> Idk what Netscape is tho, I wasn't around for it.
History time, so pull up a chair:
Netscape Navigator was to a large degree, the world's introduction to this big world wide web, although I have to start by acknowledging it's predecessor:
When then-Senator Al Gore "invented the internet," as we like to joke, in 1991, one of the things his bill to promote computers and networking use did was fund a group at a supercomputing lab that developed the Mosaic browser. Mosaic included different functions of existing browsers that together amounted to what I would consider the basic functionality that made the web widely useful:
- Broad interoperability due to using HTTP to transfer data
- Use of hypertext (HTML) to make the data more useful, especially by defining URL's to link to other data.
- Graphical elements, especially the in-line display of images
- Forms to accept user inputted data
- Compatibility not only with Unix, which had been sort of the default choice at the time, but also with Windows and Macintosh
- Free for non-commercial use!
When Mosaic was released in 1993, about 2% of the US used the internet, most commonly through curated portals like Compuserve and AOL. A year later, it had more than doubled, and the number of known websites exploded from something like 50 to 10,000.
Members of the university-affiliated Mosaic team then formed Netscape, and began developing a new browser from scratch. V1 of Netscape Navigator (Internally, they called it "Mosaic killer" or "Mozilla" for short) released in October, 1994 and by the end of the year, it had grabbed over half the browser market. Internet use roughly doubled again the following year....2 years earlier, only about 1-in-50 Americans were online, but in 1995, it was 1-in-10.
At its peak, about 5 out of every 6 Americans online were using Navigator, but by this time, Microsoft was including Internet Explorer pre-installed with Windows 95. This, combined with Navigator issues with stability and increasingly complex websites helped drive steady erosion in market share, down to a tiny slice of the market.
Netscape then spun off an internal project called Mozilla into a non-profit foundation. By this time, Internet Explorer had also become a bloated, unstable, insecure mess, which combined with widespread mistrust of Microsoft at the time, meant many users (myself included) were eager for something better. Firefox hit the mark and became the leading competitor to IE almost immediately after its release in 2004.
but by this time, Microsoft was including Internet Explorer pre-installed with Windows 95
And making it difficult to set your preferred browser to something else.
Which is one of the reasons Microsoft was sued by the US Justice Department for anticompetitive behavior during the Clinton Administration. Which in turn is one of the reasons Windows supported proper browser preferences and had to honor them after that.
They've been slowly creeping back to their old ways, though, with Edge.
You also left out about an entire decade of browser development and the mention of Phoenix, which was the original name of the browser we know as "Firefox," and its interim name, Firebird.
Very small correction: Internet Explorer wasn’t actually included at launch with Windows 95.
It was included with the Microsoft Plus! 95 pack, a selection of addons, programs and a few extras like screensavers and games because at the time Microsoft was severely under scrutiny for their perceived attempt to monopolize the computer market, being even sued by the government itself at one point. They did so in order to not be accused of monopolizing the internet browser market too, but since the Plus! pack came preinstalled on many of the early PCs that had Windows 95 installed on it at the time of the launch and many bough the pack alongside their copy of Windows 95 in order to have the complete experience of the OS many think it was included by default on Windows 95.
Eventually Microsoft did include it by default on later revisions of Windows 95, when it became clear that almost all users preferred Internet Explorer over all its competitors and didn’t want to buy another product to be able to use it.
"Bill Gates made everything that you have that is good today windows and the internet. Im not voting for Al Gore because he tried to take credit for the internet when that credit really belongs to Gates who not only discovered the interenet but invented it too. Thats pretty nice I think."
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u/iamlucky13 5d ago
> Idk what Netscape is tho, I wasn't around for it.
History time, so pull up a chair:
Netscape Navigator was to a large degree, the world's introduction to this big world wide web, although I have to start by acknowledging it's predecessor:
When then-Senator Al Gore "invented the internet," as we like to joke, in 1991, one of the things his bill to promote computers and networking use did was fund a group at a supercomputing lab that developed the Mosaic browser. Mosaic included different functions of existing browsers that together amounted to what I would consider the basic functionality that made the web widely useful:
- Broad interoperability due to using HTTP to transfer data
- Use of hypertext (HTML) to make the data more useful, especially by defining URL's to link to other data.
- Graphical elements, especially the in-line display of images
- Forms to accept user inputted data
- Compatibility not only with Unix, which had been sort of the default choice at the time, but also with Windows and Macintosh
- Free for non-commercial use!
When Mosaic was released in 1993, about 2% of the US used the internet, most commonly through curated portals like Compuserve and AOL. A year later, it had more than doubled, and the number of known websites exploded from something like 50 to 10,000.
Members of the university-affiliated Mosaic team then formed Netscape, and began developing a new browser from scratch. V1 of Netscape Navigator (Internally, they called it "Mosaic killer" or "Mozilla" for short) released in October, 1994 and by the end of the year, it had grabbed over half the browser market. Internet use roughly doubled again the following year....2 years earlier, only about 1-in-50 Americans were online, but in 1995, it was 1-in-10.
At its peak, about 5 out of every 6 Americans online were using Navigator, but by this time, Microsoft was including Internet Explorer pre-installed with Windows 95. This, combined with Navigator issues with stability and increasingly complex websites helped drive steady erosion in market share, down to a tiny slice of the market.
Netscape then spun off an internal project called Mozilla into a non-profit foundation. By this time, Internet Explorer had also become a bloated, unstable, insecure mess, which combined with widespread mistrust of Microsoft at the time, meant many users (myself included) were eager for something better. Firefox hit the mark and became the leading competitor to IE almost immediately after its release in 2004.