I worked at Microsoft for 20 years and was on the Internet Explorer team when the DOJ investigation went to trial. This is a very good summary of the events. What I find even more interesting, though, is the long term effects the trial had on the company. Even though in the end the company was not broken up and the consent decree was relatively light on consequences, the company nevertheless changed greatly internally, in some ways for the better and in some ways not. To me, the question of how much of this change is attributable to the DOJ trial indirectly has always been more interesting than what can be directly linked. I've always wondered to what extent BillG's decision to greatly scale down his involvement in the company stemmed from his experiences during the trial. Certainly the company changed greatly under SteveB's leadership from what it had been under BillG. Would that transition have happened at all had the government not intervened?
No idea what that guy above me is talking about. Some kind of Time Cube shit. But I agree with the OP. I wonder, if the DoJ ruling hadn't gone the way it had, if projects like the XBox would've happened.
congrats, you worked at what could only be described as the evil phase of ms. You guys deserved far worse, and stagnated the entire industry, and the web.
I was a Network Analyst working for a fast growing company called Paranet in Houston contracting for Exxon Eutec and at the time Netscape was the browser choice at Exxon. Once Microsoft released Internet Explorer 2.0, patches would come out for Windows 3.11 and Netscape would start crashing. Netscape would come out with a new version fixing the problem then Microsoft would release a patch something and then Netscape would start having problems again. Microsoft and their marketing tricks.
From the ad break: "You should be worried", "You're at risk!" These claims are pretty hyperbolic today. I wish you wouldn't use them. Just watch Tom Scott's video on VPN adverts.
To be fair, once Netscape had gained a huge market share, they got lazy. Once Microsoft announced Internet Explorer, Netscape panicked, and started pushing out a lot of questionable changes. Netscape 4 was unstable garbage, and further versions were horribly slow and buggy. In the Mac labs of my university, people intentionally uninstalled Netscape and replaced it with IE 5.5, because it was a FAR better and more stable browser. When Mac people WANT to uninstall the software provided by Apple and install a Microsoft product, you know you done screwed up. Ultimately, Netscape killed themselves through bloat, instability, UI redesigns, and trying to push features nobody wanted. Sound familiar? The real crime is how MS forced vendors to sell Windows exclusively through bulk pricing, and still does. The justice department focused way too much on the browser war, and not enough on MS's whole OEM licensing model.
"UI redesigns, and trying to push features nobody wanted. Sound familiar?" Apple and Microsoft in the 2010's in a nutshell with removing headphone jacks, windows 8/10, UWP, no more apps in itunes, dropping phone sized phones, rounded screens...
I had the same issue with MSN being a permanently installed icon in my Windows Desktop. I sorted that out quickly, with a simple Registry edit. It's handy at times to have a second browser ready for use (which I do), but MSN was not in any part of my interests.
How about when Muggersoft forced Apple to install IE and OE into every Mac preinstalled with current and future versions of the macOS until OS X, when Billy-boy conceded that Safari and Mail.app were superior. Ok it was because MS had bailed Apple out with a $13million loan, but all the same.
I wonder what would have happened if Netscape had been a bit more sly from the get-go. Instead of claiming that their product would reduce Windows to "buggy device drivers," they could have said they were no threat to MS at all, kind of the same way that Microsoft claimed to support OS/2, even while developing its competitor.
That won’t have helped, Microsoft was and is a company that goes into market they see are growing, they like to dominate that market, they do not cooperate like normal companies, they take what they get. This way there no Wordperfect, no Lotus 1,2,3, no Pascal this companies are bundled out of the market.
OS/2 which, like Linux, was more amenable to being run on any compatible system 24/7, was a threat to anything MS could create as a competitive product, so Billy-boy did what he could to kill it.
@@stephenwright8824 IBM was wherry slow to support 2GB/4GB on OS/2, they failed to get game companies interested, and kind expected Microsoft to deliver office programs, IBM lacked the balls to do it.
So companies like google, apple, amazon, disney, Uber, Microsoft still, they are all major players in a very anti-competitive market. how come the FTC just gave up on those companies.
Dapper Dinkum that’s not how they work lmao, and all of these companies can already do that as soon as you signed their EULA’s and Terms of Service Agreements. Quantum Computing fearmongering is stupid because we are nowhere close to them actually being useful for anything but solving very specialized math problems and computational problems. Even google’s quantum supremacy claim is disputed by IBM.
