[nbevans]

Give over. Internet Explorer didn't hurt innovation at all. It was more innovative than Netscape by a country mile. IE was the first to pioneer CSS! And DHTML! Netscape pioneered, erm, cookies, I guess? There was no other web browser worth using other than IE or Netscape back in those wild west days of the Web.

Yes there was a period of a year or two when Netscape entered the abyss and it took a while for a new competitor to IE to spring up. But that happened (Firefox) and shortly after Microsoft resumed development on IE too.

You seem to have selective memory. IE brought A LOT of good to the Web. A LOT of good.

[SwellJoe]

Courts in Europe and the United States disagree with you. And, while I'm willing to believe juries and judges can make mistakes, I have to say I don't think the courts did enough...and they went after Microsoft for many of the more minor problems with Microsoft's business.

"You seem to have selective memory. IE brought A LOT of good to the Web. A LOT of good."

From where I'm sitting you have a very imaginative memory. IE was better than the competition because it destroyed the competition using the very unethical (and illegal, according to courts in several nations) tactics I've already mentioned.

Honestly, I'm surprised anyone on HN would have so little knowledge of the history of Microsoft and the web that you would interpret their stranglehold on the browser as a positive thing. I simply can't wrap my head around it, it's so absurd to me.

[nbevans]

Thanks for the down vote for disagreeing with your opinion.

The courts took issue with bundling it with Windows. Not that it was not innovative. There was even a few articles in recent years suggesting the courts went too far over the "bundling" case; sighting comparisons to vendor lock-in all over the industry now not reaching the courts at all. Just one top hit cite: http://readwrite.com/2013/11/12/apple-maps-takes-off-cue-the...

The whole bundling IE case was fundamentally stupid and run by lawyers and judges who had no understand of the technology industry, the web and the wild west stage the web was going through. Back then, it was all about enablement. Getting people just onto the web in the first place was hard. They had to buy a computer, a modem, sign up with an ISP, possibly upgrade their operating system, install a web browser etc. But in those days, installing a web browser meant you had to go buy a Magazine from a shop just to get the CD-ROM. Microsoft viewed this, rightly, as an impediment. So they bundled IE with their OS. A practice that is still common place today by every major operating system that exists including Windows, Linux, OSX, Android, iOS, WinPhone.

Without IE bringing DHTML we would not have the foundations that made modern day JavaScript, SPA, "Ajax" applications today. How is that not fostering innovation? IE 1 to 6 were a technology showcase to show everybody else what the web _could_ be or become. That's one reason why, though they'll never admit it, Mozilla abandoned Mozilla Suite and started work on Firefox.

"So little knowledge of the history of Microsoft and the web"? Er, what? I date back to having to when you had to install a TCP/IP stack manually in order to get onto the web. What you're actually surprised about is that anyone would dare challenge you on what you perhaps believed would be a widely held opinion when it's far from that clear cut.

[tkubacki]

According to this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/business/2000/microsoft/...

MS was making "illegal market-splitting suggestion"

and

"Microsoft began to use its market power to extract exclusionary deals with many of the largest [PC manufacturers and internet service providers]", threatening Netscape customers such as Compaq that if it tried to replace the Internet Explorer icon with the Netscape Navigator icon "

We can assume they've done many more bad things since their EEE attitude was proven many times (Bill Gates included - vide leaked email in antitrust case http://antitrust.slated.org/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/... )

[TheRealDunkirk]

You want history? I'll give you history. The bottom line is that Microsoft used it's monopoly position to destroy Netscape, who -- really, let's be honest -- made "the web" a thing to begin with at all.

If Microsoft would have made Internet Explorer a boxed piece of software to sit on the shelf beside Netscape Navigator, and if they had priced it similarly, and if people had voted with their wallets in IE's direction (because it was actually a better product for the money), I wouldn't have had a problem with IE taking over the world. As it was, they bundled it, and it was crap in comparison (at least to start with, and many would say up until recently), but Netscape couldn't compete with free.

THAT'S what a lot of us still remember. It was a perfect, easily-visible example of a lot of business moves they have made, and for which they ultimately -- not only weren't punished -- but actually were allowed to prosper because of. THAT'S why people like me are still sore about it.

They won because of BUSINESS SAVVY and LEGAL moves, not TECHNICAL MERIT, and people in the software development world (and everyone else) have paid the price for it for 20 years. (I can't get Sametime in the web version of Lotus Notes to work unless I use Internet Explorer, and in "compatibility mode", to emulate their non-standards-compliant behavior that everyone was forced to code around, as one immediate example.)

