Programming Windows: Netscape Navigator and JavaScript (Premium)

While Bill Gates and Microsoft were laser-focused on bringing Windows 95 to market in 1994-1995, millionaire entrepreneur and Silicon Graphics co-founder Jim Clark had left that firm and was looking for the next big thing. He found it at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. There, a small team had created X Mosaic, one of the first widely used web browsers, a new type of graphical application that combined previous Internet tools like FTP, Gopher, and NNTP with hypertext links, audio, graphics, and video. He recruited a Mosaic developer named Marc Andreessen, who with Clark saw that web browsers would serve the same role for the techie Internet as did GUIs like Windows for PCs.

“Windows had penetrated all the [PC] desktops, the Mac was a huge success, and point-and-click interfaces had become part of everyday life,” Andreessen said of those days. “But to use the Net, you still had to understand Unix. And the current users had little interest in making it easier. In fact, there was a definite element of not wanting to make it easier, of actually wanting to keep the riffraff out.”

(Fun aside. Clark and Andreesen originally sought to bring an online gaming network to the Nintendo 64, but delays in the console scuttled the deal. The web browser was Plan B.)

Andreesen brought along several other students and staff from the University of Illinois, Clark recruited some key hires from SGI, and the combined group formed Mosaic Communications in April 1994. After a legal threat by NCSA, which continued to promote Mosaic, the company’s name was changed to Netscape, and its initial web browser product—which was written from scratch in order to avoid Mosaic’s many coding mistakes—was codenamed Mozilla, for “Mosaic killer.” By the time the first version appeared in beta form, it has been officially named Netscape Navigator and there were versions made available for Windows (16-bit only at first), Mac, and Unix.

As evidenced by the application’s codename, Netscape sought to kill Mosaic, and it did so quickly, achieving market dominance by the end of 1995. But Netscape’s real innovations were related to its vision that the Internet, which was decentralized and not controlled by any one company, could be the platform that finally defeated Microsoft. And that a web browser could likewise replace Windows as the GUI through which users accessed that platform.

That was a bold vision for 1994, a time in which online connectivity was dominated by proprietary online services like CompuServe, America Online (AOL), and Prodigy, and access speeds were measured in Kbps and were served over unreliable dial-up networking connections. Too, Netscape immediately and explicitly positioned itself as a direct rival to Microsoft, which by then had defeated every competitor, including mighty IBM, and had established itself as the de facto standard in personal computing. Windows 95, though routinely delayed throughout 1994 and 1995, would only serve to cement the software giant’s rule atop the industry.

Netscape’s strategy was simple enough: It would emulate Microsoft by establishing its own de facto standard for the web. It knew that it would need to move quickly for this strategy to succeed, so Netscape established a schedule that Jim Clark called “Netscape Time”—what onlookers later renamed to “Internet Time”—for its new web browser. That is, where Microsoft would release a new version of Windows on floppies or CD-ROM every three or four years, Netscape would release a new version of its browser to the web every few weeks or months. The first version would be superior to Mosaic, sure, but it would also be buggy and incomplete, by design. And that was fine because a new version was coming out soon and would fix the problems while adding new features, too.

Netscape’s influence on a coming generation of Internet startups and entrepreneurs is obvious today, but it was the first company to employ and formalize this strategy. But Netscape wasn’t trying to define a 24/7/365 culture, it simply understood that Microsoft wouldn’t ignore the Internet forever. Netscape moved quickly because it knew that it was only a matter of time before it entered Bill Gates’ radar.

Regardless, speed wasn’t Netscape’s only innovation. The firm also wanted to establish the web as a platform that could rival Windows, and that required not just interactive content but also a way for developers to write sophisticated applications for the web. The web browser would need to support dynamic content too. It needed to become its own ecosystem.

Netscape invented Secure Socket Layer (SSL) to bring encryption to the web so that business could be conducted there securely. It created a plug-in infrastructure so that third parties could build off of its browser. It created email, newsgroup, and server products, so that it could have free(ish) offerings for individuals and paid offerings for businesses, financing its future innovations.

