When Netscape Almost Destroyed Microsoft | Nostalgia Nerd
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 19 ธ.ค. 2019
- Get Surfshark VPN at Surfshark.deals/NERD, Enter promo code NERD for 83% off and (for a limited time) THREE extra months free! Here's a story that started in 1989, with Microsoft's alliance with IBM, and their joint OS/2 venture. But it would lead to an Antitrust case waged against Microsoft in 1998 by the United States Government. At the core of this case was Microsoft's Internet Explorer, and the way it had been rammed into Windows '95, in order to crush the competition of Netscape Navigator. It's a story that the media followed intently, and I felt it was time to re-tell it, and just refresh our memories.
🏆 Support 🏆
Support my channel, get exclusive videos & perks, as well as an ad and sponsor free experience at / nostalgianerd from just $1
🏪 NN Shop & Affiliate Links! 🏪
My eBay Shop: nnerd.es/NerdShop (Now Re-open!)
My Retro Tech book: nnerd.me/HVFtSB (2nd edition is out!)
Desk Shelves for Retro Computers: nnerd.me/RetroShelves (Because you're worth it)
🍻 Share/Like 🍻
If you wish to share this video in forums, social media, on your website, or ANYWHERE else, please do so! It helps tremendously with the channel! Also, giving a thumb up or down also helps with visibility on TH-cam. Many thanks!
📟 Subcribe 📟
Click to Subscribe: nnerd.es/2K4TYvX
📱 Join me on Social Media 📱
🐥 / nostalnerd
🎮 / nostalgianerd
👱🏼📘 / nostalnerd
📸 / nostalgianerd
🌍 www.nostalgianerd.com
🎥 Equipment 🎥
Lumix G6 with Vario 14-42mm Lens
Nikon D3200 with 40mm Macro
Corel Video Studio Ultimate 2019
Corel Paint Shop Pro 2019
Blue Snowball Microphone
📜 Resources 📜
In video links and references are provided where possible. If you believe I have forgotten to attribute anything, please let me know (drop me an email via. the about page on TH-cam or send me a tweet), so I can add it here. Apologies if I have missed anything out, it takes time to make these videos and therefore it can be easy to forget things or make a mistake.
Errors and omissions excepted
Some material in this video may be used under Fair Dealing / Fair Use. Where under section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976 (UK: Sections 29 and 30 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988), allowance is made for purposes including parody, quotation, criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, education and research. Fair Dealing / Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing.
Gates was the son of a very successful lawyer, Allen always said that gave him an edge during negotiations
I was a Network Analyst working for a fast growing company called Paranet in Houston contracting for Exxon Eutec and at the time Netscape was the browser choice at Exxon. Once Microsoft released Internet Explorer 2.0, patches would come out for Windows 3.11 and Netscape would start crashing. Netscape would come out with a new version fixing the problem then Microsoft would release a patch something and then Netscape would start having problems again. Microsoft and their marketing tricks.
the "animated businesspeople" scenes are giving me anxiety
Especially when ur on acid!
Agree. With vpzom...
Ivan the communist... You need help.
Me too! that guy repeatedly adjusting his spectacles.
Seriously, I had to stop watching and just listen because those were so annoying over and over and over and over and over again.
@carddamom it seems unlikely you haven't heard of the most popular operating system.
I worked at Microsoft for 20 years and was on the Internet Explorer team when the DOJ investigation went to trial. This is a very good summary of the events. What I find even more interesting, though, is the long term effects the trial had on the company. Even though in the end the company was not broken up and the consent decree was relatively light on consequences, the company nevertheless changed greatly internally, in some ways for the better and in some ways not. To me, the question of how much of this change is attributable to the DOJ trial indirectly has always been more interesting than what can be directly linked. I've always wondered to what extent BillG's decision to greatly scale down his involvement in the company stemmed from his experiences during the trial. Certainly the company changed greatly under SteveB's leadership from what it had been under BillG. Would that transition have happened at all had the government not intervened?
Bill was misunderstood, then abused by those who require "evolution (profit) control".
Welcome to 2019. Milk humans. Evolution = NULL.
No idea what that guy above me is talking about. Some kind of Time Cube shit. But I agree with the OP. I wonder, if the DoJ ruling hadn't gone the way it had, if projects like the XBox would've happened.
heh. Bilge.
I don't think they learned anything... try and uninstall Edge from Windows 10... they should have killed Microsoft in the 90s
congrats, you worked at what could only be described as the evil phase of ms. You guys deserved far worse, and stagnated the entire industry, and the web.
And now it's Google asserting dominance whilst getting away with it.
Indeed
There's a Brave choice that can be made ;)
blakegriplingph chrome is very very slowly dieing as people start valuing privacy more and move to a browser like Firefox although it’s safe for at least another 3 years
Google runs half of the Internet, ruining it in the process. Dark times ahead if things don't change
This is one reason I'm distancing myself from them by using Brave Browser and Duck Duck Go for search. Being an Android user it's hard to disconnect entirely, and some of their stuff is bloody useful. Others start useful and end up getting dropped (coughG+cough)... though we're talking on a Google primary platform that's not going away any time soon.
From the ad break: "You should be worried", "You're at risk!"
