Microsoft Gave Its Browser Away Free — And That's What Made It a Crime

Business Onion · 2:59

In December 1995, Microsoft announced it would give its web browser away free. Not as a promotion — permanently. Netscape, which sold one, had about 80% of the market. Big technology companies do this over and over. They own the thing everyone else has to build on, then they build their own version of whatever sells on top of it. Microsoft had already done it to the spreadsheet, the word processor and the database. But Netscape was different. Netscape wasn't built on top of Windows — it was built to make Windows unnecessary. A browser runs programs that come from the internet instead of from the machine in front of you. If enough of what people did happened inside the browser, it would stop mattering which operating system was underneath. Bill Gates saw it early. On 26 May 1995 he sent a memo to Microsoft's leadership titled "The Internet Tidal Wave," naming the new competitor: Netscape.