VS. 
In its early days, internet browsing was a painful, bland experience. Many of us can remember (and feel like dinosaurs doing so) pay-by-the-minute pricing plans and that wretched screech as your 28.8 modem murdered—er, connected to—your phone line.
And in the beginning, there was WorldWideWeb, and it was good. Actually, it wasn’t all that great. In the coming years, WorldWideWeb became the de facto standard. Mosaic was developed by NCSA, becoming first in the category of World Wide Web browsers.
According to Mosaic's Wikipedia entry, “Marc Andreessen, the leader of the team that developed Mosaic, left NCSA and, with Jim Clark, one of the founders of Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI), and four other former students and staff of the University of Illinois, started Mosaic Communications Corporation. Mosaic Communications eventually became Netscape Communications Corporation, producing Netscape Navigator.”
In its glory, circa 1996, Netscape Navigator was the browser of choice for nearly 80% of all internet users.
Rival Spyglass licensed the technology and trademarks from NCSA for producing their own web browser.
In 1995, Bill Gates was quoted as saying that using the internet for personal reasons was a passing fad. Obviously, he has since recanted such a belief. In 1996, Microsoft bought Spyglass, and soon thereafter released Internet Explorer.
According to Wikipedia:
“By the end of the decade, Netscape's web browser had unquestionably lost its former dominance on the Windows platform. Even on other platforms it was threatened, both by the gradual rise of open source browsers and by the August 1997 agreement that resulted in an investment of $150,000,000 by Microsoft in Apple, which included a requirement that Apple switch the default browser in new installations of Mac OS from Netscape to Internet Explorer.
“Of greatest significance, though, was Microsoft's massive and ultimately successful campaign to get ISPs and PC vendors to distribute Internet Explorer to their customers instead of Netscape. This was helped in part by Microsoft's investment in making IE brandable, such that it was a quick operation to create a customized version of IE. Also, web developers increasingly used proprietary, browser-specific extensions in the web pages they wrote. Both Microsoft and Netscape were guilty of this behavior, having added substantial proprietary HTML tags of their own into their browsers, the result of which was that users were forced to choose between two competing, almost entirely incompatible web browsers.”
Microsoft force-fed America its version of the internet. But IE has never been a moneymaker for Microsoft. In all reality, it has been a huge drain on Microsoft’s bank account. Said John C. Dvorak of PC Magazine, “If you were to put together a comprehensive profit-and-loss statement for IE, there would be a zero in the profits column and billions in the losses column—billions.”
What is it costing Microsoft to keep their number one position? What does it truly benefit them?
Microsoft stands for the operating system category, not the web browser category. They are wasting time and effort by the truckload in order to keep their product in front of its competitors.
A poorly branded product may attain short-term success, but in the long run, it is the narrowly focused brand that wins. Netscape failed largely because they lacked quality. But also because Microsoft bullied their way (at a magnanimous loss) into the web browser category. Very few companies are forced to deal with a competitor who will sacrifice their own resources, taking losses in the billions, to try and dominate a category.
The truth of the matter is this: no matter how much quality exists in Microsoft's Internet Explorer, is doomed in the web browser category.
As long as they pump money into a losing brand, they will suffer losses, the likes of which the average company could not weather. But Microsoft is not your average company–they are Big Brother Part II.
IBM could not be all things to all people. And nor can Microsoft.
Antitrust lawsuits are needless. People are self-regulating. In a free enterprise society, no product will ever achieve a 100% market share. It's time for the people's champion.
Enter: the contender–Mozilla…
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