I don't remember things being so grim in the 90s. It's true that MS was pushing its proprietary technologies and (ab)used the popularity of Windows and IE, but

I don't remember things being so grim in the 90s. It's true that MS was pushing its proprietary technologies and (ab)used the popularity of Windows and IE, but the web was a wild west back then and everyone was pushing in their own direction. Thankfully open standards like ECMAScript were adopted, but I never saw what MS was doing as being so sinister. I would also argue that today we're much closer to a "GoogleInternet" than we ever were to a "MSInternet" in the 90s, yet we don't hear near as much uproar about that. (And we definitely should...)