[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.