Through all the stages of development and innovation and
implementation of new features, Microsoft always had advantages over
Netscape: Web developers will be quick
to tell you that neither product was technically superior, but when it came to
money, Microsoft, the richer cousin of the two, always came out on top.
Netscape had begun its life with a large market share, but remained a
relatively small company, operating on what many said was less about capital
investment and more about goodwill.
Reports were that Netscape’s total revenue was less than Microsoft’s
interest income. The other major factor
was availability: Explorer was bundled
with every copy of Windows, and while the early versions were technically
inferior to Netscape, they were average-consumer-friendly and widely
accessible. As its market share grew,
Microsoft plowed even more money into development and marketing. They bought and promoted Front Page, a web
authoring tool that created pages that tended to look better in Explorer than
in Navigator. By the end of 1998, Microsoft
had effectively beaten Netscape at its own game.
The so-called “war” flamed out when Internet Explorer ceased
to have any formidable competition from other browser developers. Netscape was bought by America Online and
“open-sourced” its code, meaning that they made it available to anyone who
wanted to take it in hand and improve on the original model. Mozilla stepped up to the plate, and built
its own Mozilla 1.0 browser, which along with Opera, and Safari, provided
alternatives for those looking for something a little different in their web
experience, but they weren’t able to stop the Microsoft juggernaut.
By 2002, IE had commanded the attention of a whopping 96% of
browser users, but not without consequence.
With gaps in security technology and a massive consumer group, Explorer
became the victim of countless virus and worm attacks. On the development front, a lack of attention
to ever-evolving web standards caused headaches for those designing
websites. IE6 – the most recent
incarnation of Explorer – still does not comply with Cascading Style Sheets,
the PNG image format, or XHTML. This
shortcoming forces developers to add cumbersome chunks of code to the building
process, simply to ensure that their work doesn’t break in Explorer.
So, where does the “war” stand now? Most say that it’s old news. With Microsoft’s announcement that IE6 will
be the last version that we will see until after the Longhorn Operating System
is launched in 2007, many will tell you that the Internet is now officially
stagnant. Others, however, say a second
war is imminent. Mozilla continues to
gain popularity with its latest Firefox browser, promoting features like
increased security, pop-up blockers and tabbed browsing. For Unix users, the Konqueror browser
competes with Mozilla. Konqueror’s KHTML
engine was used by Apple for their Safari browser, now the default browser for
Mac users. Opera, while still a small
player, has remained a popular choice on mobile devices such as cell phones.