These claims are pretty hyperbolic today. I wish you wouldn't use them. Just watch Tom Scott's video on VPN adverts.
@Seán's Mobile what happened with Nord?
Yes. The scare mongering is kinda awful.
@Marc Carran Fallacy by statistics.
don't buy it if you don't want it
@@josephyn89 People like to claim hacks when they sell your data to the wrong guy... Go ask Sony how their PSN network hack went down ;-)
And yet, today we have massive monopolies controlling the Internet today. So...... we accomplished nothing.
Today, Google and other companies knows they can buy favors from the government.
@@Bill67J
Google is owned by the government
The EU is still suing them. Seems like we'll have to do it since the US stopped caring about freedom.
@@evanfehr3819 you have that backwards.
So companies like google, apple, amazon, disney, Uber, Microsoft still, they are all major players in a very anti-competitive market. how come the FTC just gave up on those companies.
my best guess is that no US President administration since Clinton's has been actively trying to enforce anti-trust laws.
Dapper Dinkum that’s not how they work lmao, and all of these companies can already do that as soon as you signed their EULA’s and Terms of Service Agreements. Quantum Computing fearmongering is stupid because we are nowhere close to them actually being useful for anything but solving very specialized math problems and computational problems. Even google’s quantum supremacy claim is disputed by IBM.
@@justajavajunkyI know you're being sarcastic but I was rude and mean in my earlier comment. I'd like to apologise for being so toxic.
The purpose of the state is to serve the interests of capital
@@justajavajunky I'm not really used to people genuinely wanting to learn on YT so this is a new experience for me.
I wonder what would have happened if Netscape had been a bit more sly from the get-go. Instead of claiming that their product would reduce Windows to "buggy device drivers," they could have said they were no threat to MS at all, kind of the same way that Microsoft claimed to support OS/2, even while developing its competitor.
That won’t have helped, Microsoft was and is a company that goes into market they see are growing, they like to dominate that market, they do not cooperate like normal companies, they take what they get. This way there no Wordperfect, no Lotus 1,2,3, no Pascal this companies are bundled out of the market.
OS/2 which, like Linux, was more amenable to being run on any compatible system 24/7, was a threat to anything MS could create as a competitive product, so Billy-boy did what he could to kill it.
@@stephenwright8824 IBM was wherry slow to support 2GB/4GB on OS/2, they failed to get game companies interested, and kind expected Microsoft to deliver office programs, IBM lacked the balls to do it.
@@stephenwright8824 The funny thing is a lot of NT was written by IBM while a lot of OS/2 was written by Microsoft.
@@stephenwright8824 os/2 was developed mostly by Microsoft at first how does that make sense
I just wanna point out that whoever designed the Netscape logo and icons was a mastermind.
Never in my whole time on the internet have i ever been so inspired from double clicking and seeing the netscape logo in conjunction with going online across the whole globe.
Internet Exploder never satiated this imagination. Starting IE felt more like opening MS-paint.
And no browser icon/logo since has ever made me feel like i am actually entering orbit around the world to find information from the other side of the planet by the click of a mouse button.
To be fair, once Netscape had gained a huge market share, they got lazy. Once Microsoft announced Internet Explorer, Netscape panicked, and started pushing out a lot of questionable changes. Netscape 4 was unstable garbage, and further versions were horribly slow and buggy. In the Mac labs of my university, people intentionally uninstalled Netscape and replaced it with IE 5.5, because it was a FAR better and more stable browser. When Mac people WANT to uninstall the software provided by Apple and install a Microsoft product, you know you done screwed up. Ultimately, Netscape killed themselves through bloat, instability, UI redesigns, and trying to push features nobody wanted. Sound familiar?
The real crime is how MS forced vendors to sell Windows exclusively through bulk pricing, and still does. The justice department focused way too much on the browser war, and not enough on MS's whole OEM licensing model.
"UI redesigns, and trying to push features nobody wanted. Sound familiar?"
Apple and Microsoft in the 2010's in a nutshell with removing headphone jacks, windows 8/10, UWP, no more apps in itunes, dropping phone sized phones, rounded screens...
I had the same issue with MSN being a permanently installed icon in my Windows Desktop. I sorted that out quickly, with a simple Registry edit. It's handy at times to have a second browser ready for use (which I do), but MSN was not in any part of my interests.
I don't remember Netscape 4 (Communicator) being unstable but it was certainly bloatware - of course IE was also very bloated at the time.
How about when Muggersoft forced Apple to install IE and OE into every Mac preinstalled with current and future versions of the macOS until OS X, when Billy-boy conceded that Safari and Mail.app were superior. Ok it was because MS had bailed Apple out with a $13million loan, but all the same.
@@needforsuv My quick diss of Microsoft back in the day was, "They take the obvious and make it look like innovation."
You should do an episode on the 1969-1982 US vs IBM Antitrust Case. A 13 year long case that was dropped without merit.
Bill Gates: "If you define 'definition', for this conversation in a loose way, then I'll understand what you mean".
I think this may have topped Bill Clinton's, "it depends on what your definition of 'is' is" for a 90s WTF quote.
brilliance to learn from.
These people (Politicians and CEOs) are the biggest liars, killers and thieves humanity has to offer.
