Browser War

During 1989, the Internet was being used only by computer nerds and researchers. A group of graduate students from the University of Illinois decided to take the Internet to another level and make the Internet accessible to the public. The thought awakened Marc Andreessen that if the public gets access to the Internet and can use it conveniently through the world wide web, then the communications would become instantaneous and help grow the economy in an advanced manner globally. They brought the concept of the browser to mass. The idea was to make browsers graphical and more user-friendly for its regular users. Marc had worked on the first-ever browser, 'Mosaic' which came to be known as the 'Netscape Navigator.' Netscape made their browsers available for public testing worldwide; they could catch errors and fix them for a new browser release.

Next, came the big question- who will fund it? Jim Clark forecasted the future and began to push Netscape to go public (IPO). He contacted Marc Andreessen and offered him a job in Silicon Valley and set up a team of students to work on it. Jim's business venture worked well for Netscape's IPO and exceeded all expectations. Clark alone made around $600 million in a day. Andreessen was a well-known face by now and got immense popularity. 'Time' published Andreessen on the cover, giving Netscape a brand identity that was soon to be challenged by it's biggest competitor and Tech giant 'Microsoft.'

Microsoft came into the fight of browsers to swallow Netscape and capture, dominate the potential market. It first offered to buy out Netscape and then threatened them to take over and demolish Netscape. Microsoft had a significant advantage at that time concerning positioning it's a new proposed browser (later to be known as Internet Explorer) since they had a monopoly in the operating systems market. They knew they could compel the users to use Microsoft's browser other than third-party browsers like Netscape. Netscape declined to bow down. Microsoft started building and marketing its browser.

Early 90's Microsoft started packaging the new browser (Internet Explorer) with it's Operating system (Microsoft Windows) to the users and had put in the clause in their T&C such that anyone using any browser other than IE will lose their MS license. They tied up with major internet service providers to promote and attract users towards Internet Explorer. On top of that, Microsoft offered this browser for free with it's OS. On the other side, Netscape's revenue model solely dependent on the pricing of Netscape. Netscape started to feel the heat. Microsoft's strategy and aggressive marketing were gaining momentum and thus taking the market share away from Netscape.

The war between Netscape and Microsoft continued from here on, and both started making innovation and updates. But it was getting too difficult for Netscape to keep up as they were losing revenue and market share very rapidly. They open-sourced their browser to slow down the market share fall, trading off with the revenue. That didn't work as well. By the late 90's Microsoft captured the browser market by about 80%. Netscape was then sold to AOL for about $4.2 billion; thus, the era of browser war came to an end.

In 2000, the presiding judge produced all the facts and pieces of evidence which proved that Microsoft was abusing a monopoly position that was restricting the users from having a fair choice in terms of browsers. This trial had a huge impact on Bill Gates personally and Microsoft for years to come.

Though Microsoft won the browser war, for the time being; it was unaware that meanwhile, many other open-source browsers were ready to launch themselves in the market and offer competitive services in the early 2000s.