Yes, the Redmond Middle School science project called Internet Explorer prototyped some excellent concepts. For sure. You can get a LOT of cool concepts for a

Yes, the Redmond Middle School science project called Internet Explorer prototyped some excellent concepts. For sure. You can get a LOT of cool concepts for a hundred megabucks a year from people of the intellectual and creative firepower hired by Microsoft. But, why did it fail? Of course, as the article says, one reason was the Ballmer-era tsunami of bureaucratic confusion that inundated Microsoft and stymied the release of the Windows versions that carried IE. Another was security. Cybercreeps love IE. Drive-by malware? IE. "Internet Exploder." A third was the cost of compatibility. It necessary for web developers and later, web app developers, to develop and test once on all the browsers and then again on each version of IE. It didn't help that it came bundled with Windows: large-org IT managers often forced their users to use an atrocity like IE6 years after it upgraded. This bogus standardization shackled a ball and chain to third-party developers. A fourth was, paradoxically, the whole ActiveX Control subsystem. Apartment threading, anyone? Monikers, anyone? It was just barely good enough that DICOM and other high-end imaging systems could use it. That took away incentives to get <canvas>-like stuff working well. Other companies have done similar things. DECNet, GM's MAP/TOP. Apollo Token Ring. SysV vs. BSD. But none of those things hobbled an industry quite like IE. Trebuchets are cool tech too. But imagine if every UPS truck had to carry one to place packages on peoples' doorsteps.