What the future of browsers looked like when IE6 was released | Hacker News Reader

What the future of browsers looked like when IE6 was released

t3.org

109 pointsjeffwidman25 comments

2001 (in case you missed the date): "The browser war is over, and Microsoft has won. Now comes the occupation."

2004-2011: Viva la resistance!

2004-2008 = the resistance 2008 - present = the second great browser wars

I simply can't think of the situation today as a browser war. In the late 90 there was the .com boom, making it feel like whoever wins the war will dominate the world, it was a more fuzzy world in terms of standards, so a lot of sites had to choose whether to make their site Netscape-friendly or IE-friendly, since it was almost impossible to do both. Add to that Microsoft strong-arm tactics and the existence of Netscape as a single-product commercial entity and you got a much messier, much dirtier war with higher stakes.

Today, the stakes are not that high. Most of the dirty fights are at the search and user details area. The standards are more strict and developers are fast to call on either side deviations. Lock-in is harder, and, to be honest, it's pretty obvious that whomever the "winner" will be, it won't give them the 99% dominance that IE had at about 2001.

>Add to that Microsoft strong-arm tactics

What strong arm tactics?

Like refusing to sell windows to any retailer (white or grey box) who installed Netscape on their machines?

To clarify: at that time, IE was a separate programme an MS instructed vendors that they must include IE, including a desktop icon, and must not include Netscape

Integration of the browser with the OS, down to the API level. Forcing OEMs not to pre-install Netscape on Windows machines they sell. Releasing their own Java VM on IE (for which they were sued by Sun). Creating JScript, a JavaScript implementation not compatible with Netscape's. Just search for "microsoft antitrust case" for more details.

But these are only dirty tricks in the context of a monopoly. If they weren't a monopoly (which they were), it's just smart business. See Apple and Android today (Apple won't let AT&T put random AT&T software on the device. Android has blooked 3rd party competitive apps, like Skyhook, from being packaged with Android phones).

The toughest part about being a monopoly is that the regulatory agencies won't give you any guidance on what is "over the line" (Microsoft at one point went to the EU to ask if they did X, would that be legal. The EU said that they won't tell them. Try it and you'll find out.) You just have to do stuff and see if you get sued or not.

The whole system of a corporation owing only to its shareholders demands this "do stuff and see if you get sued" mentality. The Mozilla foundation, being a non-profit doesn't need to bully anyone into submission. But that's besides the point, as I think today whatever race there is to browser dominance is not driven by the notion that "win the war, win the market", but by a more sensible notion, and therefore I hesitate before I call the situation today a "Browser War".

http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f3800/msjudgex.htm

http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f218600/218633.htm

How different a place the web would be today if Microsoft had truly embraced innovation back then, instead of focusing solely on peripheral income streams. I think we can truly be grateful to the hard work of so many involved in the Mozilla Project as well as Webkit, but it's a shame it took those projects, and 10 long years for Microsoft to start really even talking web standards.

A big reason of Mozilla/Firefox surviving is, Microsoft taking a 5 year long vacation from releasing web browser. (between IE6 (2001) - IE7(2007)).

Or it’s the other way around. Complacent Microsoft not working on a new, improved version because there is no perceived threat.

This is what I meant. What other way did you infer?

FYI:

http://slashdot.org/story/03/05/31/1650206/IE6-SP1-Will-Be-L...

Then after XP SP2 and Firefox was released:

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/05/02/15/1756240/IE7-Announce...

Release of IE was tied to the OS. Since Vista was delayed, IE too got delayed.

I don't see how that made the difference. If IE7 was released in 2004 or 2005, at best it would have been IE7 as we know it, and more likely would have been something halfway to IE7, and not particularly compelling - not unlike IE7.

As usual people who didn't care would use IE, and people seeking something better still would have used Firefox. Reading from their track history of lack of effort, innovation and overall mediocrity, there's no way MS could have killed Firefox and now Chrome by releasing some other schlonky IE.

IE7 in 2003 would have been much better than the IE7 that actually released.

The reason for that is that Microsoft disbanded the IE team after IE6. So to release IE7 they had to create a new team, get them trained up on the codebase and release something. And they were under time pressure, so they released as soon as they had something better than IE6. This took them probably 1-2 years at least between the learning and the coding.

If instead they had kept the existing IE6 team and had them work on IE7 back in 2001, they could have spent a full 2 years on development and delivered something significantly better than IE7 as it shipped. The difference from IE6 to that something would have been about like the difference from IE8 to IE9.

Oh, I love this: "Smart Tags caused immediate and vocal backlash among webmasters and content creators who sill harbor quaint notions that they, not Microsoft, should be in control the content and advertising at the sites they create."

I am going to assume he was being a bit sarcastic there.

"The browser war is over, and Microsoft has won. Now comes the occupation." What a great line, thank goodness for competition! I will think of it every someone says "but somebody is already doing that"

"Smart Tags caused immediate and vocal backlash among webmasters and content creators who sill harbor quaint notions that they, not Microsoft, should be in control the content and advertising at the sites they create."

A quaint notion indeed. It really was a different world back then.

After IE6 was released, WaSP took a gentle leave of absence, claiming that "Browser makers are no longer the problem": http://archive.webstandards.org/

Is it just me or does this site waste 80% of the browser with whitespace? I've never seen such big margins.

Thanks, Mozilla.

Kind of sad to see the champion of the revolution in those old days,Firefox,going down steadily to Chrome,the new,talented kid on the block.

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