Programming Windows: Internet Explorer (Premium)

It was late 1994, and Microsoft was shopping around for a web browser. It was too late to create its own web browser from scratch, not if the product was to be included with Windows 95. But then fate intervened. First, Netscape spurned its acquisition offer, and that firm quickly starting signing up partners to distribute its browser. Then, AOL yanked its next choice out from under it by purchasing BookLink for $30 million. (AOL CEO Steve Case later confirmed that his firm had only purchased BookLink to keep it out of Microsoft’s hands.) Finally, CompuServe paid an incredible $100 million for Spry, another browser company.

(Fun aside: Microsoft did license BookLink’s browser technology for a Microsoft Word feature called the Internet Assistant, which translated Word documents into HTML so that they could be published on the web.)

So Microsoft was left with only one obvious choice: It could license Mosaic from Spyglass, which had obtained the master license for that browser technology from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Ironically, Microsoft had previously spurned Spyglass when the firm inquired about licensing Mosaic just months earlier. But now the software giant needed Spyglass. And time was of the essence.

Oddly, Microsoft originally negotiated only for a browser for Windows 95, and not for Windows 3.1 or NT. The software giant refused to pay any royalty, and it suggested a one-time royalty payment. Spyglass, which typically received about $1 per each copy of Mosaic it sold, declined the offer. After all, Windows 95 would quickly sell in the millions and then tens of millions of units. Spyglass was looking at a windfall.

Internally, Microsoft calculated that it would cost it about $1 million to create its own web browser from scratch using a normal development schedule in which it would miss the Windows 95 launch. And any attempt to speed up that timeline to meet the Windows 95 deadline would lead to massive additional costs. So it offered $2 million for the Mosaic source code, with stipulations that limited its reliance on Spyglass. It would receive only a single snapshot of the Mosaic source code, which it would then use to build its own browser for both Windows 95 and NT, but not 3.1, or for the Mac or Unix. Spyglass agreed, and the contracts were finally signed---and never officially announced---on December 16.

Microsoft, quietly, had become a browser maker.

A small team of 5 or 6 engineers led by Thomas Reardon began working to turn the Spyglass code into the first version of Internet Explorer. As originally envisioned, Internet Explorer, or IE, would be a standalone application, like others that Microsoft bundled in Windows. But the first version would be very basic, thanks to the tight schedule. Subsequent releases, which would happen at first on a quick, Netscape-like schedule, would close the functional gap with Navigator.

Microsoft’s original goal of bundling IE with Windows ...

Gain unlimited access to Premium articles.

With technology shaping our everyday lives, how could we not dig deeper?

Thurrott Premium delivers an honest and thorough perspective about the technologies we use and rely on everyday. Discover deeper content as a Premium member.

Tagged with

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC