
Ask HN: How did Microsoft hold back the Internet for 6-7 years? - biznerd
I binged (jk googled) and couldn&#x27;t find anything.<p>This was in a comment located here:
https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=8673760<p>And it piqued my interest.<p>How did this happen? Or did it happen?
======
wrs
The very short, oversimplified version:

Microsoft leveraged their dominance of desktop computing to gain dominance of
browser installed base with IE. Having won the battle, they stopped improving
the browser as an application platform.

During the first period, Microsoft developed and deployed a variety of browser
technologies such as Dynamic HTML (aka the DOM) and XMLHTTPRequest that moved
the browser toward being a viable application platform. During the second
period, IE stagnated and it was left to Firefox and, later, Chrome to pick up
the baton. But they had to fight for market share for several years before
having enough influence to make significant progress. IE has recently caught
up, but that still leaves several years before enterprise customers will
deploy the improvements.

Thus in 2014 there are still major gaps in the browser platform that really
should have been solved some years back, and a large portion of installed base
still using the transitional IE 8 and 9.

~~~
tacos
Microsoft tied browser development to OS development. After Windows XP (Oct
2001) they didn't release an OS until Vista (Jan 2007). Things far, far more
important to Microsoft's overall strategy than HTML parsing stalled during
that gap.

------
Joeri
The truth is more shaded than saying they held back the web. What I remember
is that IE 5 came out in 1999, and was a significantly better browser than
netscape 4, which was my favorite browser at the time. So, netscape had an
inferior product. Meanwhile microsoft also decided to bundle IE with windows,
for free, on all new PC's. So netscape had a worse product _and_ worse user
acquisition. If you're a startup in that position, what is the logical thing
to do? Well, netscape decided the most logical thing was to start a multi-year
rewrite of their entire product, with the goal of having an identical UI, but
a fresh codebase. IMHO, it is fair to say microsoft helped netscape into the
grave, but it is also fair to say netscape did much of the walking.

So, from about 2000 until about 2006 IE was the only game in town because
there just weren't any viable competitors (well, ok, there was opera, but...).
Looking around and noticing they didn't have competition, microsoft figured
they didn't need to iterate their product, so they didn't.

Now, this will sound strange to say now, but IE 6 had the best standards
support, in 2001. However, it also had a lot of proprietary features which
made things easy to do that were hard to do using W3C standards, which as
standards tend to be weren't as developer-friendly as they could have been (I
still think CSS's layout model is a big mistake). Web developers being web
developers they couldn't resist those features to build stuff quicker, and
they ended up building a lot of IE-only sites, which created the legacy which
we are still battling today. And that made it very hard for upstart browsers
like firefox to gain marketshare.

Now, again IMHO, it is fair to say microsoft did nothing to discourage people
from using those proprietary features and getting locked into a dead-end
platform. However, it is also fair to say you could and can build a standards-
compliant codebase which is IE 6 compatible so developers were helping the
jailer put on the chains.

I think blaming it all on MS is easy but inaccurate. It was a shared blame
across netscape, microsoft and the web development community of the early
2000's, which ended up in a stagnated browser market from 2000 to 2005/2006.

~~~
melling
No, it's pretty accurate. When you gain a monopoly and people stop testing on
other browsers, you create a big problem. I never stopped using
Netscape/Mozilla. It doesn't matter if IE was better for a period of time.
Once it became dominant and incompatible, all other browsers fought a huge
uphill battle. IE is still the most widely used desktop browser.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
This is unfortunately starting to happen once again with Chrome.

~~~
Joeri
The irony is that many sites now have poor compatibility with IE due to using
proprietary webkit-only CSS styles. On mobile it's even worse, with most
"mobile optimized" sites being broken even on firefox and opera. Even big
sites perform poorly. Engadget's mobile version is broken on anything that's
not webkit. It is frustrating to see that people never learn. They're quite
happy to change jailers, but quite unwilling to free themselves.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Yeah, it's gotten to the point that some alternative mobile browsers are
starting to support -webkit- prefixes.

------
hnriot
The very short answer is that they of course didn't. It's utter nonsense. I
was around in those days, worked on Mozilla and Nutscrape etc. Back in the day
there were many browsers, all spun off the Spyglass original code, the
internet was pre javascript and it was a very different place. Then the
browser wars started, there was Netscape and IE and others, back then it was
viable for individuals to actually make a competitive browser, but over time
they got to be big complex pieces of code, basically a VM. Security became a
big deal and the open source movement built the best browsers, Mozilla,
Phoenix and Firefox ten years ago. Microsoft tried to get the Internet to come
to it rather than the other way round, just as companies like AOL did. They
tried to add proprietary technology to lock in the internet to their Windows
platform. Can't really blame them for that, but meanwhile every user on the
planet was free to install any other browser they wanted. Just because they
didn't isn't Microsoft's fault. They didn't prevent you doing so.

These days the internet has shifted from the desktop to laptops to mobile
phones and tablets where Apple and Google have the lock in as Microsoft did.
Apple allow other browsers provided they don't want fast javascript. Yet
nobody's accusing Apple of holding up the internet.

The main things that really did hold back the internet was bandwidth, it
was/is the phone and cable companies because they really do have a
stranglehold on their customers.

Others here have suggested microsoft tried to stop others from innovating.
Again, total bullshit, they forced exactly nobody to use their software.

I am no fan of MSFT, I haven't used their products in years, but someone who
was around then really needs to set the story straight.