I just wanna point out that whoever designed the Netscape logo and icons was a mastermind. Never in my whole time on the internet have i ever been so inspired from double clicking and seeing the netscape logo in conjunction with going online across the whole globe. Internet Exploder never satiated this imagination. Starting IE felt more like opening MS-paint. And no browser icon/logo since has ever made me feel like i am actually entering orbit around the world to find information from the other side of the planet by the click of a mouse button.
Bill Gates: "If you define 'definition', for this conversation in a loose way, then I'll understand what you mean". I think this may have topped Bill Clinton's, "it depends on what your definition of 'is' is" for a 90s WTF quote.
He opened up for a great comeback if the other guy would have gone to define "definition". "what definition of definition did you use when you defined definition"?
I love English and learning weasley communication because it's super easy to pull something out of your butthole and make it sound confident and even philosophical
blakegriplingph chrome is very very slowly dieing as people start valuing privacy more and move to a browser like Firefox although it’s safe for at least another 3 years
This is one reason I'm distancing myself from them by using Brave Browser and Duck Duck Go for search. Being an Android user it's hard to disconnect entirely, and some of their stuff is bloody useful. Others start useful and end up getting dropped (coughG+cough)... though we're talking on a Google primary platform that's not going away any time soon.
I mean, when you see what some of these sponsors are paying the youtubers, and how shakey ad revenue is otherwise, it makes sense. Some of these sponsors are paying up to $5,000 per video. Mind you, that's about half of the annual income someone working 20/hr a week on minimum wage in the us
@@laggory Way to much money going around these days... back in the day making videos wasn't a job, it was just things you wanted to share with other people for the fun of it.. nowadays it is all about revenue, subs, adds, getting x videos out a month etc... I am getting so fed up with so many channels e-begging spamming their Patreon and donate links...
yeh but obviously the government isnt just going to start suing tech companies for no reason, there are no monopolies in the tech world anymore, e.g. if you dont like windows, use mac or linux. if you dont like an iphone use any other android. like no one is doing anything that warrants being sued over. for example, what ur doing is just generic boomer talk by saying how BACK IN YOUR TIME THINGS WERE BETTER, there is no need for your boomer talk.
@@christiansousanis7318 I'm 27 there are plenty of dangerous monopolies around Disney comes immediately to mind and Google has been making concerning moves for years Along with cable and internet companies with their exclusivity agreements and with local news networks around the country being quickly and quietly bought out by spectrum (time warner) (almost att time Warner) it's ignorant to think that monopolies can't exist in our current climate
I was firmly in the Netscape camp back then... Only used Win98 for games and school work while using Linux for everything else. But as a web designer for my college I ended up having to use IE 5 for HTML4 pages because Netscape had support for CSS, a single file for typeseting on all web pages. That was Netscape was too busy fighting MS in the courts instead improving their browser. Once the more bloated IE6 came out I switched to Firefox which I used ever since.
And now we have Win 10. Due to the lack of control we used to have over the O/S many are bailing out of Microsoft and going to Linux. I would have been happy with Win 98 if only they had continued support. When my Vista computer went out of support, I put Linux on it and have never regretted that.
@@Icalasari BS. First there is something called integrity. That flew out the window here in the persuit of his own interest. Second: The ones that NEED money, those are the ones that pick up trash, flip hamburgers, work on a factory production line, etc. They are surviving... not scaring the innocent and ignorant into paying for something that average joe just doesn't need at all. And because there are a lot of people on the internet who are not aware that he's selling BS to serve his own pockets, THAT's why I called it out.
@@denny4471 Every month? My Matrox G200 got by for a while, then I went ATI Radeon (the first generation) 2 years later, then 9800 Pro....... Looking back the biggest difference I see now is the price, resolution we play at, and how much they heat up.
The book written on this subject by David Bank is a firm recommendation. It is based on thousands upon thousands of emails that were disclosed during the trials and it takes a deep dive in Gates’ head, whose end goal was something termed ‘Microsoft Everywhere’.
@kasimirdenhertog3516 It was something like, "One World, one __, one Software: Microsoft" and people at the time said that was eerily similar to "One world, one nation, one Fuhrer."
What Netscape was trying to do that scared Microsoft so much would not have happened anyway. It was only much later that Chromebooks and the likes of iPad delivered, to an extent, on the promise of OS irrelevance. But even today, in the smartphone arena, the operating system matters, and we're back to most work being done in apps and not in the web browser.
I think the good part about all this, is that open standards won. How horrible would it have been, if MS was able to enforce their technology on the web and sell licenses to other companies. As is said in the video, MS got really scared when Netscape was painting a picture where the browser was the main interface with the user and the OS could be replaced, without the user even noticing. And in the end you could say this vision became reality with ChromeOS. Open standards also made sure that Apple didn't get crushed and ultimately I really think Linux will grow on the desktop and laptop.
