Microsoft Tried To Buy Netscape: Suppose They Had? 246
Glyn Moody writes "In an interview, Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript and currently CIO at Mozilla, reveals that Microsoft tried to buy Netscape at the end of 1994. They were turned down because the offer was too low, but imagine if Netscape had accepted: no browser wars, no open Web standards, no Mozilla, no Firefox. How might the Web — and the world — have looked today if that had happened?"
Re:Fallacy (Score:5, Interesting)
Well Microsoft really kicked Netscape butt. But at the time Netscape wasn't about Open Web Standards, It was two sides trying to win their own priority web standards.
A new browser would have came up with more force if Microsoft killed the Linux ports of the browsers. Probably Konquer (that both Google Chrome and Apple Safari is based off of) would have became more used then Mozilla and got a big community support to make it on par and better then IE, just because the Linux users needed a web browser.
Re:Doesn't matter (Score:4, Interesting)
"Do you think Microsoft would have allowed Google to flourish?
" .doc formats in Word to force Office. MS excells at this (no pun intended) but the WWW is a different beast. As long as something is somewhat open alternative will pop out and once that happens the monopolists no longer writes the rules and controls the market.
You can't control the market of search providors like you can with Word. MS would have to rewrite w3c and lock html, encrypt it with proprietary protocols not based on HTTP, and do crazy shit to kill all competition. It is not like controlling the
There would be another browser if it were not for Firefox.
In 1994 there were 4 browsers out there. Some were as good as Mosaic too and I used one that I can't remember the name of which was made by a lawyer organization. Anyway, Netscape was the best one and it didn't win until the late 1990s.
What would have happened is another browser would have come by. IE 6 was ok in 2001, but security holes, and terrible development efforts to get anything done in it created the fuel for Mozilla Phoenix (later Firefox). Konqueror was created on Linux that was starting to become popular which is what webkit is based off of (engine of Chrome).
Mac users also would have used a different browser altogether as IE did not exist on the mac until 1998 if I recall. Was there even a MacOS8 or MacOS9 version before MacOSX? I do not recall as I was an NT user then. Someone can correct me if I am wrong as I didn't use macs then but it stands my point. Linux was more popular and so was Unix 10+ years ago in the workstation market and they would have used a different browser or a Gnu based one would come about that would be ported to all operating systems such as Konqueror. Universities were not all NT and Windows based like today and these CS and engineering students were most of the internet users anyway in the mid 1990s. Not the general public.
When MS had 90% of the market in the dark days of 2004 - 2006 demand for a way out corrected it. Many people do not like control by one company. Firefox was born. I just remembered Opera does exist and is popular in Russia and Eastern Europe. Perhaps, that would be the new norm? Demand exists outside of the workplace who do not want one company, one standard, one way of doing things etc.
IE 6 did make much of the web proprietary and started the intranets that can't be upgraded today that we all loathe, but MS attempts at proprietarization failed. Too many people need the net on many devices which means standards and more browsers hence the race for HTML 5.
Re:Wouldn't have changed (Score:5, Interesting)
"In 1994 linux users had to use something, whether konqueror, opera or any other browsers rose, a niche existed to be filled for a better web browser."
In 1994 there was hardly any Linux users. 1.0 was released that year and Slackware was the only player. Also the few Linux users out there did not "have" to have a browser. The web was just not that well established and Gopher was still popular.
In many ways the web was crucial in the history of the FOSS community and there is no guarantee we'd have Konqueror without Netscape. KDE wasn't founded until 1996 and the first release of Konqueror was years later than that.