All the touchy-feely "openness" they're trying to foist on the world now is going to have to be everything they hope people will interpret it as for the next THIRTY years for me to believe they really want to interoperate with the rest of the world like Linux always has.

[scholia]

IE was better than Netscape by about version 4/4.5, and it was more standards-compliant by IE6. The Netscape code was awful and Microsoft had two IE teams working in parallel, with the second one working to "componentize" IE and leapfrog Netscape. Which it did.

Netscape always had a free version* available, so it wasn't really down to price. (*though it was usually the buggier beta version.) Otherwise, its plan was to make money on server side, and despite buying in several server companies, it failed.

While Netscape was technically inferior, it is true that Netscape's own marketing and managerial mistakes contributed to its downfall. For example, you could only download it from Netscape, you couldn't customize or rebadge it, and at one point it decided to withdraw it, so you could only get it as part of a Netscape suite.

All of this was suicidal when Microsoft was shipping a free IEDK and allowing computer mags and ISPs to distribute IE.

Finally, in the anti-trust lawsuit, Microsoft WON the browser case 2-1 on appeal. So bundling wasn't actually illegal, as alleged.

I watched all this closely at the time. It is also well documented in several books, including How The Web Was Won, Competing on Internet Time, and the great High St@kes, No Prisoners.

[TheRealDunkirk]

If IE was ever more standards-compliant than it's competition, it was a very short-lived period. It made cross-platform (i.e., normal, ordinary, and real) web development problematic for over a decade.

You can say Netscape imploded, but they experienced a fight-or-flight response forced on them by Microsoft's scummy actions. I never said that bundling was illegal, but that's a purely legalistic distinction. I certainly implied it was unethical.

Before the trial, Microsoft gave about $10K a year in political donations. By the time it ended, they were giving over a million to EACH side. You weren't the only one watching, but not everyone watched the same things.

[scholia]

Microsoft made IE more standards-compliant than Netscape because this was a competitive advantage for Microsoft. It's a common tactic for companies when the dominant supplier has a 90% market share.

Remember "Best viewed with Netscape Navigator"? Netscape wanted to control the web by defining and unilaterally introducing web standards, so Microsoft naturally allied itself with the W3C.

It was short lived because Microsoft effectively abandoned browser development following anti-trust action, because it decided it could/would only ship browsers with operating systems. This turned out to be a bad choice because of the long delay between XP (which included IE6) and Vista. The slow take-up of Vista made it even worse. Microsoft didn't want people to use IE6 or XP, but the market decided otherwise.

All this goes back to the consent decree that Microsoft signed with Janet Reno. This specified that Microsoft was allowed to improve the operating system by adding new features. This more or less required it to build IE into the OS.

Microsoft was already under investigation during this period, and for the decade after the case, Microsoft operated under the close supervision of a US Judge. Whether or not you think its actions were scummy, it's unlikely they were illegal. Indeed, during this time, Microsoft was certainly easier for third parties to deal with than Netscape -- see High Stakes for examples.

As for political donations, this was also inevitable. Netscape couldn't compete in either technology or marketing so it played politics instead. Microsoft had operated on the basis that it wouldn't get involved with politics, and then it got screwed for its neglect. It simply decided not to make that mistake again. As anyone would.

Either way, Netscape was doomed in the long run. It was deluded in thinking that people would pay for a client access program. (You're welcome to provide examples of companies that have made pots of money out of this, but usually the client is free and people pay for the service.)

Netscape was even further deluded when it thought that it could charge PC manufacturers to ship its browser. The reality is that companies have to pay PC OEMs for distribution.

The final delusion was that users would pay a price for Netscape Communicator http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Communicator in order to get their hands on Netscape Navigator.

You really don't need any conspiracy theories to understand why Netscape lost. It had a combination of arrogance and incompetence the like of which I have not seen before or since.

[nbevans]

You weren't on the web back then were you? It seems pretty obvious from this that you weren't. IE was not a bad product. It beat Netscape on both technical and commercial merit.

It's almost like you would rather still be paying for web browser software today. Would you?

[TheRealDunkirk]

I've been on "the web" since Usenet on real Unix machines in college. I was rummaging around gopher servers on Linux. I had a SLIP dial-in account using Trumpet Winsock on WfWG. I had a DSL line hosting a video sharing site out of my house in '96. Heck, I ran IE on Solaris x86 for awhile. And, yet, somehow, it's "obvious" to you that I wasn't "on the web back then?" Uh. Wow. No, I was never on ARPANet, but, sheesh. I don't usually expect that sort of thing from HN, but I guess times are changing.

[SwellJoe]

HN does not allow one to downvote replies to your own comments.

