Word: browser
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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With $81 million in sales and 600 employees, Netscape had enjoyed a comfortable dominance of the infant Internet world. Its killer app was a program that made navigating the Net as simple as pointing at what you wanted to see and clicking on it. Browsers brought order to the chaos of the World Wide Web, a corner of the Net stuffed with text, sounds and pictures. Netscape's Navigator browser was the best on the market, and it had propelled the company through a wildly successful initial public offering in August. Some analysts were saying Netscape had an invincible lead...
Proof of that came on Aug. 13, when Microsoft unveiled Explorer 3.0, the newest version of its Web-browsing software. The 8-megabyte behemoth matched Netscape's franchise browser, Navigator, feature for feature, and at a much better price--free. Available over the Web, the browser notched a million downloads in its first week. Netscape stockholders voted with their feet: by late August, Netscape stock had shed half its value from a December high, while Microsoft shares approached record levels. And Gates swore the best was yet to come...
Netscape wasted little time in counterattacking. Two weeks later, on Aug. 26, company founder Jim Clark unveiled blueprints for a new software firm called Navio that will try to outflank Microsoft by putting browser software on pretty much anything with a screen and a modem. The first stop is likely to be an Internet TV, followed by a $500 network computer, online video gaming machines and Net-surfing cell phones. Organized around a powerhouse electronics alliance that includes just about everyone but Microsoft (Sony, NEC, Nintendo and IBM are supporting the venture), the company...
Half a year later, the duel has turned nasty, with legal shrapnel accompanying this month's releases of the latest versions of competing browsers, Netscape's Navigator 3.0 and Microsoft's Explorer 3.0. Which one is better? It's hard to say, and this in itself is a victory for Microsoft, which released its first weak browser just a year ago. Many Microsoft-loathing high-tech cognoscenti say Navigator remains the better guide. But the new Explorer narrows that gap convincingly, and the average user won't notice much difference...
Here's where things get interesting, as Netscape and Microsoft are building their browsers around rival development tool kits, or platforms. Netscape is paired with Sun Microsystems' Java, a programming language that has won the fierce but possibly ephemeral allegiance of Silicon Valley's software jocks (the Netscape/Java alliance, a giddy Sun executive hyperbolized last year, "is the last great hope to stop Microsoft world domination"). Java is starting from scratch, though, and it could take painfully long for its adherents to produce high-quality applications. Microsoft's Active-X platform, by contrast, supports both Java and the venerable Visual...