The 90s were wild man
He opened up for a great comeback if the other guy would have gone to define "definition".
"what definition of definition did you use when you defined definition"?
I love English and learning weasley communication because it's super easy to pull something out of your butthole and make it sound confident and even philosophical
I remember the old days when every youtube video wasn't sponsored by a VPN. Good times man, good times.
Are you talking about the raid shadow legends times?
I mean, when you see what some of these sponsors are paying the youtubers, and how shakey ad revenue is otherwise, it makes sense. Some of these sponsors are paying up to $5,000 per video. Mind you, that's about half of the annual income someone working 20/hr a week on minimum wage in the us
complain about sponsors as much as you want, but they are the reason why youtube is still here.
That was the youtube's golden era.
@@laggory Way to much money going around these days... back in the day making videos wasn't a job, it was just things you wanted to share with other people for the fun of it.. nowadays it is all about revenue, subs, adds, getting x videos out a month etc... I am getting so fed up with so many channels e-begging spamming their Patreon and donate links...
God remember when the government cared about shutting down monopolies? I miss that so much
-Looks at G.M, toyota and other car companies.- 🤔 how is this even legal?
Ok Boomer. Did u just forget that the FCC just sued TH-cam for $170million
@@christiansousanis7318 not for being a monopoly they sued over a weird interpretation of a children's privacy act
yeh but obviously the government isnt just going to start suing tech companies for no reason, there are no monopolies in the tech world anymore, e.g. if you dont like windows, use mac or linux. if you dont like an iphone use any other android. like no one is doing anything that warrants being sued over. for example, what ur doing is just generic boomer talk by saying how BACK IN YOUR TIME THINGS WERE BETTER, there is no need for your boomer talk.
@@christiansousanis7318 I'm 27 there are plenty of dangerous monopolies around Disney comes immediately to mind and Google has been making concerning moves for years
Along with cable and internet companies with their exclusivity agreements and with local news networks around the country being quickly and quietly bought out by spectrum (time warner) (almost att time Warner) it's ignorant to think that monopolies can't exist in our current climate
Don't use scaretactics to sell your advertisementdeal.
I know...W T F, literally
Sponsors often have strict rules and require you to mention these things. If he's in serious need of money, he might not HAVE a choice
@@Icalasari BS. First there is something called integrity. That flew out the window here in the persuit of his own interest.
Second: The ones that NEED money, those are the ones that pick up trash, flip hamburgers, work on a factory production line, etc. They are surviving... not scaring the innocent and ignorant into paying for something that average joe just doesn't need at all.
And because there are a lot of people on the internet who are not aware that he's selling BS to serve his own pockets, THAT's why I called it out.
Agreed. This was one of my favourite NN videos in a long time and then... ugh.
Agree. Misjudged there NN, sorry.
The book written on this subject by David Bank is a firm recommendation. It is based on thousands upon thousands of emails that were disclosed during the trials and it takes a deep dive in Gates’ head, whose end goal was something termed ‘Microsoft Everywhere’.
I still miss netscape navigator to this day! it worked so much better than all the other browsers @ the time imo and i loved the simple layout
The 3D card battles of the late 90's would make a nice video too.
I had colleagues into the latest, hottest video cards. They all spent the equivalent of the price of a midsize car on all their cards!
@@denny4471 What? Back then?
@@dcikaruga Sure, I'm exaggerating, but these dudes were spending $300-$500 every couple months for the latest & greatest video card.
@@denny4471 Every month? My Matrox G200 got by for a while, then I went ATI Radeon (the first generation) 2 years later, then 9800 Pro....... Looking back the biggest difference I see now is the price, resolution we play at, and how much they heat up.
The SoundCards where even crazier. It turns out today you just have a stock soundchip and it works for everything you ever need
*_Man,_* it took a really long time to settle the Netscape Vs. Microsoft court case! it took over *_*SEVEN*_* years to settle it!
And now we have Win 10. Due to the lack of control we used to have over the O/S many are bailing out of Microsoft and going to Linux. I would have been happy with Win 98 if only they had continued support. When my Vista computer went out of support, I put Linux on it and have never regretted that.
"This is nit picking on super heroic levels", when you are dealing with the law nit picking is the name of the game, a good technicality can win or lose a case.
I was firmly in the Netscape camp back then... Only used Win98 for games and school work while using Linux for everything else. But as a web designer for my college I ended up having to use IE 5 for HTML4 pages because Netscape had support for CSS, a single file for typeseting on all web pages. That was Netscape was too busy fighting MS in the courts instead improving their browser. Once the more bloated IE6 came out I switched to Firefox which I used ever since.
This was awesome, thanks SO MUCH for making this. I hear your love for it, and so many archives were new to me, and your thoughts on this story were well thought out. I also love that you voiced your own video's quotes. Kept me immersed in your vid.
What Netscape was trying to do that scared Microsoft so much would not have happened anyway. It was only much later that Chromebooks and the likes of iPad delivered, to an extent, on the promise of OS irrelevance. But even today, in the smartphone arena, the operating system matters, and we're back to most work being done in apps and not in the web browser.