I worked software support for a large insurance company, and we used OS/2 Warp running in a virtual machine to access certain legacy apps. I had never used OS/2 before, and I really liked it, despite it being 20 years old at that time. It's a shame that OS never got a chance to develop and evolve. I would have liked to have seen what it could have become.
This was awesome, thanks SO MUCH for making this. I hear your love for it, and so many archives were new to me, and your thoughts on this story were well thought out. I also love that you voiced your own video's quotes. Kept me immersed in your vid.
Hearing about this process made me decide to not use Internet Explorer whenever possible. For years I've used other browsers, but at work we only had IE available and I've had to use it for 7 years when working. People were complaining, however, and in 2019 we finally were given the option in our work PCs to use Firefox or Chrome instead, for those who preferred it.
"This is nit picking on super heroic levels", when you are dealing with the law nit picking is the name of the game, a good technicality can win or lose a case.
Funny thing is that I have never used Explorer, I went from Mosaic to Netscape to Firefox. I tried Edge when I bought my first computer with Windows 10, but I gave up fast since the protection against pop-up scam (the famous call a number because there is a virus on your computer) was ridiculous. Sure I have to install a browser each time I buy a new computer, but it's better than dealing with a Microsoft browser.
As always, your videos are very informative and comprehensive. I remember the first versions of Explorer. They were garbage until version 3.0 came out. Netscape really started to suck after they merged with AOL.
Good to get an overview of this. I was only tangentially aware of this going on at the time as I was still waving the Amiga flag as a diehard (or rather a pauper lol) My internet use was restricted to school (where yeah, we mainly used netscape), and mainly browsing the AmiNet, stuffing floppies full of shareware Amiga software to take home to my then non-internettable A1200. It'd be a few years til I got my first modem at a car boot sale and finally got my miggy online. I think we're a similar age so I really dig your videos. Keep up the good work! :)
A big aspect of getting IE dominant (and why for all but the last few versions it ignored most actual standards and had its own) was to encourage people to use Windows in the server room, using the IIS stack rather than something like Apache.
I was 14 but it still brings back some nostalgia. I remember all my friends getting Pentium 1 and. 2 computers around this time and actually being impressed with the games. Plus the internet and AOL instant messenger came into prominence around this time. What a great era
I was 18 and remember being a bit worried, just thinking it would do more harm than good for the software industry in the US (ie - through discouraging companies from growing too large).
On my wall, I still have the original Firefox 1.0 poster: "Are you fed up with your web browser? You're not alone. We want you to know there is an alternative..." with all the names of supporters from 2004, right after the renaming from Phoenix/Firebird. Ah, heady days.
I've been wondering when/if the time ever comes for computer memorabilia to become collectible. Guessing the limited timeframe this stuff was relevant makes them fade from memory so fast people don't necessarily form lasting nostalgia.
RIP Firefox... 9 Feb 04 - 4 Jan 18 It's things like TabMixPlus that made it great. The whole WebExtensions thing killed it. Anyway, it's _still_ way better than Google's DCT (data collection tool), but not anymore the really cool thing it was.
I remember netscape had the first ever back up button and I loved it. I remember thinking, i wish my dads old amiga had a backup button because im always trying to get out of trouble on that thing. Microsoft soon copied them by installing a back up button on the windows os and now everything has one.
"A buggy set of device drivers underneath the browser". This is exactly what Windows is in most use cases nowadays. I guess Netscape couldn't achieve that goal but the market was actually advancing into that direction. Google implements that even more with all of their, somewhat scary, Chrome-cloud-whatevers.
Windows 10: Early Access, eternal Pre-Alpha, forced updates make you stay in that loop, never stable, even the friggen (file) explorer has it's abundant cornucopia of bugs that never ever get fixed even in decades... literally.
Having worked in the Tech sector for 30 years I remember all of it well.... It's so funny how Microsoft Panicked when Netscape came along. Now it's rolling over for Chrome.... My how times have changed.
