The question was how JS "won" the browser. The answer is that Netscape (with Bill Joy at Sun) fixed the race and ran it in 10 days. Way too little time to use an existing language and bend it to "look like Java".

Did you read the last link, the HN comment?

Update: http://javascriptjabber.com/124-jsj-the-origin-of-javascript... has more detail.

The point of all this isn't subtle. MS was coming after Netscape, copying and injecting stuff like VBScript. JS was a rush job because of this. If it had waited till Netscape 3 the odds of a VBScript mandatory single scripting language for the Web would've been high. Netscape 4 was way too late.

Only by going out in Netscape 2 did JS preempt that VBScript dystopia. Only by looking like Java did it get management support. Only by being its own language did it happen in ten days.

/be