On my wall, I still have the original Firefox 1.0 poster: "Are you fed up with your web browser? You're not alone. We want you to know there is an alternative..." with all the names of supporters from 2004, right after the renaming from Phoenix/Firebird. Ah, heady days.
I've been wondering when/if the time ever comes for computer memorabilia to become collectible. Guessing the limited timeframe this stuff was relevant makes them fade from memory so fast people don't necessarily form lasting nostalgia.
@@snooks5607 I trend to agree. Wanna buy a cheap modem? I'll throw in an adapter for your wall socket, and a curly cable.
RIP Firefox... 9 Feb 04 - 4 Jan 18
It's things like TabMixPlus that made it great. The whole WebExtensions thing killed it. Anyway, it's _still_ way better than Google's DCT (data collection tool), but not anymore the really cool thing it was.
Did the title changed? It was 'how government try to kill microsoft' before (or something like that),right?
Love your channel. Clear, listenable voice. Concise, detailed and informative. Much appreciated.
Amazing how essentially ChromeOS and chromebox was proposed way back then.
Hearing about this process made me decide to not use Internet Explorer whenever possible. For years I've used other browsers, but at work we only had IE available and I've had to use it for 7 years when working. People were complaining, however, and in 2019 we finally were given the option in our work PCs to use Firefox or Chrome instead, for those who preferred it.
"A buggy set of device drivers underneath the browser". This is exactly what Windows is in most use cases nowadays. I guess Netscape couldn't achieve that goal but the market was actually advancing into that direction. Google implements that even more with all of their, somewhat scary, Chrome-cloud-whatevers.
Windows 10: Early Access, eternal Pre-Alpha, forced updates make you stay in that loop, never stable, even the friggen (file) explorer has it's abundant cornucopia of bugs that never ever get fixed even in decades... literally.
4:20 King Kong Bundy in a Microsoft commercial wtf lol
Noticed that too, was a nice surprise xD
This was possibly one of the worse sponsored segments I have ever seen for a VPN. This says a lot.
Funny thing is that I have never used Explorer, I went from Mosaic to Netscape to Firefox. I tried Edge when I bought my first computer with Windows 10, but I gave up fast since the protection against pop-up scam (the famous call a number because there is a virus on your computer) was ridiculous. Sure I have to install a browser each time I buy a new computer, but it's better than dealing with a Microsoft browser.
Well, Edge is now based on Chromium, so, of course you'll get popups for IT Scams.
I worked software support for a large insurance company, and we used OS/2 Warp running in a virtual machine to access certain legacy apps. I had never used OS/2 before, and I really liked it, despite it being 20 years old at that time. It's a shame that OS never got a chance to develop and evolve. I would have liked to have seen what it could have become.
same for BeOS
Arca Noae OS is the successor to OS/2 actually. :)
Welcome to another example of, 'Too Big To Fail.'
I think the good part about all this, is that open standards won. How horrible would it have been, if MS was able to enforce their technology on the web and sell licenses to other companies.
As is said in the video, MS got really scared when Netscape was painting a picture where the browser was the main interface with the user and the OS could be replaced, without the user even noticing.
And in the end you could say this vision became reality with ChromeOS.
Open standards also made sure that Apple didn't get crushed and ultimately I really think Linux will grow on the desktop and laptop.
Having worked in the Tech sector for 30 years I remember all of it well.... It's so funny how Microsoft Panicked when Netscape came along. Now it's rolling over for Chrome.... My how times have changed.
Well researched Sir. Good work.
All the best for 2020 *NN* . Hope you & your family are well, have a great Xmas & New Year.
A big aspect of getting IE dominant (and why for all but the last few versions it ignored most actual standards and had its own) was to encourage people to use Windows in the server room, using the IIS stack rather than something like Apache.
7:35 this dude wanted to make Chrome OS in 1995.
Would be interesting to see an alternate timeline where the computer industry has been dominated by the cloud-based Netscape Navigator OS since the 90s.
@@leysont pcs would be well, boring
I remember netscape had the first ever back up button and I loved it. I remember thinking, i wish my dads old amiga had a backup button because im always trying to get out of trouble on that thing. Microsoft soon copied them by installing a back up button on the windows os and now everything has one.
I knew vaguely of this, but never heard it explained in such detail. Brilliant
19:37 N64 with Mario 64 or Goldeneye for only £100? I'll take a couple of them please!
‘He was going to “buy” Netscape.’ Translation: have his techs interview their techs, copy the product, and then put hem out of business with a superior distribution channel giving his away for free until he owned the market.
Good to get an overview of this. I was only tangentially aware of this going on at the time as I was still waving the Amiga flag as a diehard (or rather a pauper lol) My internet use was restricted to school (where yeah, we mainly used netscape), and mainly browsing the AmiNet, stuffing floppies full of shareware Amiga software to take home to my then non-internettable A1200. It'd be a few years til I got my first modem at a car boot sale and finally got my miggy online. I think we're a similar age so I really dig your videos. Keep up the good work! :)
Congratulations on being the first poster I've seen on here that can use the English language (nearly) correctly.
Amiga is back with 080 Vampire Standalone :)
You were still using an Amiga in the late 90’s.....dude.
