“If you get ubiquity, you have a lot of options, a lot of ways to benefit from that.” If people didn’t have a way to get quick and easy access to Netscape, it would never spread. “It’s basically a Microsoft lesson, right?” was how Andreessen framed it. “It looks free optically, but it is not,” a Netscape employee would later describe it. For the buttoned-up corporations buying in bulk with specific contractual needs, they could license the software for a reasonable fee. And universities and non-profits could easily get zero-cost licenses.įor the upstarts of the web revolution and open source tradition, Netscape was free enough. But fully function Netscape beta versions were free to download for their website. When the Netscape browser was released it came with fee of $39 per copy. But June 21, 1995-when Microsoft and Netscape came to a meeting as conceivable friends and left as bitter foes-may be the most definitive.Īndreessen called it “free, but not free.” Or the day Andreessen called out Microsoft as nothing but a “poorly debugged set of device drivers” (early 1995). The release of Internet Explorer 1, for instance (late summer, 1995). There are a few different places to mark the beginning of the browser wars. Microsoft claimed the meeting was a “setup,” initiated by Netscape to bait them into a comprising situation they could turn to their advantage later. The company would be threatening to use its monopoly to squash competition.Īndreessen, no stranger to dramatic flair, would later dress the meeting up with a nod to The Godfather in his deposition to the Department of Justice: “I expected to find a bloody computer monitor in my bed the next day.” Then, things began to sour.Īccording to accounts from Netscape, “Microsoft offered to make an investment in Netscape and give Netscape’s software developers crucial technical information about the Windows operating system if Netscape would agree not to make a browser for Windows 95 operating system.” If that was to be believed, Microsoft would have tiptoed over the line of what is legal. The meeting began friendly enough, as the delegation from Microsoft shared what they were working on in the latest version of their operating system, Windows 95. On the Microsoft side was a contingent of product managers and engineers hoping to push Microsoft into the Internet market. Newly appointed Netscape CEO James Barksdale also came. He was already something of a web celebrity. Both groups, however, were suspicious of ulterior motives. The stated goal was to find ways to work together-Netscape as the single dominant force in the browser market and Microsoft as a tech giant just beginning to consider the implications of the Internet. In June of 1995, representatives from Microsoft arrived at the Netscape offices.
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