Netscape was best until about version 3. It had some niceties that IE lacked, actually IE was not even acceptable. Netscape 4.7 was "not so nice" and IE 4 was faster so, although terribly unsafe, it dominated market for years.
Oh, and by the time Netscape 4.7 and IE 4.01 were released, Microsoft had already destroyed Netscape's business.
I don't remember which Netscape I used, but I started with it. It was awful in the constant crashing. I tried IE, and it crashed too, but only about half as often. If Netscape crashed half as often as Netscape, I would have stuck with it.
If you produce an obviously inferior product, it's a bit unfair to blame the competition for your own failures.
Actually, no. That's not true at all. Crashes were as rare as today if you chose the right programs and were properly conservative with what you installed. I suffered very few crashes even with Windows 3. I won't say Windows 95 was rock solid, but I didn't see the infamous BSoD more than a couple of times a year... and I was a heavy user!!
Do you know what was different? A lot of people had very poor judgement about what to install and what to trust. Also faulty drivers, but this still happens today! No further than last night this very computer reset when starting Firefox :-/
I'm very surprised to see this revisionist version of computer history. I can't help thinking that there's some vested interest in this criticism. At the time it was some sort of fad among Linux fans against Windows dominance. I also liked Linux, but it was very annoying to see this kind of (reverse!) FUD.
Now it seems like it's some other "interest group" that's spreading it. Depressing.
The FoF makes no mention of software quality issues that I could find. Nor did they prevent anyone from installing Netscape. Nor did they prevent Netscape from making a better browser than IE.
Microsoft's actions in bundling a browser and attacking Netscapes various (likely poor) business models in multiple modes had a great deal to do with why and how Netscape started turning out shitty products.
This was part of Microsoft's strategy from the very beginning. Look up Andrew Orlowski's story "The Canonization of Saint Bill", in which a former Intel executive recalls an early 1980s meeting with Gates and Ballmer explicitly offering to carve up the IT market in a three-way split between IBM, Intel, and Microsoft.
I was in the industry from the late 1980s onward, and saw what and how Microsoft operated. Testimony and findings of fact from the DoJ case, the Novell case, the SCO vs. IBM case, and others, all paint the same story.
And yes, some of the competitors exhibited incompetence or limited vision. But "DOS ain't done until Lotus won't run", and similar variants, are very much part of the history:
The strategic side is: ... We put a bullet in the head of our would be competitors on DOS like DRI, Desqview, dos extenders etc.
- Nathan Mhyrvold, Microsoft Corp., May 9, 1989. Business as usual.
Bullet in the head of dos extenders? Zortech (my company) created its own 32 bit dos extender and shipped it. It worked fine up through Windows XP, and was a major factor in the success of Zortech C++. I also used 286 dos extenders extensively, the only "bullet in the head" they ever got was being obsoleted by advancing 32 bit computing.
Are you in any way refuting the fact that this is what the legal record records Microsoft executives as having said? In many ways? Against many specific competing or even complementary products?
You're quite adept at dragging goalposts, but the point remains they've moved, and you're not defending the original point. I'll interpret that as your having conceded it.
Yeah, I read your link about Microsoft v Novell, which is not the same as Microsoft v Netscape.
As for Microsoft warning people that Windows was not tested with DRDOS - so what? Why would they be obliged to test against DRDOS? Why would they be obliged to support Windows on DRDOS?
I remember in even earlier days PC clone BIOSes would contain the string: "some programs expect the string 'Copyright IBM' here". IBM was unable to stop the clones. Microsoft could not stop DRDOS from faking whatever detection mechanism their was, why didn't DRDOS do that? Why didn't DRDOS offer better deals to OEMs? Why didn't DRDOS offer their own Windows? Why didn't DRDOS offer a dos that was much better, rather than only slightly better?
And the "bullet in the head of dos extenders" was simply puffery, as I was directly involved in the dos extender business and no such thing happened. My dos extender made DOS into a viable 32 bit operating system - why didn't DRDOS come knocking and buy that? Microsoft had nothing like it.
In my not-so-humble opinion, DRDOS had many opportunities to counter, and they didn't. Microsoft didn't owe them any consideration. What Microsoft execs said isn't any more material than rah-rah locker room talk amongst a football team about them murdering the other team.
I preferred 3.0.3 SE. The standard editions seemed more stable and faster than the gold editions, and I really didn't need the extra functionality. Unfortunately with the 4.0 series everything was folded into the Communicator suite.
One big problem a lot of people forget is how quickly the web was moving back then. 3.0 came out in mid-1996, and soon there were many sites that wouldn't work with 2.0. 4.0 came out in mid-1997 (technically before 3.0.3), and by late 1998 I had to upgrade to the 4.0 series, because a lot of the web didn't work in 3.0.
It was actually DoubleClick that made me switch to IE - they started serving Javascript that hung every version of Netscape, which broke a lot of the web.
Oh, and by the time Netscape 4.7 and IE 4.01 were released, Microsoft had already destroyed Netscape's business.