(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.