Having worked in web development throughout ie6 up to ie10+ I can say with confidence, the money spent on cross browser compatibility cost the world's IT industry (edit: well more people paying for web sites, it frustrated the industry and slowed development more than anything) far more than $200 billion. Often it took longer to implement ie6 support than the website itself took to build. On top of that, in the early days of the internet when it was slow dial up and Windows 95 running on 16MB of ram, the woefully inefficient ie6 would slow the internet experience down to an absolute crawl. Then it would let viruses and malware and for the early years of the internet, browsing and overall experience could be quite frustrating. I think Microsoft has been a disaster for the IT software industry. The reason Internet Explorer was so awkward to develop for is because it's rendering engine (or 'document object model') was based on MS's own renderer (I forgot the name but hasLayout was a thing). Then they tried to combine web pages and Office pages with the same file docx standard in the most fail way ever. Instead of Mozilla's Gecko or Apple's WebKit engines which were developed with the WC3 internet standards group (Google's Blink is now the primary rendering engine).
@@Henrik_Holst Yeah I looked it up. I remembered some other name for some reason. MS wrote a ie6 debugging tool which was pretty useful because you could see all the janky javascript.commands that were doing things. Bad things. hasLayout indeed.
@@joshmbrown42 Yeah it was the most supported that's true. Up until Firefox in the early 00's or something. I even used it on XP. It was ok at first I'll admit but too many things installed themselves onto it. It was only when I tried a different browser that I realised pages actually loaded faster and I was like omg you had 1 job ie6.
I remember I was able to start using Linux as a mainstream pc in 2009 after many failed tries, 3 of the theeting problems were dial-up which I got rid only in 2007 with 640kbit adsl, flash plugin support and IE websites compatibility which at that time was at an acceptable level
My first browser was Mosaic. About 2007, with a fresh build of s/w, Explorer/exploder couldn't read internal company sites. Downloading Safari for Windows solved the problem.
Would be interesting to see an alternate timeline where the computer industry has been dominated by the cloud-based Netscape Navigator OS since the 90s.
‘He was going to “buy” Netscape.’ Translation: have his techs interview their techs, copy the product, and then put hem out of business with a superior distribution channel giving his away for free until he owned the market.
* 16:16 its actually "20 State Attorneys General" in American grammar (since we're talking about American attorneys. Yes, I realize in the UK its said the other way, but this is a specific reference to the American job title.)
As soon as yanks start using correct English when talking about the UK, then, you can attempt to criticise an Englishman on the correct grammar for the English language.
Microsoft Hardware FTW. Still using a 2003 Digital Media Keyboard and the glorious Force Feedback 2 stick that has something all the modern and utterly expensive shit doesn't: Force Feedback. As for the keyboard: I don't get those overpriced RGB things and the manufacturers constantly playing around with the standard keyboard layout, making literally every keyboard released since useless once you try using it without looking at the thing. There literally haven't been any worthy replacements for those in almost two decades, ongoing.
i NEVER get notices for videos on this channel. i just happen across them searching for something to watch. i am subbed and ALL selected in the bell. youtube, what gives!?
Yeah, his listed reasons "use location restricted services, hide yourself from targeted ads, avoids mobile roaming charges and better prices, and more" just doesn't really fairly encompass the benefits of using a VPN.
yeah security on the net really isnt an issue anymore however using a vpn to access different countries netflix libraries thats a good use for vpns, also cookies bypass vpns anyway so targeted ads will hapen unless you disable cookies
True story, this happened to me. I wrote an application for a large company. It was had about 50 users. It was written in Paradox for Windows, a product from a rival company named Borland. A new version of Windows came out. The company wanted to move over to the new version but because they were such a large company, they tested it in a few departments first. Thankfully the department I wrote that application for was one of the departments. IT installed the new version and the workers came in the next day, booted their computers, and went into my application. My application quickly crashed on everyones' computer. The company paid for top support to Microsoft so I was able to talk to a support person immediately. I described the problem and the support person told me that she KNEW what the problem was and had a solution. She said the problem was that I was using a non-Microsoft tool and the solution was to rewrite the application in Microsoft Access. It took 3 programmers 3 years to write that application so doing a re-write wasn't an option. I told my boss what the support person said and so my boss called her boss and here is what he was told. Microsoft had released the new version of Windows KNOWING it crashed Paradox for Windows !!!!!! We ended up going back to the old version of Windows. Eventually Borland was forced out of business even though they tended to write better Windows tools than Microsoft.
"Taking a cue from Borland's low price Quattro Pro spreadsheet debut against Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access debuted with a $99 price.[3] This undercut the traditional DBMS prices of Paradox DOS, Paradox Windows, and dBase of around $799, which negatively impacted Borland more than any other firm. " lol no shit they priced themselves out of business.