True story, this happened to me. I wrote an application for a large company. It was had about 50 users. It was written in Paradox for Windows, a product from a rival company named Borland. A new version of Windows came out. The company wanted to move over to the new version but because they were such a large company, they tested it in a few departments first. Thankfully the department I wrote that application for was one of the departments. IT installed the new version and the workers came in the next day, booted their computers, and went into my application. My application quickly crashed on everyones' computer. The company paid for top support to Microsoft so I was able to talk to a support person immediately. I described the problem and the support person told me that she KNEW what the problem was and had a solution. She said the problem was that I was using a non-Microsoft tool and the solution was to rewrite the application in Microsoft Access.
It took 3 programmers 3 years to write that application so doing a re-write wasn't an option. I told my boss what the support person said and so my boss called her boss and here is what he was told. Microsoft had released the new version of Windows KNOWING it crashed Paradox for Windows !!!!!! We ended up going back to the old version of Windows.
Eventually Borland was forced out of business even though they tended to write better Windows tools than Microsoft.
"Taking a cue from Borland's low price Quattro Pro spreadsheet debut against Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access debuted with a $99 price.[3] This undercut the traditional DBMS prices of Paradox DOS, Paradox Windows, and dBase of around $799, which negatively impacted Borland more than any other firm. "
lol no shit they priced themselves out of business.
REALLY love this documentary. Would love to see more of this as a refreshment to other kinds of documentaries out there :)
As always, your videos are very informative and comprehensive. I remember the first versions of Explorer. They were garbage until version 3.0 came out. Netscape really started to suck after they merged with AOL.
Someone needs to destroy Google's current grip on the Internet, as they control a big search engine, the most used browser and the most used mobile operating system.
Splitting the company into 'Alphabet' and separating the different divisions was a preemptive strike to try to prevent that.
Stop using chrome
Problem solved.
Just don't buy iphone . Problem solved.
@@CDRiley what? Do you mean don't buy android?
The difference is Google products are actually good, that's why people use them. Google defeated MSN search, AltaVista and Yahoo not by being anti-competitive, but because their search engine was actually superior. Android defeated Windows CE/Mobile and Symbian because it was actually superior. Google Maps defeated other map applications because it actually worked better in most instances. Microsoft on the other hand have rarely delivered high quality products, instead providing clumsy products that barely work and crash frequently (particularly Windows 95 & 98, and of course the horribly sluggish Internet Explorer).
* 16:16 its actually "20 State Attorneys General" in American grammar (since we're talking about American attorneys. Yes, I realize in the UK its said the other way, but this is a specific reference to the American job title.)
As soon as yanks start using correct English when talking about the UK, then, you can attempt to criticise an Englishman on the correct grammar for the English language.
Watching now, I remember this happening back in 97 but I was 11 so...yeah I didn’t really care since I had toys to play with. Great topic!
I was 14 but it still brings back some nostalgia. I remember all my friends getting Pentium 1 and. 2 computers around this time and actually being impressed with the games. Plus the internet and AOL instant messenger came into prominence around this time. What a great era
I was 18 and remember being a bit worried, just thinking it would do more harm than good for the software industry in the US (ie - through discouraging companies from growing too large).
I was actually born the day after Billy tried to redefine the word definition.
Hello you used from 6:14 to 6:33 video from netscapecorp account, (was mine) by the way not a problem , just would like you ask before : )
I was reading: "When Nestlé Almost Destroyed Microsoft" 😂
I wish Microsoft would destroy Nestlé, THAT would make Gates a TRUE humanitarian, and a hero for all time!
Well, If you think about it , if you pour Nestlé on your Windows computer, it will technically destroy Microsoft.
You live in such a nice wonderland, 😙😂😂😂
I've really never understood how this lawsuit made much sense, Netscape had a browser everyone loved so they made their own and bundled it with their own operating system they built. Other than apparently bullying oems I'm not 100% sure on what they did could be anti-competitive, it's not like they blocked installing of alternative browsers. It's like for example all of the jailbreak Dev teams over the years sued Apple for anti-competition because they kept continually locking them out with software updates (but even then it would make more sense because they're actually getting locked out).
Well it's a bit controversial because defaults make a huge impact. You can see it with how Google's market share exploded after they bundled it with Android. In Russia there was an antitrust case to avoid Google from destroying Yandex and it worked, the fix was essentially to let users pick their search engine the first time you open the app. Some people prefer Google, some prefer Yandex, it's transparent and democratic. Most people sadly don't understand browsers or search engines (*especially in desktop computers and laptops) so if they manage to navigate the web they'll stick to whatever is there by default. Not everyone knows how to download, install and tweak programs and settings, we may take that sort of knowledge for granted but when we talk about the general market it's not that way. So yeah it didn't make much sense for people like us but it definitely matters for other people. The most just thing would have been to facilitate the installation of both so people could actually choose, or selling IE separately. Most people I met when I was younger used IE, this includes all my relatives in my huge family, my school and even my dad's coworkers - even though he worked in a computer related business. People just don't know or care and this difference in market share is a game changer.
My first browser was Mosaic. About 2007, with a fresh build of s/w, Explorer/exploder couldn't read internal company sites. Downloading Safari for Windows solved the problem.
