6 ms·

No personal offense intended, but Netscape was crushed by its own technological problems and missing business model as much as anything else. By the time IE4 wa

by wk_end 3y ago

No personal offense intended, but Netscape was crushed by its own technological problems and missing business model as much as anything else. By the time IE4 was out, it was unquestionably the better browser - the Communicator suite was buggy and bloated by comparison, and only fell further behind as Mozilla scrambled to rewrite the whole thing. Certainly, bundling IE into the OS helped - not to mention Microsoft's classic EEE approach to web standards - but post-Netscape but pre-Chrome there was a time when people were happy to switch to Firefox from IE because Firefox was simply the superior browser.

fnordpiglet 3y ago
Microsoft redirected billions of dollars from their OS monopoly into developing a free product bundled into the operating system to bring down a competitor in a different market. It’s not my take, it’s the judgement of the courts. Mozilla was based on gecko and related technologies which were being developed for communicator, but when the revenues associated with the browser evaporated, there was no point in investing in it any further. Rather than simply letting it rot we decided that the way to stick a thumb in Microsoft’s eye was to take one step further and not just make it free, but make it open, with an organization to perpetuate open browser technologies. But everything that went into Mozilla was already long in development. That said, IE 4 was a better product - which goes to show an unlimited war chest, a singular drive, and no commercial necessities can go a long way in developing software. They also had a lot of layout experience internally with office, and made smart key decisions that we had blundered on early due to lack of layout experience. We were mostly an internet protocol company, and our layout experience was fairly simple. That translated into a really key early mistake - when calculating table layout, which were the primary way of organizing visual elements at that time, we assumed tables were infinitely large and as we loaded elements and calculated their size we sized the table to fit them. Microsoft did the opposite and assumed they were zero sized and rendered each element in lay out as its size is known. This allowed a perception of faster loading because you could see the loading as it progressed. Unfortunately the layout engine in early Netscape browsers was so deeply enmeshed in the code that removing it and replacing it with gecko was a multi year effort, and we were being driven my marketing and product to release versions so as to not be seen as falling behind. Ultimately that was the downfall of Netscape - product had way too much power over engineering, and while we had the best engineering team I’ve ever worked with in my career (including at multiple FAANG, unicorns, Wall Street quant groups, etc), we were constantly hamstrung by product chasing some short term priorities to keep notching differentiating features. Microsoft had a very clear goal - eliminate Netscape’s browser revenue at any cost - and the ability to redirect most of their engineering talent into that goal. Once they released a bundled browser that was technically superior as a web rendering tool for absolutely free (not just free, but mandatory and inseparable from their OS), it was all over for us. All the differentiating features were buggy baggage on a partially completed product vision that had no revenue model - so, the product never finished. The key is there -was- a business model, and it was successful. But no one can compete against a monopoly price dumping to zero. Given another six months we would have had the new layout and rendering engine in place, and would have had the better browser again. But with no revenue possible, the only option was to fold. But the smarter option was the one we took, and thus set up the precedent for large open source transfers and foundations. And, IE languished and rotted, because why bother investing in something that makes no revenues?
- scarface_74 3y ago
  Netscapes idea of rewriting the entire browser was so famously bad it’s a popular blog entry that people still refer to now. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-... The operating system vendor creating thier own browser was always going to happen Neither Apple, Google or Microsoft were ever going to let themselves be beholden to a third party for anything as essential as the browser
  - fnordpiglet 3y ago
    There was no plan to rewrite the browser. It was to replace the rendering and layout engine with Gecko, and the chrome with XUL. Both of these were the foundation of Firefox, so wasn’t such a bad decision after all? Netscape 5 was post revenue decimation and was a bizarre organizational screwup between the Mozilla efforts and the existing rendering engine folks, where the existing engine folks thought they could salvage the renderer. They were not able to, and the gecko efforts were the only viable path forward. I’ve read Joel’s outsider view from Microsoft’s monopolist vantage and it doesn’t square with reality of what actually occurred. And his discussion of the situation sans the fact Netscape was in disarray after his employer destroyed our business illegally leaves a lot of crucial context out of the discussion. Fact is even in Mozilla and Netscape 6, and in both efforts for 5, most of the code carried over. The rewrite was primarily focused on integrating or improving the rendering engine (remember 5 was two competing camps trying to get to done first, some bizarre cargo cult management decision based of Microsoft culture). Ironically the historical truth is Joel’s advocated way of incrementalism was the side that actually lost and couldn’t deliver anything. The rewrite is what you use today in Firefox.
    - The_Colonel 3y ago
      Netscape's failure seems to have been caused by years of incrementally piling new features over the old rotten core without much cleanup / refactoring, which is certainly not what Joel suggests
    - scarface_74 3y ago
wilsynet 3y ago
The business model was to license the browser to corporations. And they would have done pretty well except Microsoft gave away the browser for free. The model of licensing software was pretty typical for the time. I disagree that they didn’t have a sustainable business model. Sure, IE4 was better and Netscape didn’t respond very well, but by 1997 it’s market share and revenues were already significantly eroded.
- scarface_74 3y ago
  Netscape was a horrible crash prone application that could bring an entire operating system down. IE was a better product on Windows and Macs
  - icedchai 3y ago
    I remember Netscape 4.x crashing every 30 to 45 minutes. It was incredibly unstable.
tyingq 3y ago
Netscape did have a nice http server. NSAPI was, as I recall, the earliest version of something like FastCGI, where your backend processes were separate from the web server, but didn't have to fork/exec/exit for every request.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  It had live wire, which was a before its time nodejs

