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So extra context that may help at least understand the perspective: There was a considerable amount of overlap between the browser and the file manager origina

So extra context that may help at least understand the perspective: There was a considerable amount of overlap between the browser and the file manager originally. The notion of the modern day internet wasn't really here, and instead a lot of companies saw "browsing the web" as mostly equivalent to "browsing your files - but remotely". Even Microsoft did this - "Windows Explorer" (The file manager) and "Internet Explorer" (The browser) shared a huge amount of code. To that point that I could still write COM browser helper objects that run in both of those programs as late as 2018 - only stopping when MS finally killed IE in favor of Edge-Chromium. Basically - Back then the web was just files to be browsed, and that was the job of the file manager, and people correctly identified that the web had monetization opportunities. They were just bad at identifying exactly what they were.

Foobar8568 2y ago
Add to that, all the hype on file systems as well with BeOS FS or WinFS ( I had too look up the name of the abandoned Vista FS, I am almost sure it had another name), plenty of new FS were created during that era as well. File management was a key activity at that time.
Suppafly 2y ago
>Even Microsoft did this - "Windows Explorer" (The file manager) and "Internet Explorer" (The browser) shared a huge amount of code. And famously got sued for closely tying the browser with the OS, despite the design making technological sense.
kombine 2y ago
KDE's first browser and file manager was also the same app - Konqueror.
nsonha 2y ago
I believe you could type a web address into Explorer and it loads the site... or the other way around, my memory is hazy
- DCH3416 2y ago
  You can still do that to this day. But it seems like now it hooks into edge or presumably the default browser.
DCH3416 2y ago
It was more than that. If you look at beta builds of Windows 95* they essentially integrate outlook into explorer. Effectively you would have a hierarchy for each layer of internet communication available from the file management. *http://toastytech.com/guis/chicago4.html http://toastytech.com/guis/chicago4.html I guess they figured it would be more profitable to sell that as a standalone product in the office suite.

Foobar8568 2y ago

Add to that, all the hype on file systems as well with BeOS FS or WinFS ( I had too look up the name of the abandoned Vista FS, I am almost sure it had another name), plenty of new FS were created during that era as well. File management was a key activity at that time.

Suppafly 2y ago

>Even Microsoft did this - "Windows Explorer" (The file manager) and "Internet Explorer" (The browser) shared a huge amount of code. And famously got sued for closely tying the browser with the OS, despite the design making technological sense.

kombine 2y ago

KDE's first browser and file manager was also the same app - Konqueror.

nsonha 2y ago

I believe you could type a web address into Explorer and it loads the site... or the other way around, my memory is hazy

DCH3416 2y ago
You can still do that to this day. But it seems like now it hooks into edge or presumably the default browser.

DCH3416 2y ago

It was more than that. If you look at beta builds of Windows 95* they essentially integrate outlook into explorer. Effectively you would have a hierarchy for each layer of internet communication available from the file management. *http://toastytech.com/guis/chicago4.html http://toastytech.com/guis/chicago4.html I guess they figured it would be more profitable to sell that as a standalone product in the office suite.