“It was essentially the razor and razor blade model,” Netscape engineer Lou Montulli said. Netscape wasn’t just letting in the riffraff, it was transforming the Internet to be nothing but riffraff. It would bring the Net to the masses, just as Windows had done for PCs.

Netscape released Navigator 0.9, its first public beta release, in October 1994. It was an instant blockbuster: By the time 1.0 shipped a few months later, the browser had been downloaded over 6 million times. By early 1995, Navigator was the browser of choice for 55 percent of Internet users. Navigator hit 45 million downloads by the end of that year and 80 percent usage share. Mosaic, which once controlled this market, had shrunk to 5 percent usage share and quickly disappeared.

Netscape 2.0 would be the first version of the browser to bring programmability to the web. This happened initially through a partnership to bring Sun’s Java programming language to Navigator via a plug-in. Netscape was excited by the deal, but there were those within the company who didn’t want to cede any control to an outside party. So, a skunkworks project to create a Netscape-made Java virtual machine (JVM) was begun. As was a one-man effort to create a simple scripting language for the browser, something that would be powerful but would attract beginners in the same way that Visual Basic had on Windows.

The Netscape-made JVM never made it to market. But the scripting language did, and it was created by Brendan Eich, one of the first Netscape employees. Like Andreessen, he had graduated (with a master’s degree) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. But he had worked at SGI for seven years, where he became something of a programming language nerd. And when Clark recruited him to Netscape, Eich set out to create a scripting language in Navigator.

By the time Netscape had partnered with Sun, those plans changed: Eich was enlisted by Andreessen to create a new scripting language, similar to Java but simpler, that could be included alongside Sun’s technology in Navigator 2.0. There was just one problem: It needed to be completed in just 10 days because of the beta shipping schedule.

Undaunted, Eich achieved the impossible, creating what is today the most popular programming language on the planet. Originally called Mocha for the obvious Java branding tie-in, the language was later renamed to LiveScript to fit in with a family of Live-branded Netscape product offerings. But Eich and Andreessen hated that name, and after Sun’s Bill Joy agreed to license the Java name, it was renamed to JavaScript.

While all this was happening, Bill Gates and Microsoft were distracted. Windows 95 was taking much longer than expected to bring to market, and Gates’ attention was further divided by those next-generation technologies that he thought would follow: Interactive TV—ironic, given that Gates didn’t even own a television—and online services that were walled gardens and disconnected from the Internet.

Microsoft’s interactive TV efforts never amounted to anything, mostly because the cable and TV giants of that era had seen the destruction that Gates and Microsoft had wrought in the PC market and wanted nothing to do with them. But ever the visionary, Gates managed to push through a proprietary online service, originally called Marvel, and to co-author a book about what he called “the Information Highway,” which had almost nothing to do with the Internet or the web.

But Microsoft’s ignorance couldn’t last.

“Everywhere I go, people ask me about how Microsoft will be on the Internet,” Gates finally admitted. And after AOL acquired BookLink Technologies for its web browser for $30 million, he suddenly saw the light. Netscape was being championed as the next Microsoft in the press. Hell, Marc Andreessen was being championed as the next Bill Gates. That could not stand.

First, Microsoft offered $100 million to Netscape for an outright acquisition. (If you can’t beat ‘em, buy ‘em.) But Microsoft’s offer was rebuffed. So, it was decided: Microsoft wouldn’t just beat Netscape. It would destroy Netscape.

Finally, the sleeping giant had awoken, and Bill Gates cast the gaze of his Sauron-like eye firmly on the tiny startup from Silicon Valley. Netscape had unleashed an Internet tidal wave. And within just a few short years, that tidal wave would turn around and subsume it in Microsoft’s last great act of destruction.

Netscape didn’t realize it yet, but it had already lost.