No need to guess, from https://thisdayintechhistory.com/05/26/bill-gates-internet-tidal-wave/ https://thisdayintechhistory.com/05/26/bill-gates-internet-t...

No need to guess, from https://thisdayintechhistory.com/05/26/bill-gates-internet-tidal-wave/ https://thisdayintechhistory.com/05/26/bill-gates-internet-t... to all the material discovered during US v. Microsoft, we know MS's plan was exactly what you said, after killing Netscape to avoid it becoming the new cross-OS runtime for apps. Good point about MS leaving the Web fallow, which missed big opportunities Google and Apple (iPhone original app model was Web-only; native came almost a year later for games and for want of WebAssembly :-/).