These answers from Bill in 18-19 minute of the video makes sense. It's the interview where every word could be used against him. In these fragments all I can see is a classical manipulation. Interviewer tries to present things as simple, he acts like he don't understand why Bill acts this way. Bill knows what's going on, so he tries to be very exact, define everything. In return he's asked vague questions, so he tries to be more precise and the circle closes. These answers can't be interpreted in "just talking" way, because then yeah, Bill acts like idiot. It's a legal stuff and we should see it that way - then everything seems to be in order. He's guilty or not - doesn't matter. Either way different answers than his would be digging own grave. If you still have doubts, check out educational video "don't talk to the police" here, on the YT - lawyer (prof. James Duane) and cop give good examples how simple words can be turned against you. They propose to don't talk at all, because whatever you say, it might be bad for you, if the law wants it. Here he had to talk and he chosen the best way. I admire how he handles it.
I've really never understood how this lawsuit made much sense, Netscape had a browser everyone loved so they made their own and bundled it with their own operating system they built. Other than apparently bullying oems I'm not 100% sure on what they did could be anti-competitive, it's not like they blocked installing of alternative browsers. It's like for example all of the jailbreak Dev teams over the years sued Apple for anti-competition because they kept continually locking them out with software updates (but even then it would make more sense because they're actually getting locked out).
Well it's a bit controversial because defaults make a huge impact. You can see it with how Google's market share exploded after they bundled it with Android. In Russia there was an antitrust case to avoid Google from destroying Yandex and it worked, the fix was essentially to let users pick their search engine the first time you open the app. Some people prefer Google, some prefer Yandex, it's transparent and democratic. Most people sadly don't understand browsers or search engines (*especially in desktop computers and laptops) so if they manage to navigate the web they'll stick to whatever is there by default. Not everyone knows how to download, install and tweak programs and settings, we may take that sort of knowledge for granted but when we talk about the general market it's not that way. So yeah it didn't make much sense for people like us but it definitely matters for other people. The most just thing would have been to facilitate the installation of both so people could actually choose, or selling IE separately. Most people I met when I was younger used IE, this includes all my relatives in my huge family, my school and even my dad's coworkers - even though he worked in a computer related business. People just don't know or care and this difference in market share is a game changer.
Wow that was quick explanation on Ms-DOS... no mention of branches of third-party apps, Quarterdeck memory management, Xtree directory utility. We moved right to window GUI 😅🤬
I run it on a pentium 1 and a pentium 3 that run "DOS 7 with GUI 4" (win9x). on more modern computers that run NT windows (xp and 7) I use a clone called "ztree win" some times, just for fun.
And the Hungarian version of Windows 95 at the end :)))) My favorite sentence on the screen with orange color, before turn off the computer (when i was a child): "Most már kikapcsolhatja a számítógépet." :)
We used to call IE, Internyet destroyer. Even while we used W95, W98, and WME, we still would download Netscape or Mozilla and use it instead of IE. Much less buggier. There were some wesites that 'required' IE, but they soon fell by the wayside.
Actually, I lived through this, microsoft plus was required to be able to access your modem from windows. This caused most of us trying to do real networking, fidonet at the time, to look at os2, which came with everything we needed.
I'm a full stack .NET developer. I've been one for nearly 20 years. From my perspective, Microsoft is no longer the evil one. They haven't been for quite a while. They are a world leader in open source software. The source of the .NET framework is largely open except for the proprietary bits. Their flagship development tool is free. And Azure is priced such that any size business can more the flourish. I'm planning a business in the near future, and starting out my platform costs will be virtually nothing. Apple on the other hand. Well, I used to be a huge apple fanboy. Let's just say I'm not a fan of that company any more.
"Microsoft is no longer the evil one"!? "They are a world leader in open source software"!? You're joking, right? With all sorts of bullshit Microsoft has brought out and tried with Windows 10, I can only see your comments as an attempt at a joke or pitching for Microsoft.
@@jsmunroe No. But I don't have to be one in order to see that Windows 10 is a buggy spyware which doesn't let me have a complete control over my PC and it acts more like a Trojan horse. Forced multi-gigabyte updates with no option to switch-off, downloaded and installed when Microsoft feels like it, drivers updated or features changed/added/removed at Microsoft's whim, causing problems when something stops working or a needed feature is gone just like that. I don't want to go on and on with all the BS that Microsoft has rolled out with Win 10, if you are pretending like those issues don't matter or don't exist, I have no reason to waste my time and energy. Windows was the final nail in the coffin of Microsoft, and I'm switching to a Linux OS. Windows 2000 Professional was THE best Windows version in which MS actually CARED to make an OS which works solidly, has everything a user would need to get things done, and has no bloatware or unnecessary junk to make it large and slow. It was a lean, mean, high-performing machine. I thought that Microsoft finally got it. But then it started adding junk and making Windows more bloated and slower, and it has been mostly a downhill slope ever since. Windows 10 was the final and the greatest insult that I wouldn't even call an "operating system" anymore.