~~~
saranagati
this is a very narrow minded view. microsoft began creating plugins for
utilities that did not follow web standards such as activex that would
integrate the browser with the operating system. on top of them being horribly
flawed with security bugs, these plugins would then only work for ie.
microsoft then pushed people creating web content to use these non-standard
plugins in their site because they would not modify ie to include w3c
standards that did the same thing. so now many people and companies were
forced to use ie because some site they needed to use required one of those
plugins.

this continued on until so many major security flaws were found in ie that it
drove people who didnt even know what a web browser was to firefox.

~~~
tacos
This too is a narrow view. Another way to look at it is that people were
building apps in the browser and they needed to do real stuff. Browser apps
needed to talk to devices, legacy systems, card readers, EEPROM programmers,
medical imagers... whatever the hell it is that people jam into Windows. And
those devices weren't magically going to sprout a REST interface. There had to
be a transitional period.

Microsoft had been making developers happy for a decade by giving that exact
sort of functionality in local file Explorer, in Word, in Excel, on the
desktop, via COM/OLE/VBScript and god knows what else. So they tried it.

The blood/brain barrier between OS and Browser remains up for debate a decade
later.

The W3C remains woefully understaffed and even today hasn't solved basic
problems that were solved in the dumb terminal era of the 1970s.

There's a lot of shit that got shoved into the browser when we were excited
about browsers that shouldn't be there. Likewise there's a LOT of OS-level
functionality missing from the browser that may or may not belong there, but
which I don't see appearing in the next 10 years either.

------
Ollinson
I hate to give just a wikipedia link but I really have nothing more to add
than what is there:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish)

While this might not explain "6-7 years of holding back the internet" it
definitely was not beneficial.

------
general_failure
Short summary: there was a time when people paid for browsers. Microsoft
started bundling IE for free along with the OS. This killed the paid browser
market completely (bringing down companies like Netscape) as everyone started
using IE since everyone was using windows. Once their position was
established, Microsoft stopped developing IE. The IE team was mostly disbanded
and there was no updated in IE for many many years.

Not progressing the internet was in MS' best interest. They wanted a world
where desktop apps running in their OS was the future.

~~~
pyre
> bringing down companies like Netscape

To be fair, Netscape Navigator could be a real POS, and IE 5/6 were actually
leaps forward at the time. The real problem was Microsoft killing off all
competition and then, having won the Browser Wars, disbanding the IE
development team, leaving IE to stagnate.

Other issues:

\- Killing off competition made it so that the browser landscape on other
platforms was barren.

\- MS having a separate version of IE for Mac that was a _completely_ separate
codebase with it's own set of bugs/quirks also didn't help with the browser as
an OS agnostic platform.

\- IE's lack of standards compliance paired with it's "still work even with
HTML horribly broken" also had a hand in things. E.g. for years a good portion
of the Internet was delivered as broken HTML because it "worked in IE" and
other browsers were "broken" because they were more strict about the
standards.

~~~
icantthinkofone
Netscape was NOT a POS except in the eyes of those trying to get web sites to
work in it that worked in IE. Microsoft created IE with various APIs that only
worked in IE but would fail in Netscape.

~~~
skrebbel
I strongly doubt you ever tried to make a site work in Netscape 3. If you'd
nest layers (yes, the <layer> tag) more than 2 levels, random stuff would
break.

