By joshua Quittner
Library book
At last the book that tells the whole story of the ruthless crushing of Netscape but the satanic Microsoft.
Pg. 177 Netscape 's success with Navigator 1.0 awakens the sleeping dragon. Smaug, in Redmond, wakes up and sniffs the air and exclaims, "We will crush Netscape!"
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/doc/files/2012/09/netscape-navigator-icon-199x300.png
Pg 237 1995 was a good year for the internet and computers. As windows 95 was getting ready to release, Netscape was going public. I remember this as a giddy time and believing that this new internet thing would really, once and for all, level the playing field. Boy was i naive.
Pg 248 In 1986 Microsoft's IPO, considered wild at the time, left the company valued at 519 million. Fast forward to 1995 and Netscape after it's IPO would be worth 4.4 billion. "Netscape bad ushered in a new era."
Netscape's success had awoken the sleeping giant of Redmond. By winter of '95 Bill Gates had set out to crush the fledgling startup. And try though they might, the rebels were no match for Darth Gator and his money and minions. Even though Netscapes gave away the browser and source code to the world, and justice deparment lawyers aside, Gates and the bloodthirsty Microsoft horde conquered.
I remeber at the time being outraged at the behavior of Gates and I continued to go.out of my way to use Netscape Navigator. I continued to root for the underdog, but eventually even I gave in to tbe inevitable. "Resistance is futile...You too will become one with the Borg." And i did. Not proud of that, but I did.
Portions of tbe old Netscape browser live on in Firefox which i don't use (forgive me Mark).
And then tbere was one. But the success of Cbrome has consistently eaten into Gates' marketshare. And the internet is fluid. Maybe Gates' commeuppance is yet to be.
Books:
Overdrive by James Wallace
Essays:
This in Oct 95 shortly after release of 1.0
http://m.fastcompany.com/26443/can-you-work-netscape-time
Video:
The Browser Wars
Discovery The True Story of the Internet 1 of 4.B…: http://youtu.be/qQwCx-Ey6x8
No comments:
Post a Comment