@@edinfific2576 Linux is a good OS. Go for it. Being a developer for so many years, I no longer hate platforms. That monoculture bullshit is what users do and it is very naive. Windows is a great operating system too. Sorry for your experience but it is not universal. Everything i said in my post is true. I stick to it.
Yeah the more I learn of current Microsoft the less I hate it. Generally speaking I still believe it's not ethical to eat smaller companies all the time (but that's a problem governments have to fix at some point), but compared to Google or any other big ones they're the best by far lol. I love their contributions to open source software and the increased revenue for Canonical as I use Ubuntu as my daily driver. It feels very unfair that people seem to like Google while hating on Microsoft though, can't really get that logic anymore.
Someone needs to destroy Google's current grip on the Internet, as they control a big search engine, the most used browser and the most used mobile operating system.
The difference is Google products are actually good, that's why people use them. Google defeated MSN search, AltaVista and Yahoo not by being anti-competitive, but because their search engine was actually superior. Android defeated Windows CE/Mobile and Symbian because it was actually superior. Google Maps defeated other map applications because it actually worked better in most instances. Microsoft on the other hand have rarely delivered high quality products, instead providing clumsy products that barely work and crash frequently (particularly Windows 95 & 98, and of course the horribly sluggish Internet Explorer).
Microsoft still forces Edge onto users. Like if an app is bundled with web browser extensions like some live apps are, the default browser used is Edge.
WOW! two whole weeks after this went up and they pushed me a notification today! Thanks to youtube, the bell notification means bugger all if you just push notifications whenever you feel like it!!!!!!!
surprisingly entertaining. guessing it has something to do with there being so much less coverage of 90s tech history. all that 80s Commodore, Atari, Nintendo stuff is coming out of my ears.
How much did running IE on Windows cost the world economy over the years via bad code, malware, and poor products? It's like they held slowed everything down and in the process transferred money to themselves, effectively like a tax on productivity.
re: the email gates sent out in 1995. Gates published his book, The Road Ahead, the same year as the Memo he sent out. It detailed a lot of what we called the information super high way back then and even now, still tells the story of what we're experiencing. It's a great read to see how he was seeing the future that we're living in now and how much he got right.
Simon Johnny Except that at this time he wasn't even shipping TCP/IP drivers with MS.DOS or Windows, and was having his networking lunch eaten by Novell. TCP/IP was a third-party industry to Bill, which is why we have Winsock. He didn't wise up for several more years.
ur posts are sending me "back into the past" .....this case was the main key to keep Windows platform open for developer, it was a great event of trusting the Law and the new born of digital law , and to put a spot light on the integrity of Tech developers ... and clients relationship with tech vendors ...
Watched this 3 weeks ago but forgot to leave a comment. I really enjoyed this video and learnt something too. Thank you and well done on a great video 👍😃
In the end, Microsoft was right: the internet would soon become so integrated into our lives that the operating system needed some form of browser built in. And, in the end, NOBODY was going to pay for a web browser or media player.
Very well done! It was a crazy time and did indeed shape the future more than many thought at the time. Microsoft these days is sadly dysfunctional and has made epic mistakes where they have failed to innovate and been shamed by other companies (failing year after year in mobile phones being just one the more obvious examples). One thing however is still true: They continue to ignore what their customers want, produce substandard products, and focus on mostly just their stock price which mostly serves senior management.
"They continue to ignore what their customers want, produce substandard products" Spot on! MS Office's insistence on the clumsy "ribbon" menu bars is comical, when other products like LibreOffice or Google Docs are perfectly happy to provide the conventional menu bars that most users prefer.
During this fight I was still using Lynx browser through a dial up connection. Lynx if you've never heard of it, was a text only browser that was compatible with generic terminal software.
@@rayceeya8659 It's pretty good, especially when setting up UNIX-based OS installs that don't have a GUI installer (like Arch and Gentoo Linux). I prefer w3m or links, given they have more modern features IIRC.
I think a vacuum was created when ATARI and Amiga disappered from the home market. With more operating system out there it probably be easier for software provider like Netsacpe, the escudos of software companies from Commodore/Amiga and ATARI for not being able to keep up on the hardware front, created a approximately OS monopile on home market, Macintosh also barely able to stay alive, the one thing that kept it alive was it focus on true color graphics, assuming that some different decision was made back then I sure thing might have looked really different. The argument about DRDOS and MSDOS and so on, I think is false, as was more or less the same thing, noting really to do with the OS monopoly.