I do disagree with you, in every regard, but I don't downvote over disagreement (and could not possibly downvote you in this instance). Someone else must also disagree with you.

[nbevans]

You don't make much sense. You disagree with me "in every regard" and yet you agree with Ken who made an almost identical point to my own.

Microsoft defined the business model of the web browser market as it exists today. I.e. free, widely and easily available, and bundled with the OS. This has not changed. The court cannot prevent free market economics, but they tried to.

Yes Microsoft made Netscape go bust. But Netscape were weak and short sighted. They were like squashing an ant.

[SwellJoe]

Ken made the point that Google and Apple behave the same way as Microsoft in the markets where they have monopoly-like dominance, and I agreed with him. In that instance, I am not talking about browsers. I am talking about the markets in which Google and Apple have monopoly-like power, and the ways they abuse that power. Browsers are a small part of that picture (though, it is telling that all three build browsers, despite their being numerous good browser options on the web...the browser clearly holds a power position on devices, and OS vendors are guarding that position jealously).

Anyway, I think what the justice department went after Microsoft for was a minor part of the wrongs Microsoft committed. Bundling the browser, and effectively prohibiting computer vendors from bundling Netscape, was a nasty trick and it killed Netscape (just as Microsoft killed Lotus, WordPerfect, and numerous others, often through backroom deals to separate those companies from their customer acquisition channels). But, my concerns are less about what happened to Netscape than about what happens to consumers and the market, when consumer choice isn't what decides the outcome.

IE was a proprietary overlay on the web. It was not an HTML browser, it was a Microsoft delivery platform. Having a stranglehold on the browser locked every competing OS out of the web for a decade. I switched to Linux on my desktop in 1995. But, I had to keep a Windows installation around on every desktop I ever owned in order to be able to access bank and government web sites, so I could use IE to access it. That's why IE was destructive, and that's abuse of monopoly power.

And, that's why Microsoft created IE: To embrace and extend the web, to use their existing monopoly in several enterprise markets to subtly take over the new market of the web and destroy the openness that allowed competitors to thrive. And, it succeeded for a long time. For years, we were trapped in this horrible Microsoft-owned world, where the dominant browser was incompatible with every other browser and with the standards and in ways that were intimately tied to the Windows operating system.

So, the courts didn't tackle the most damaging issues, unfortunately, and it took several years for the web to recover from the damage Microsoft caused.

[piokoch]

The courts questioned the fact that browser was delivered as a part of operating system, not that it was blocking innovation.

Speaking of innovation it is true that IE was terrible in adopting standards (this was pain for long, long years and costed tones of money), but, on the other hand, they have invented XMLHttpRequest, which opened doors to modern web applications development.

[nbevans]

This is complete rubbish. IE was on the cutting edge of web standards, to such an extent it was having to make up some proprietary technologies itself such as XMLHttpRequest (just one example).

The problem is a lot of Ruby/JS/dynamictypedlanguage hipsters these days who shout so loudly about IE having poor standards support weren't actually around at the time. Everyone loved IE back in those days as it was modern and every release had new exciting features in it (both for users and developers).

The fact that IE got some things "wrong" with CSS and had bugs like transparent PNGs not rendering, er, transparently... were just necessary growing pains. This didn't matter in the wild west days of the web as, well, PNGs weren't even that popular back then and CSS was still something web developers were getting to grips with, slowly.

Compare IE4-6 not to later-generation browsers, but to its direct rivals of the day which was Netscape and Opera and not really much else. Compared to these, IE was king.

[scholia]

It's simply not true that IE was terrible in adopting standards: it was very good at it up to and including IE6. That included the rapid adoption of Netscape "standards".

The real problem was that Microsoft stopped browser development for half a dozen years, and that put it miles behind. The rapid releases from IE8 to IE11 show Microsoft trying to catch up, ie being pretty good at adopting standards.

There are plenty of things to blame, including the US Justice Department, the unexpected delay from the Longhorn disaster, and the backlash against Vista. This left XP dominating the PC market, and XP shipped with IE6.

If that's been holding up the web, it's not because Microsoft willed it. Just the reverse: it's being trying for years to kill it off.

[kenjackson]

In fairness, what MS did in the past is what Apple and Google are going now, just with larger market share.

[SwellJoe]

Ken, this is an amazing day. I don't believe I have ever agreed with you in a discussion about Microsoft (or any discussion for that matter). But, I can say with complete conviction that I agree with you. Apple and Google (much moreso Apple) are behaving badly on a number of fronts, and abusing their near-monopoly position in certain markets.

[jabits]

xhr.

[jamespo]

Yeah, who uses SSL/TLS