studies and landmarks

This page highlights studies of web browsers and landmarks in their development.

It covers -

• studies - memoirs, industry analysis and technical works
• landmarks - key points in the evolution of the browser

     studies

Much of the non-technical literature regarding browsers has centred on the battle between Microsoft and Netscape. Three useful points of entry are Competition, Innovation & the Microsoft Monopoly: Antitrust in the Digital Marketplace (Boston: Kluwer 1999) by Jeffrey Eisenach & Thomas Lenard, World War 3.0: Microsoft & Its Enemies (New York: Random 2000) by Ken Auletta and The Economics of The Microsoft Case (PDF) by Timothy Bresnahan.

Jim Clark's memoir Netscape Time: The Making of the Billion-Dollar Startup that took on Microsoft (New York: St Martins 1999) is an interesting picture but suffers from having Clark on both ends of the camera lens. Michael Lewis' The New New Thing (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1999) is a portrait of Clark, profiled in Wired 2.01 and 2.10 among others.

Speeding the Net: The Inside Story of Netscape & How It Challenged Microsoft (Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press 1998) by Joshua Quittner & Michelle Slatulla and Competing on Internet Time: Lessons From Netscape & Its Battle with Microsoft (New York: Free Press 1998) by Michael Cusmano & David Yoffie are less persuasive after Netscape tacitly conceded defeat. 

Views from Redmond include Paul Andrews' reverent How the Web was Won: Microsoft from Windows to the Web - The inside story of how Bill Gates and his band of Internet idealists transformed a Software Empire (New York: Broadway 1999), Overdrive: Bill Gates & the Race to Control Cyberspace (New York: Wiley 1998) by James Wallace and Barbarians Led by Bill Gates: Microsoft from the Inside (New York: Owl 1999) by Jennifer Edstrom & Marlin Eller. Charles Ferguson's High Stakes, No Prisoners: A Winner's Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars (New York: Times 1999) is an account by the developer of web-authoring software FrontPage.

A profile of Time Warner (the conglomerate that gobbled up Netscape) and of Microsoft appears in the Ketupa site.

Netscape's Marc Andreessen features in Robert Reid's upbeat Architects of the Web - 1,000 Days That Built The Future of Business (New York: Wiley 1997).

Information about the early days of Mozilla is here.

     landmarks

1989 Tim Berners-Lee proposes global hypertext space

1990 Berners-Lee develops WorldWideWeb browser to support what becomes the web

1993 NCSA Mosaic released

1993 Lynx released

1994 Netscape releases Navigator

1995 Microsoft licences Mosaic as basis for Internet Explorer (IE), released as Windows 95 Plus with default page set to MSN

1996 Opera released

1996 W3C releases Amaya

1997 Mosaic 3.0 released

1997 Netscape has est 72% of global market, IE has 18%

1998 Gnuhoo rebadged as Newhoo and then as Open Directory Project (ODP) before acquisition by Netscape for US$1m

1998 America Online buys Netscape for US$4.2bn

1998 iCab releases iCab

1998 Netscape developers 'leak' source code as Mozilla

1999 Nestscape's global share at around 33%

2000 KDE releases Konqueror

2001 Netscape's share at 12%

2002 Mozilla Foundation releases Mozilla

2002 Netscape's global market share down to 3.9%, Microsoft's IE up 87%?

2003 Apple launches Safari browser

2004 IE peaks at est 95% of market

2004 release of Firefox

2004 Mozilla Foundation and Opera form Web Hypertext Applications Technology Working Group (WHATWG)

2005 Firefox surpasses 25 million downloads in 100 days

2007 AOL announces abandonment of support for Netscape

2008 Google launches Google Chrome browser




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