Great video. Just one thing... that VPN Shilling in the middle of the video seemed to use the scare tactics too much. I know you tried to use it to match the theme of the video, but it needed some refinement IMHO. On the flip side, you didn't take an offer to shill the shit out of NordVPN as it gets on my nerves with the amount of shilling it gets. So I guess my VPN grumble neturalizes out - it's a VPN advert, but it's not NordVPN. Keep up the great content!
Classic deception tactics. Argue what I'm saying is right therefore what you're saying must be wrong because words can only mean what I say they mean. Also known as bald-faced lies.
It might seem callous at first, but if you have ever done any real debates, this can be proven to be a smart and ingenious tactic. I make this assessment coming from the mindset and mentality of an avid Chess player. I'm a strategist.
Nostaligia Nerd, I'm disappointed to see sponsored ad breaks in the middle of your videos, especially scare tactics shilling VPN subscriptions. I thought you and this channel were above that.
What needed to happen was adjustments to Software copyright. Intel was the power house that was setting back development more so than Microsoft. Intel was actively spending a huge amount of resources and money to stop competition and limit it. by 1992 Intel was the undisputed king of hardware and every year it was sabotaging other silicon companies. Let's not even get into the bullshit Apple pulled. For setting back development it would go in this order Intel > Apple > Microsoft
Thanks again for that stroll down RAM lane. I remember reading this in the Seattle Times while it happened. I was working my way through school at the time.
Hmm... I was going to say how silly it is to consider human memory like RAM but then had to think about what it means to power down in the human context and got all into a spiderweb of life/death/sleep/coma/stroke. Not as simple as I had initially thought!
Gates was the son of a very successful lawyer, Allen always said that gave him an edge during negotiations
I worked at Microsoft for 20 years and was on the Internet Explorer team when the DOJ investigation went to trial. This is a very good summary of the events. What I find even more interesting, though, is the long term effects the trial had on the company. Even though in the end the company was not broken up and the consent decree was relatively light on consequences, the company nevertheless changed greatly internally, in some ways for the better and in some ways not. To me, the question of how much of this change is attributable to the DOJ trial indirectly has always been more interesting than what can be directly linked. I've always wondered to what extent BillG's decision to greatly scale down his involvement in the company stemmed from his experiences during the trial. Certainly the company changed greatly under SteveB's leadership from what it had been under BillG. Would that transition have happened at all had the government not intervened?
Bill was misunderstood, then abused by those who require "evolution (profit) control".
Welcome to 2019. Milk humans. Evolution = NULL.
No idea what that guy above me is talking about. Some kind of Time Cube shit. But I agree with the OP. I wonder, if the DoJ ruling hadn't gone the way it had, if projects like the XBox would've happened.
heh. Bilge.
I don't think they learned anything... try and uninstall Edge from Windows 10... they should have killed Microsoft in the 90s
congrats, you worked at what could only be described as the evil phase of ms. You guys deserved far worse, and stagnated the entire industry, and the web.
I was a Network Analyst working for a fast growing company called Paranet in Houston contracting for Exxon Eutec and at the time Netscape was the browser choice at Exxon. Once Microsoft released Internet Explorer 2.0, patches would come out for Windows 3.11 and Netscape would start crashing. Netscape would come out with a new version fixing the problem then Microsoft would release a patch something and then Netscape would start having problems again. Microsoft and their marketing tricks.
From the ad break: "You should be worried", "You're at risk!"
These claims are pretty hyperbolic today. I wish you wouldn't use them. Just watch Tom Scott's video on VPN adverts.
@Seán's Mobile what happened with Nord?
Yes. The scare mongering is kinda awful.
@Marc Carran Fallacy by statistics.
don't buy it if you don't want it
@@josephyn89 People like to claim hacks when they sell your data to the wrong guy... Go ask Sony how their PSN network hack went down ;-)
To be fair, once Netscape had gained a huge market share, they got lazy. Once Microsoft announced Internet Explorer, Netscape panicked, and started pushing out a lot of questionable changes. Netscape 4 was unstable garbage, and further versions were horribly slow and buggy. In the Mac labs of my university, people intentionally uninstalled Netscape and replaced it with IE 5.5, because it was a FAR better and more stable browser. When Mac people WANT to uninstall the software provided by Apple and install a Microsoft product, you know you done screwed up. Ultimately, Netscape killed themselves through bloat, instability, UI redesigns, and trying to push features nobody wanted. Sound familiar?
