorer

> Version 1.1 of Winsock was supplied in an add-on package (called Wolverine) for Windows for Workgroups (code named Snowball). It was an integral component of Windows 95 and Windows NT from versions 3.5 and onwards

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winsock#Microsoft_implementati...

[kevin_thibedeau]

Win95 had IP networking from day one. The drivers weren't installed by default but they were available from the control panel networking applet.

[jerf]

A company the size of Microsoft making some peripheral investments can dwarf what entire startups might be able to invest.

But it was clearly not central to Microsoft's strategy for a long time. It's not like this is a whacky theory; their plain lack of focus on the Internet is matched by their own corporate statements about how they weren't focusing on it particularly. They got there, but they were slow to the party. They had to be forced. They had to go through some phases of attempting to embrace and extend the entire Internet, which they mostly failed at but did have a pretty good run at with Internet Explorer (though they still lost that one eventually).

Their core strategy was to focus on Windows and Office, but at the time they focused on the network as a threat to those things. They perceived the web as a threat because you don't need an OS if you just have a browser, and for as much as we today do on the web, including Office, they were afraid we'd do even more, like, do literally everything in a browser, and that the future was Chromebooks; specifically, machines with no Windows and no Office. Existential threat to a two-legged Microsoft. Prior to the internet being able to sensibly run an office suite they were also afraid that we'd all switch to some inferior product that was based on what the web could run, and they wouldn't be able to charge anywhere near as much. They saw the internet as an existential threat for a long time, not an opportunity.

So while they knew they couldn't kill the internet as a whole, and they put down some small side-bets that even if they paid off could never have sustained a company the size of Microsoft, they generally were attacking the internet and trying to embrace & extend it. Now they don't do that anymore and they generally understand it as an opportunity as well. But there was a long run where Microsoft saw it as a threat overall, even if they invested here or there. This seems to have come from Steve Ballmer, but that approaches the limits of my knowledge; people who were there could speak to that better.