16:38 Bill Clinton did the same thing when he questioned the definition of the word is.
In both cases, normal people watch them and think "What the fuck are you doing?"
That acturally is a common philosophical question, (usually done as a thought experiment..)
Having worked in web development throughout ie6 up to ie10+ I can say with confidence, the money spent on cross browser compatibility cost the world's IT industry (edit: well more people paying for web sites, it frustrated the industry and slowed development more than anything) far more than $200 billion. Often it took longer to implement ie6 support than the website itself took to build. On top of that, in the early days of the internet when it was slow dial up and Windows 95 running on 16MB of ram, the woefully inefficient ie6 would slow the internet experience down to an absolute crawl. Then it would let viruses and malware and for the early years of the internet, browsing and overall experience could be quite frustrating. I think Microsoft has been a disaster for the IT software industry.
The reason Internet Explorer was so awkward to develop for is because it's rendering engine (or 'document object model') was based on MS's own renderer (I forgot the name but hasLayout was a thing). Then they tried to combine web pages and Office pages with the same file docx standard in the most fail way ever. Instead of Mozilla's Gecko or Apple's WebKit engines which were developed with the WC3 internet standards group (Google's Blink is now the primary rendering engine).
Trident was the renderer.
@@Henrik_Holst Yeah I looked it up. I remembered some other name for some reason. MS wrote a ie6 debugging tool which was pretty useful because you could see all the janky javascript.commands that were doing things. Bad things. hasLayout indeed.
@@joshmbrown42 Yeah it was the most supported that's true. Up until Firefox in the early 00's or something. I even used it on XP. It was ok at first I'll admit but too many things installed themselves onto it. It was only when I tried a different browser that I realised pages actually loaded faster and I was like omg you had 1 job ie6.
I remember I was able to start using Linux as a mainstream pc in 2009 after many failed tries, 3 of the theeting problems were dial-up which I got rid only in 2007 with 640kbit adsl, flash plugin support and IE websites compatibility which at that time was at an acceptable level
@@fabiosemino2214 IE's unique architecture was often retrofitted with plugins used by large organisations so it's use lasted alot longer as a result.
Awesome video as always. I was amazed at just how much of this i had forgotten while living theough it. Thank you.
Actually, I lived through this, microsoft plus was required to be able to access your modem from windows. This caused most of us trying to do real networking, fidonet at the time, to look at os2, which came with everything we needed.
More appropriately titled: "When Microsoft set the IT industry back 15 years"
Nobody wants the 2010s 15 years before the 2010s
More like 25 years almost 30
What needed to happen was adjustments to Software copyright. Intel was the power house that was setting back development more so than Microsoft. Intel was actively spending a huge amount of resources and money to stop competition and limit it. by 1992 Intel was the undisputed king of hardware and every year it was sabotaging other silicon companies. Let's not even get into the bullshit Apple pulled. For setting back development it would go in this order Intel > Apple > Microsoft
@@Thickcurves I would say Microsoft > Intel > Apple
Netscape is evolving!!
Netscape evolved into Mozilla Browser
Actually into Phoenix at first, Firefox is second evolution.
@@MJ-uk6lu Phoenix, Firebird , then Firefox.
@Steven 1773 Or, in Linux and Win 7, Iceweasel.
@@MJ-uk6lu Firefox had 15 upgrades in seven months in, I believe, 2013. So much for stability.
And we're all grateful for it.
At 21:28, Bill Gates says "Who decides what's in Windows? The customers who buy it."
Well, that was definitely not the case with Windows 10.
It is the ultimate goal of any corporation to eliminate all competition and establish a monopoly, that's the magic of the Free Market™
But they forget that competition is actually good for business!!! Competition is what drives innovation and helps to improve R&D!!!
We used to call IE, Internyet destroyer.
Even while we used W95, W98, and WME, we still would download Netscape or Mozilla and use it instead of IE. Much less buggier. There were some wesites that 'required' IE, but they soon fell by the wayside.
Internet Exploder :)
@@CakePrincessCelestia Or As I Call It Internet Explore-Fail
16:43 "I define the word 'definition' more strictly than you." --Bill Gates trying to weasel his way out of a question by LITERALLY arguing semantics.
Ok Mr. Gates, who would you define 'definition' exactly?
So that's where Slick Willie got his line, "Could you please define what 'is' is?" in his impeachment deposition.
Classic deception tactics. Argue what I'm saying is right therefore what you're saying must be wrong because words can only mean what I say they mean. Also known as bald-faced lies.
It might seem callous at first, but if you have ever done any real debates, this can be proven to be a smart and ingenious tactic. I make this assessment coming from the mindset and mentality of an avid Chess player. I'm a strategist.
And the Hungarian version of Windows 95 at the end :)))) My favorite sentence on the screen with orange color, before turn off the computer (when i was a child): "Most már kikapcsolhatja a számítógépet." :)
Watched this 3 weeks ago but forgot to leave a comment. I really enjoyed this video and learnt something too. Thank you and well done on a great video 👍😃
How much did running IE on Windows cost the world economy over the years via bad code, malware, and poor products? It's like they held slowed everything down and in the process transferred money to themselves, effectively like a tax on productivity.
