this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
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They became a poster child for why you should never “start over from scratch” even if your current codebase is awful. Because when you do that your competitors keep going, then they have years on your now stale product. Netscape lost all on their own…
Also: selling a browser? Man, the 90’s where wild.
That's rather simplifying history and not the main reason Netscape failed.
Netscape lost because Microsoft used it's dominant monopoly position to bundle Internet Explorer with windows. By 1999 the writing was already on the wall - IE had already overtaken Netscape market share and was growing rapidly.
The Mozilla project and code base change was a gamble to try and fix the problems. When Microsoft released IE6 2001 they didn't bother releasing another major version for 6 years as they were so dominant.
So while the code base change was arguably mishandled, at worst it accelerated the decline. Instead the whole story is a poster child for how monopoloes can be used to destroy competition. The anti trust actions in the US and EU came too late for Netscape.
Ironically Microsoft was the receiving end of the same treatment when Google started pushing Chrome via it's own monopoly in search. They made a better product than the incumbent but they pushed it hard via their website that everyone uses.
Chrome was also shoved down user's throats by being bundled with all kinds of software. When you downloaded programs from places like SourceForge, Softonic and similar, your download (when you installed it) had "Install Chrome Browser" already checked. If you forgot to uncheck the box, you ended up having to uninstall Chrome. It was the most annoying thing ever.
Huh, weirdly I don't remember that. I remember having to uncheck a whole bunch of check boxes for browser extensions, toolbars, WinZip pro, etc. But I didn't remember that chrome was one of those. I'm sure you're right though.
I don't think chrome was on sourceforge's list-of-malware they stuffed everything in, but it was bundled with a lot of legitimate software.
Google bought a lot of their marketshare, and did so with any method that resulted in an install, including bundled installer crap.
I always assumed it said chrome but was just a virus so I was always super paranoid when installing things
The monopoly position helped for sure but I think it’s glossed over that at one point Internet Explorer was simply the best web browser on the market. It’s was only after years of mismanagement by Microsoft that it gained the reputation it has now. But there was a point in the late 90s early 2000s where Netscape was a super buggy mess and Internet Explorer was the best browser on the market.
That was true for Chrome as well, when that first hit the market it was a light and amazing browser. There were a lot of technology savvy early adopters for Chrome.
Yeah, Netscape 4.0 was simply slower than IE 4.0. Back then, when a browser was a program that would actually push the limits of the hardware, that was a big deal.
Lemme guess, one was super buggy and the other the best browser on websites using non-standard functionality of the latter.
My guy. In the 90's ALL browsers were non-standard. Even at the protocol level.
http/0.9 - 1991
http/1.0 - 1996
http/1.1 - 1997
html/1.0 - 1991
html/2.0 - 1995 revised in 1996, and 97.
html/3.0 - 1997
html/4.0 - 1997 revised in 1998, 99, and 2000.
Then comes all the add-ons like flash, shockwave, etc... Nothing was standard at this time-frame. We threw everything possible into browsers. Toolbars for literally everything (I remember even having winamp controls in my browser).
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Evolution_of_HTTP
Literally sites and browsers would just implement stuff just to implement and see if it became used.
A lot of recent times (2010's mostly) has been back peddling the mad rush of just shoving EVERYTHING into browsers. Now I actually fear we're going to far though... With google removing useful backend stuff for plugins and such. I just hope Firefox never follows suit.
Hokay.
About try and see - I actually liked the way it was with HTML 4.0 , Macromedia Flash, no JS and no CSS.
ADD:
I remember a Shaman King fansite where I would watch all its episodes in Flash in atrocious quality.
Would like to see something like Gemini, but with tables and other formatting being more customizable in the page, like it was back then. And a choice between a link that is just a link and a link that should be displayed inline if possible.
I was being a bit facetious, thanks for the corrections and insight. Cheers!
They were also, eventually, much too late to matter, convicted of being a monopoly as a result of the IE money grab.
Opera was a paid browser till it started going bad.
Never paid for it though, and started using it when it was free, so can't complain.
Didn't the refactored netscape eventually evolve into Firefox though? Not disputing the poster child status or the fact that it's a terrible business decision, but the project did not really go stale I think?