You talk about APIs but really, if JS compat was your only problem you were a
happy developer. It was the markup engine itself that was crap. IE's was
simply also crap, just in a different way.

~~~
icantthinkofone
In 1998 or so, Scottrade, my broker, advised me to quit using IE and only use
Netscape because of all horrible issues they had making their code work with
it and that they advised all their clients to do the same. That's almost a
quote.

------
twa927
"Microsoft cast a shadow over the software world for almost 20 years starting
in the late 80s." It was not only the internet. In some way it was an evil
monopoly that did everything to prevent others from innovate and forced usage
of it's own crappy software. The citation come's from PG's essay from 2007
"Microsoft is dead" [0].

[0]
[http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/microsoft.html)

~~~
throwawaykf05
Just like today's "mean people" essay, PG was likely wrong in that essay as
well. Firstly, regarding the "shadow that was cast", let's look at some data
rather than rely on what "everyone knows", shall we? Here's a relevant paper
that looks at some data (caveat - it only covers events up to 2000, but then
that's the period PG talks about as well):

"Did Microsoft Deter Software Innovation?", Josh Lerner,
[http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=269498](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=269498)

Spoiler: It follows Betteridge's Law.

And of course Microsoft is not "dead" or "irrelevant" and does not produce
"crappy software", as much as the Silicon Valley hive-mind would like to think
so. This is trivially disproved by looking at 1) their revenues and 2) their
ranking in the top brands worldwide over the last decade and a half.

~~~
jasonm23
> disproved by looking at 1) their revenues and 2) their ranking in the top
> brands.

Enjoy chowing down on McDonalds, because apparently, by your own measure, it's
not crappy food.

~~~
throwawaykf05
Heh, I actually happen to like McDonalds! I think it has the best fast food
you can get out there, especially for the price. Imagine that, people have
opinions contrary to yours!

Now imagine something harder to believe: the _vast majority_ of people have
opinions contrary to yours.

------
Rizz
They didn't hold back the Internet 6-7 years. IE was far, far beyond whatever
competitors offered, it might be more fair to say that Microsoft released IE6
years too early. AJAX, CSS, JS, all the cool technologies that make the web
today were part of IE 6 (but not quite at the level they are today of course),
and in addition to that there were some DirectX accelerated graphics, an
advanced plugin system while other browsers only supported NSAPI, etc.

After that there was little innovation from Microsoft, but there was little
need for innovation either, most developers looking for advanced capabilities
used Flash instead of addressing the web browser natively, because that was
the trend back then and Flash works on other brands of browsers as well, and
for a while because a lot of people still used older browsers. For those
reasons there was no developer demand for more advanced features, the features
that were offered were hardly used for a long time

For example AJAX was publicly introduced in IE5 in 1999, while other non-beta
versions of competitors appeared from 2002 to 2005. Websites using AJAX thus
were rare until about 2004-2005. There was no need for Microsoft to add more
technology until the competitors caught up. Unfortunately for Microsoft, the
competitors didn't just catch up, they overtook them and implemented some
features differently than in IE, those missing and different features in IE
have caused plenty of grief for web developers ever since.

------
protomyth
I think it is more than a fair statement to say Microsoft held back the web[1]
for 6-7 years, but we settled on the web browser as the delivery for internet
services and are still trying to shoehorn everything into it.

Microsoft had a monopoly in the OS market, gave IE away free, and provided
tools and incentives to develop for IE and nothing else.

From a company's point of view, it makes a lot of sense. Cost and 90% of
customers don't have any problems. The company has a standard development and
testing platform. Cost is an amazing motivator and having that OS monopoly was
an easy leverage point.

1) there are still issues with using educational / testing sites in any
browser but an outdated version of IE. The college textbook with integrated
websites could really use some disruption

------
T-A
Just venturing a guess, I'd say it's a reference to early versions of Internet
Explorer (particularly IE6, but also later) which combined a dominating
position (thanks to Windows) with (1) an insistance on doing things their own
way instead of following standards and (2) a very slow pace of innovation.
This forced coding to a very low common denominator and/or duplication of
effort for advanced features and different browsers. The impasse ended when
other browsers became popular enough to make IE's dragging its feet
counterproductive for MS, too.

~~~
x0x0
Very slow pace of innovation? There was no innovation for a period of roughly
5 years until growing firefox adoption forced their hand. I seem to remember
the internal team was disbanded and had to be reconstituted as well. Microsoft
intentionally retarded the development of the browser as an application
development target to protect their OS monopoly. And, indeed, exactly what
microsoft feared came to pass: once apps targeted the browser, you have
chromebooks, tablets, and phones displacing windows. It's not like you need a
full desktop to browse facebook, twitter, instagram, pinterest, youtube, or
gmail.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Net...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Net_Applications_.282004_Q4_to_present.29)

~~~
throwawaykf05
This is oft-repeated but wrong. Sure, there was no innovation _in IE_ , but
innovation elsewhere on the web never slowed down. Even when IE dominated the
browser market, browsers like Opera kept developing new features. Opera in the
late 90s had features that I still don't see in most browsers today.