WOW! two whole weeks after this went up and they pushed me a notification today! Thanks to youtube, the bell notification means bugger all if you just push notifications whenever you feel like it!!!!!!!
You and Kim make the best documentaries out there. Must be something in that English water 😁👍
10:20 what is the title of the background music here? It's amazing!
In fairness to Microsoft, within a few years, almost every OS bundled a web browser with it. I don't think it was even slightly wrong of them to code their own rather than license Netscape like Apple did. The only real scummy they did was bullying PC vendors away from bundling their own software with the systems. As Firefox proved almost immediately after the trial's final conclusion, IE's status as default browser did not mean people wouldn't switch away from it. Netscape was killed by its own mismanagement, not by Microsoft.
How can you be FAIR to mickshafted they are criminals from the ground up still to this day
Seeing Bill tapdance the issue on that tape... Aw man.
Anyone who wants to debate on the Internet should watch religiously Bill’s performance on this video.
Gooey is an adjective used to describe macaroni and cheese, not an acronym for graphical user interface.
Attorney: Do you have a role at Microsoft?
Gates: Yes.
Attorney: What is your role?
Gates: There are a few.
Attorney: How would you describe these roles?
Gates: Cleverly....
I think a vacuum was created when ATARI and Amiga disappered from the home market. With more operating system out there it probably be easier for software provider like Netsacpe, the escudos of software companies from Commodore/Amiga and ATARI for not being able to keep up on the hardware front, created a approximately OS monopile on home market, Macintosh also barely able to stay alive, the one thing that kept it alive was it focus on true color graphics, assuming that some different decision was made back then I sure thing might have looked really different. The argument about DRDOS and MSDOS and so on, I think is false, as was more or less the same thing, noting really to do with the OS monopoly.
I miss TOS too.
Wow that was quick explanation on Ms-DOS... no mention of branches of third-party apps, Quarterdeck memory management, Xtree directory utility.
We moved right to window GUI 😅🤬
Might as well bring in the MSdos game like ID soft Doom 3D engine binary space partition
@KMSMista meaning you full of 💩
I still use xtree gold hahahaha
@@pelgervampireduck in an GUi dos shell? Oh what's the spec of the system that running Xtree Gold?
I run it on a pentium 1 and a pentium 3 that run "DOS 7 with GUI 4" (win9x).
on more modern computers that run NT windows (xp and 7) I use a clone called "ztree win" some times, just for fun.
ur posts are sending me "back into the past" .....this case was the main key to keep Windows platform open for developer, it was a great event of trusting the Law and the new born of digital law , and to put a spot light on the integrity of Tech developers ... and clients relationship with tech vendors ...
What's the background music up until the 9th minute? It's really nice and relaxing. Tried to shazam it, but the voice is too loud and it won't register it.
I ditched Microsoft for Linux 13 years ago. Not much of a (modern) gamer, so no regrets. I am, however, typing on a Microsoft keyboard ;)
Microsoft Hardware FTW. Still using a 2003 Digital Media Keyboard and the glorious Force Feedback 2 stick that has something all the modern and utterly expensive shit doesn't: Force Feedback. As for the keyboard: I don't get those overpriced RGB things and the manufacturers constantly playing around with the standard keyboard layout, making literally every keyboard released since useless once you try using it without looking at the thing. There literally haven't been any worthy replacements for those in almost two decades, ongoing.
Very well done! It was a crazy time and did indeed shape the future more than many thought at the time. Microsoft these days is sadly dysfunctional and has made epic mistakes where they have failed to innovate and been shamed by other companies (failing year after year in mobile phones being just one the more obvious examples). One thing however is still true: They continue to ignore what their customers want, produce substandard products, and focus on mostly just their stock price which mostly serves senior management.
"They continue to ignore what their customers want, produce substandard products" Spot on! MS Office's insistence on the clumsy "ribbon" menu bars is comical, when other products like LibreOffice or Google Docs are perfectly happy to provide the conventional menu bars that most users prefer.
(4:09) It's the Headstart IBM compatible computer! I loved my Headstart LX-CD computer, more advanced that the school's computers (until they got Windows PCs), and it had a CD-ROM drive.
Very interesting. I hope you keep making videos about computer business affairs. No a lot of content like this about!
If I had to sum up TH-cam in 2019 in two words it would be "VPN Shills". Almost every man and his dog on youtube this year was sponsored by some VPN requiring a baked in ad. It's just so tiring at this point.
The best VPN is the Linux computer you buy with cash, on public networks, fake email address, camera and microphones masked with tape over them. Nothing to hide but why allow them to spy on you continuously?
What about RAID SHADOW LEGENDS. I'm so damn sick of hearing people try their best to hype a mediocre mobile game.
So it's not okay for content creators to make money on their videos? Do you expect them to make videos for free?
@@ReallifeBambiDeerattheFarm1 No I don't expect that and I understand the need for sponsors and ads. Creators deserve to be paid. Especially this video cause it was so well put together. But as @shanna and @Darth Grumpy put it, It was the scare-tactics used and I personally found the presentation rather rude.
... or you could just subscribe to Premium.
I've used both and I preferred #OS/2...
