[brudgers]

That is patent nonsense. The web grew because Windows users were able to browse it with IE in the days before Netscape and when the second choice was going with *nix and Mosaic. IE killed Gopher by taking browsing to the masses.

Netscape was a startup and its founder had a Fuck You Money exit before it met its fate as a corporate subsidiary managed across a continent. The legacy of IE6 lives with us because of suboptimal architectural decisions by web developers. Yet, the web is escaping it - unlike the warts of JavaScript.

[justinschuh]

>That is patent nonsense. The web grew because Windows users were able to browse it with IE in the days before Netscape and when the second choice was going with *nix and Mosaic.

There were no IE days before Netscape. Netscape came first, and IE was originally just a defensive response. That's not to deny that there was a period where IE was arguably a superior browser, but IE simply would not have have been created were it not for Netscape becoming the first mainstream browser.

[brudgers]

What evidence do you have that Microsoft would not have created a web browser but for Netscape? Or rather licensed one, because that's what they did when they could not purchase Booklink.

Had Microsoft not shipped a browser with Windows, browsers would have remained obscure shareware like Netscape Navigator and AOL or Compuserve would have been the standard online experience of most people for much longer.

[ZeroGravitas]

From Bill Gates's "Internet Tidal Wave" internal memo:

"A new competitor "born" on the Internet is Netscape. Their browser is dominant, with 70% usage share, allowing them to determine which network extensions will catch on. They are pursuing a multi-platform strategy where they move the key API into the client to commoditize the underlying operating system. They have attracted a number of public network operators to use their platform to offer information and directory services. We have to match and beat their offerings including working with MCI, newspapers, and other who are considering their products."

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/07/internet-tidal-wave.htm...

He seems to view it as a most serious threat. I think if he thought it would remain non-threatening they would never have made a browser.

[brudgers]

The past is never dead, and so we shovel it full of the present when we talk about it.

70% of browser usage was probably less than 1,000,000 browsers in 1994 and those primarily in large commercial and educational settings. The consumer internet didn't exist because the web wasn't viable at 9600 baud (2738 websites of which 370 were .com in June '94).

http://www.mit.edu/~mkgray/net/web-growth-summary.html

It's obvious that once Microsoft got serious about the web, they quickly moved beyond MCI and newspapers of the memo to a vision of browsers "on every desk and in every home."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSjfmme4hpM

The scale at which Microsoft distributed browsers made the web commercially viable in the way we know it today. It's easy to forget that Netscape was bundled with AOL - keyword: walled garden.

[emn13]

I seriously doubt IE did much for the adoption of the world wide web. By the time IE made a dent, WWW was already a huge success and obviously growing rapidly. Being (eventually) pervasive it almost certainly introduced some people to the internet, but if it hadn't been MS it would have been someone else.

I bet the adoption was faster that it would have been if microsoft hadn't integrated IE. Of course, if microsoft hadn't integrated IE it's quite possible company would have died by now (or been a footnote of desktop computing history - like IBM). They didn't really have much of a choice.

[ZeroGravitas]

"IE in the days before Netscape"?

[brudgers]

From a practical perspective, yes.

IE bootstrapped access to Navigator for the general population of computer users. People got Navigator using IE to download it from Netscape's website - just like they get Chrome, Firefox, and Opera today.

Until IE shipped with Windows, the only way a typical user was going to get Netscape was on a floppy disk via the shareware community or perhaps from a BBS. It wasn't being downloaded through AOL or Compuserve and if it was, what would one have done with it August 1995?

It would be naive to ignore Netscape's IPO occurred one week before IE 1.0.

[fpgeek]

"The first version of Internet Explorer (later referred to as Internet Explorer 1) made its debut on 16 August 1995."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer

"0.4 Netscape September 9, 1994 First public beta release" "1.0 Netscape December 15, 1994 First non-beta release"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_%28web_browser%29