Now, those other browsers were less popular for a while, but let's not
conflate "widespread use" with "innovation".

~~~
x0x0
No.

I worked on web apps in the early and mid 2000s. What we could do was defined
by the capabilities of ie 5-6. Everything else, with it's whopping up to 10%
market share, was irrelevant.

Plus, innovation on its own is worthless. If I can't use feature X in the
browser that the vast majority of my customers use, it may as well not exist.

------
alyx
[http://www.hanselman.com/blog/microsoftkilledmypappy.aspx](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/microsoftkilledmypappy.aspx)

------
danieltillett
I think it interesting that no one here has brought up the fallout from the
dot.com bust and 9/11\. Both of these had far more effects on the pace of
innovation than anything Microsoft did or didn't do.

------
rythie
It terms of how (from memory + fact checks on Wikipedia): Microsoft and
Netscape battled over browsers throughout the late 90s with Netscape starting
in the position of the dominant/only browser and IE was seen as a joke, that
quickly, by the time IE5 (1999) was released Netscape seemed completely in
technical debt with it's product when they couldn't support even the most
basic CSS support in Netscape 4.x. IE5 was also the release that added support
for what is now called AJAX.

IE6 was released August 2001, at which point it had most of the market, IE
also existed for the Mac and most people I knew at the time thought of
Mozilla/Netscape as completely irrelevant as a development target. Opera has
basically always been irrelevant in my view. This started an era of IE-only
sites which further damaged the competition.

Microsoft disbanded it's IE development team and it wasn't until a few years
later that people realized that this happened (It wasn't announced till 2003)
- people seemed to assume Microsoft was working on new version of IE, which
was natural since it was pretty much the only browser in town.

WHATWG was formed in 2004 so everyone else (except Microsoft) could work on
web standard because this had basically stopped at that point.

Firefox wasn't released till November 2004, which was the first time it looked
like there would be a credible threat to IE (though it had been pretty good
for a year before with Mozilla, but still unknown to most).

Acid2 test was created 2005 which further highlighted the problems with IE6's
rendering:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid2](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid2).

IE7 was released in October 2006, by which point web developers who had been
trying to more and more with the web were thoroughly frustrated with IE and
it's rendering bugs. IE7 was a big disappointment because it whilst it fixed
some long standing problems like it's box model, it was still a long way off
the standards that had been produced since IE6 and it didn't pass that Acid2
test.

In terms of why: I've wondered why for a long time now. Mostly, I think IE6
was already too good at being web application platform and Microsoft was
worried (as they had been with Java) that this would make Windows irrelevant.
Given that IE was effectively free the probably assumed there would be no
viable competition due to the lack of business model. Microsoft stopping work
on IE they could allow websites to work, but continue to make web apps that
were too clunky to use so people would write native Win32 apps.

~~~
tacos
Reasons for "why" not often discussed: 1) Vista consumed the top systems devs
at Microsoft for seven years 2) the IE team wasn't "disbanded" so much as
loyal to management at Microsoft that was discarded (Brad Silverberg, David
Cole) 3) enterprise customers were plenty happy with IE6 4) the dotcom bust
quieted the indie developer ecosystem 5) Microsoft honestly thought they could
get NT kernels + .NET on small devices and leverage massive developer support
and existing tooling in the late 90s.

------
naner
Now it seems ISPs have been holding back the Internet (in the US). There's
almost no competition on price, bandwidth, latency, etc. Nobody is pushing the
envelope.

~~~
icantthinkofone
Nobody? In the last few years, Charter has gone from a few Mb/s downloads to
100Mb and my monthly price has been cut in half and there are no data caps.

------
bascule
If it is actually referring to IE6, in some ways IE's stagnation was helpful.
Prior to IE6 was an arms race-like flurry of different browser vendors
haphazardly slapping on features to their products, and the IE6 code freeze we
saw thereafter gave standards-writers like the W3C and WHATWG time to catch up
writing specifications for the web.

~~~
1337p337
It was a good thing. Not just for the standardization bodies, for everyone.
The "Fierce Idiocy of 'New!'"[1] died down for a little while and briefly it
was possible to rely on a stable development environment. Features are great
if they're the correct ones and they're done well, but stability and
reliability are even nicer.

1\. [http://www.constitutionaldaily.com/index.php?id=737%3Athe-
fi...](http://www.constitutionaldaily.com/index.php?id=737%3Athe-fierce-
idiocy-of-new&format=html&option=com_content)