And SSL which they invented.
i NEVER get notices for videos on this channel. i just happen across them searching for something to watch. i am subbed and ALL selected in the bell. youtube, what gives!?
re: the email gates sent out in 1995.
Gates published his book, The Road Ahead, the same year as the Memo he sent out. It detailed a lot of what we called the information super high way back then and even now, still tells the story of what we're experiencing. It's a great read to see how he was seeing the future that we're living in now and how much he got right.
Simon Johnny Except that at this time he wasn't even shipping TCP/IP drivers with MS.DOS or Windows, and was having his networking lunch eaten by Novell. TCP/IP was a third-party industry to Bill, which is why we have Winsock. He didn't wise up for several more years.
This video is great overall, but you ruined part of it with the VPN (you're at risk without one) bollocks.
Yeah, his listed reasons "use location restricted services, hide yourself from targeted ads, avoids mobile roaming charges and better prices, and more" just doesn't really fairly encompass the benefits of using a VPN.
yeah security on the net really isnt an issue anymore however using a vpn to access different countries netflix libraries thats a good use for vpns, also cookies bypass vpns anyway so targeted ads will hapen unless you disable cookies
19:25 Hey, I know that we're supposed to be focusing on the microsoft legal battle on this page, but the story above it look WAY more interesting (because I'd never heard of it). So Arizona and some civil liberties groups were freaked out because Intel wanted to use SERIAL NUMBERS? XD there has to be more to that story...
IIRC those unique processor id's are still there. Not sure if they have to enabled, or only show to tpm modules or what now, but as far as I know they are still in x86 cpu's.
@@kaseyboles30 OK, but I still don't get why this is an issue. Basically all products that have a warranty of any kind have serial numbers, and even lots of products that don't. Is the worry that the serials could be track who said what online or something?
@@Kevin-jb2pv Took a second, been 2 years. The issue was they were software readable. It's one thing to print/engrave a serial number on the product, it's another to place it such that every pc is uniquely identifiable via remote control. It could be used to hunt down dissidents, whistleblowers, and the like. It could be used to lock a piece of software such that you can only use it with that one p.c.. Computer fried by lightning and you want to reinstall everything on a new pc, sorry got to pony up the full purchase price again. The abuse potential is severe, whether from governmental actors, private companies, criminals, etc.
surprisingly entertaining. guessing it has something to do with there being so much less coverage of 90s tech history. all that 80s Commodore, Atari, Nintendo stuff is coming out of my ears.
About the time NCSA Mosaic morphed into Microsoft Internet Explorer, I clearly remember some clever so-and-so rearranging the letters of 'Netscape Navigator' into 'Captain Gravestone' on a whiteboard presentation I was doing for the company I was with at the time.
Laugh? - I almost did, especially after just purchasing 5000 Netscape licenses.
2019 in IT and I still deal with IE only websites and activex extensions.
It's interesting how Nintendo kind of shaped the internet. Like, the Mozilla guys were working with projects for the Nintendo 64. That didn't happen - so Netscape.
Nintendo doesn't understand how Internet works even today :D
I remember using Netscape waaaaay back in the day, when I was in junior high and the first year or so of high school.
Along those same lines, I remember it was like PULLING TEETH to get my parents to stop using IE like 10+ years ago. It was around the time that there was a particularly bad problem of IE allowing Trojans to come through ad placements, and I warned my parents to not use IE not only because of that but because of it just being a buggy, clunky piece of junk browser. But they were set in their ways, and they did NOT want to change.
This tug of war continued until my mother got a Trojan through IE - and yes, I had antivirus AND Malware Bytes software on their laptops but this thing got past it! - that quite literally _disabled .exe files._
It took me over an hour and a half to manually extract the thing via notepad and other workarounds I don't even remember anymore, following a guide from MY laptop's Firefox browser. (Chrome wasn't prevalent back then, not that it's a stellar alternative but pretty much anything is better than IE.)
When I finally got her laptop functioning and clean again, I told her "If you continue using IE now and you get that Trojan again, _I am not fixing it._ PLEASE use Firefox!"
Niether of them have used IE/Edge since then. Every subsequent laptop they have owned has had IE/Edge opened exactly ONE time while I was originally setting them up: _to download Firefox/Chrome/Opera._ After that, I removed all pinned shortcuts to IE/Edge from the task bar, desktop, and start menu so they wouldn't be able to easily access it.
Excellent video and report. It's still a confusing time even when you explain it!
9:44
Searching for "sun" in a Microsoft commercial... Balls of steel.
Guess they didn't name XP's GUI Luna for nothing :D
Thanks again for that stroll down RAM lane. I remember reading this in the Seattle Times while it happened. I was working my way through school at the time.
I was 6 or 7 so this was definitely nostalgic
Hmm... I was going to say how silly it is to consider human memory like RAM but then had to think about what it means to power down in the human context and got all into a spiderweb of life/death/sleep/coma/stroke. Not as simple as I had initially thought!
"Wow what predatory things Microsoft did by integrating a web browser into its operating system". I say while typing on a phone that uses an os built completely on a web browser.
Comparative to what companies do now, what microsoft did was child's play.
"Knife the baby [...] cut off their air supply." That man is a psychopath. (Yes, language and analogies we use matters a lot.)