Internet Explorer, every mention

Microsoft Volume II: The Complete History and Strategy of the Ballmer Years (Audio) · Acquired Jul 22, 2024 · 41 mentions

• ▶ 29:28 David Rosenthal Spyglass software for two million dollars, and that code base becomes the base upon which Microsoft builds Internet Explorer.
• ▶ 29:52 David Rosenthal Well, hey, if you click the About menu in the early versions of Internet Explorer.
• ▶ 32:46 Ben Gilbert Famously, you know, Netscape did not do that, and so IE, Internet Explorer, actually ends up being kind of the only application that used all these Windows components, and once they got going on the browser, they convinced the Windows…
• ▶ 33:13 David Rosenthal And Internet Explorer was available as
• ▶ 33:49 Ben Gilbert Ultimately, it wasn't that helpful in creating Internet Explorer, and they spent just as much time trying to undo a lot of it, and then build the Internet Explorer stuff on top.
• ▶ 34:08 Ben Gilbert You know, it's not like they grabbed it off the shelf and now it's IE.
• ▶ 34:37 David Rosenthal It is definitely true that if you click that about box in the early versions of Internet Explorer.
• ▶ 35:01 Ben Gilbert A lot of what became the code underpinning Internet Explorer was actually
• ▶ 35:11 Ben Gilbert And two, still a lot of work to make IE after the deal.
• ▶ 39:25 David Rosenthal You can see why it was so important to Microsoft to beat Netscape, to bring the Internet in the form of Internet Explorer into Windows and have Windows maintain its role as the dominant platform.
• ▶ 40:18 David Rosenthal Internet Explorer is not baked in.
• ▶ 41:43 David Rosenthal And then, on December seventh, 1995, Bill Gates announces that Internet Explorer is now free, and it will be bundled in with every single copy of Windows 95 going forward.
• ▶ 42:25 David Rosenthal I mean, this is now the march of Internet Explorer.
• ▶ 42:36 David Rosenthal Microsoft has now done deals with AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy, all the old online services to ditch whatever browsers they were using and bundle in Internet Explorer.
• ▶ 42:46 David Rosenthal And by the end of that year in 96, Internet Explorer passes 20% market share.
• ▶ 42:57 David Rosenthal And then by the year 2000, Internet Explorer basically has, for all intents and purposes, a hundred percent worldwide
• ▶ 43:06 David Rosenthal If you look at the Internet Explorer market share chart over time, it is the most perfectly rounded hill that you will ever see.
• ▶ 46:07 David Rosenthal But then the fourth point, which I didn't even remember at all, was that Internet Explorer would become the default browser on the Mac displacing Netscape.
• ▶ 47:50 Ben Gilbert And Microsoft said back, well, it's really important to us to have IE everywhere.
• ▶ 48:01 Ben Gilbert And Microsoft gets the win with IE.
• ▶ 58:09 David Rosenthal Which brings us right back to Internet Explorer.
• ▶ 58:30 David Rosenthal So what is Internet Explorer?
• ▶ 1:00:14 David Rosenthal In October, 1997, the Justice Department files a motion in Federal District Court stating that by bundling Internet Explorer with Windows, Microsoft has now violated the 1994 consent decree against product tying.
• ▶ 1:00:54 Ben Gilbert They're saying we ship a pile of code and you actually cannot just rip out Explorer.
• ▶ 1:01:09 Ben Gilbert And it would render, even though it was an Internet Explorer.
• ▶ 1:01:11 Ben Gilbert So there actually was like, if you think back to that sort of vision of the browser is integrated into the Windows shell, and it sort of happened, a browser was not really, at least Internet Explorer, was not really its own standalone…
• ▶ 1:01:36 David Rosenthal Well, they did ship Windows-ninety-five without Internet Explorer in the beginning, so.
• ▶ 1:01:41 Ben Gilbert So, the federal judge, Thomas Penfield Jackson, orders them to do it anyway, or more specifically, he ordered Microsoft to ship a version of Windows to the PC makers, the OEMs, or original equipment manufacturers, that didn't include IE,…
• ▶ 1:02:40 David Rosenthal Microsoft appeals Judge Jackson's order, and in early May, 1998, the appellate court rules that Microsoft can continue shipping Windows with IE bundled into it, and also continue to bundle any other features that they want as part of…
• ▶ 1:03:52 Ben Gilbert Is it okay if they tie Internet Explorer with the shipment of Windows?
• ▶ 1:04:50 Ben Gilbert You're not open to just this one thing, the tying of Internet Explorer and Windows.
• ▶ 1:18:14 Ben Gilbert And the whole time, Internet Explorer's shipping with Windows.
• ▶ 1:18:23 Ben Gilbert At this moment in time, Internet Explorer has right around 90% market share.
• ▶ 1:21:14 David Rosenthal It certainly didn't actually impact Internet Explorer or Windows.
• ▶ 2:34:26 Ben Gilbert I mean, IE is peaking and about to start falling off a cliff and are completely consumed by Vista.
• ▶ 2:40:08 Ben Gilbert And at the same time, Internet Explorer had totally languished.
• ▶ 2:40:19 Ben Gilbert IE was just widely regarded as a garbage browser.
• ▶ 2:40:22 Ben Gilbert And web developers hated it because it made you write a bunch of weird custom stuff so randomly things wouldn't work in IE.
• ▶ 2:40:33 Ben Gilbert Every time a new version of the operating system would ship it just felt like it's the same old Internet Explorer over and over again.
• ▶ 4:18:34 David Rosenthal Windows 95, Windows XP, everything we talked about at the beginning of the episode, Internet Explorer, the browser wars, they were the leaders.
• ▶ 4:44:23 Ben Gilbert Thomas Riordan, who was one of the original team members on Internet Explorer, and actually went on years later to start Control Labs, which sold to Meta, and is a part of Meta's effort now to do the, um, neural interface.