by wk_end 3y ago

fnordpiglet 3y ago

Microsoft redirected billions of dollars from their OS monopoly into developing a free product bundled into the operating system to bring down a competitor in a different market. It’s not my take, it’s the judgement of the courts. Mozilla was based on gecko and related technologies which were being developed for communicator, but when the revenues associated with the browser evaporated, there was no point in investing in it any further. Rather than simply letting it rot we decided that the way to stick a thumb in Microsoft’s eye was to take one step further and not just make it free, but make it open, with an organization to perpetuate open browser technologies. But everything that went into Mozilla was already long in development. That said, IE 4 was a better product - which goes to show an unlimited war chest, a singular drive, and no commercial necessities can go a long way in developing software. They also had a lot of layout experience internally with office, and made smart key decisions that we had blundered on early due to lack of layout experience. We were mostly an internet protocol company, and our layout experience was fairly simple. That translated into a really key early mistake - when calculating table layout, which were the primary way of organizing visual elements at that time, we assumed tables were infinitely large and as we loaded elements and calculated their size we sized the table to fit them. Microsoft did the opposite and assumed they were zero sized and rendered each element in lay out as its size is known. This allowed a perception of faster loading because you could see the loading as it progressed. Unfortunately the layout engine in early Netscape browsers was so deeply enmeshed in the code that removing it and replacing it with gecko was a multi year effort, and we were being driven my marketing and product to release versions so as to not be seen as falling behind. Ultimately that was the downfall of Netscape - product had way too much power over engineering, and while we had the best engineering team I’ve ever worked with in my career (including at multiple FAANG, unicorns, Wall Street quant groups, etc), we were constantly hamstrung by product chasing some short term priorities to keep notching differentiating features. Microsoft had a very clear goal - eliminate Netscape’s browser revenue at any cost - and the ability to redirect most of their engineering talent into that goal. Once they released a bundled browser that was technically superior as a web rendering tool for absolutely free (not just free, but mandatory and inseparable from their OS), it was all over for us. All the differentiating features were buggy baggage on a partially completed product vision that had no revenue model - so, the product never finished. The key is there -was- a business model, and it was successful. But no one can compete against a monopoly price dumping to zero. Given another six months we would have had the new layout and rendering engine in place, and would have had the better browser again. But with no revenue possible, the only option was to fold. But the smarter option was the one we took, and thus set up the precedent for large open source transfers and foundations. And, IE languished and rotted, because why bother investing in something that makes no revenues?

scarface_74 3y ago
Netscapes idea of rewriting the entire browser was so famously bad it’s a popular blog entry that people still refer to now. https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-... The operating system vendor creating thier own browser was always going to happen Neither Apple, Google or Microsoft were ever going to let themselves be beholden to a third party for anything as essential as the browser
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  There was no plan to rewrite the browser. It was to replace the rendering and layout engine with Gecko, and the chrome with XUL. Both of these were the foundation of Firefox, so wasn’t such a bad decision after all? Netscape 5 was post revenue decimation and was a bizarre organizational screwup between the Mozilla efforts and the existing rendering engine folks, where the existing engine folks thought they could salvage the renderer. They were not able to, and the gecko efforts were the only viable path forward. I’ve read Joel’s outsider view from Microsoft’s monopolist vantage and it doesn’t square with reality of what actually occurred. And his discussion of the situation sans the fact Netscape was in disarray after his employer destroyed our business illegally leaves a lot of crucial context out of the discussion. Fact is even in Mozilla and Netscape 6, and in both efforts for 5, most of the code carried over. The rewrite was primarily focused on integrating or improving the rendering engine (remember 5 was two competing camps trying to get to done first, some bizarre cargo cult management decision based of Microsoft culture). Ironically the historical truth is Joel’s advocated way of incrementalism was the side that actually lost and couldn’t deliver anything. The rewrite is what you use today in Firefox.
  - The_Colonel 3y ago
    Netscape's failure seems to have been caused by years of incrementally piling new features over the old rotten core without much cleanup / refactoring, which is certainly not what Joel suggests
  - scarface_74 3y ago

wilsynet 3y ago

The business model was to license the browser to corporations. And they would have done pretty well except Microsoft gave away the browser for free. The model of licensing software was pretty typical for the time. I disagree that they didn’t have a sustainable business model. Sure, IE4 was better and Netscape didn’t respond very well, but by 1997 it’s market share and revenues were already significantly eroded.

scarface_74 3y ago
Netscape was a horrible crash prone application that could bring an entire operating system down. IE was a better product on Windows and Macs
- icedchai 3y ago
  I remember Netscape 4.x crashing every 30 to 45 minutes. It was incredibly unstable.

tyingq 3y ago

Netscape did have a nice http server. NSAPI was, as I recall, the earliest version of something like FastCGI, where your backend processes were separate from the web server, but didn't have to fork/exec/exit for every request.

fnordpiglet 3y ago
It had live wire, which was a before its time nodejs