The real crime is how MS forced vendors to sell Windows exclusively through bulk pricing, and still does. The justice department focused way too much on the browser war, and not enough on MS's whole OEM licensing model.
"UI redesigns, and trying to push features nobody wanted. Sound familiar?"
Apple and Microsoft in the 2010's in a nutshell with removing headphone jacks, windows 8/10, UWP, no more apps in itunes, dropping phone sized phones, rounded screens...
I had the same issue with MSN being a permanently installed icon in my Windows Desktop. I sorted that out quickly, with a simple Registry edit. It's handy at times to have a second browser ready for use (which I do), but MSN was not in any part of my interests.
I don't remember Netscape 4 (Communicator) being unstable but it was certainly bloatware - of course IE was also very bloated at the time.
How about when Muggersoft forced Apple to install IE and OE into every Mac preinstalled with current and future versions of the macOS until OS X, when Billy-boy conceded that Safari and Mail.app were superior. Ok it was because MS had bailed Apple out with a $13million loan, but all the same.
@@needforsuv My quick diss of Microsoft back in the day was, "They take the obvious and make it look like innovation."
I wonder what would have happened if Netscape had been a bit more sly from the get-go. Instead of claiming that their product would reduce Windows to "buggy device drivers," they could have said they were no threat to MS at all, kind of the same way that Microsoft claimed to support OS/2, even while developing its competitor.
That won’t have helped, Microsoft was and is a company that goes into market they see are growing, they like to dominate that market, they do not cooperate like normal companies, they take what they get. This way there no Wordperfect, no Lotus 1,2,3, no Pascal this companies are bundled out of the market.
OS/2 which, like Linux, was more amenable to being run on any compatible system 24/7, was a threat to anything MS could create as a competitive product, so Billy-boy did what he could to kill it.
@@stephenwright8824 IBM was wherry slow to support 2GB/4GB on OS/2, they failed to get game companies interested, and kind expected Microsoft to deliver office programs, IBM lacked the balls to do it.
@@stephenwright8824 The funny thing is a lot of NT was written by IBM while a lot of OS/2 was written by Microsoft.
@@stephenwright8824 os/2 was developed mostly by Microsoft at first how does that make sense
So companies like google, apple, amazon, disney, Uber, Microsoft still, they are all major players in a very anti-competitive market. how come the FTC just gave up on those companies.
my best guess is that no US President administration since Clinton's has been actively trying to enforce anti-trust laws.
Dapper Dinkum that’s not how they work lmao, and all of these companies can already do that as soon as you signed their EULA’s and Terms of Service Agreements. Quantum Computing fearmongering is stupid because we are nowhere close to them actually being useful for anything but solving very specialized math problems and computational problems. Even google’s quantum supremacy claim is disputed by IBM.
@@justajavajunkyI know you're being sarcastic but I was rude and mean in my earlier comment. I'd like to apologise for being so toxic.
The purpose of the state is to serve the interests of capital
@@justajavajunky I'm not really used to people genuinely wanting to learn on YT so this is a new experience for me.
You should do an episode on the 1969-1982 US vs IBM Antitrust Case. A 13 year long case that was dropped without merit.
I just wanna point out that whoever designed the Netscape logo and icons was a mastermind.
Never in my whole time on the internet have i ever been so inspired from double clicking and seeing the netscape logo in conjunction with going online across the whole globe.
Internet Exploder never satiated this imagination. Starting IE felt more like opening MS-paint.
And no browser icon/logo since has ever made me feel like i am actually entering orbit around the world to find information from the other side of the planet by the click of a mouse button.
the "animated businesspeople" scenes are giving me anxiety
Especially when ur on acid!
Agree. With vpzom...
Ivan the communist... You need help.
Me too! that guy repeatedly adjusting his spectacles.
Seriously, I had to stop watching and just listen because those were so annoying over and over and over and over and over again.
@carddamom it seems unlikely you haven't heard of the most popular operating system.
Bill Gates: "If you define 'definition', for this conversation in a loose way, then I'll understand what you mean".
I think this may have topped Bill Clinton's, "it depends on what your definition of 'is' is" for a 90s WTF quote.
brilliance to learn from.
These people (Politicians and CEOs) are the biggest liars, killers and thieves humanity has to offer.
The 90s were wild man
He opened up for a great comeback if the other guy would have gone to define "definition".
"what definition of definition did you use when you defined definition"?
I love English and learning weasley communication because it's super easy to pull something out of your butthole and make it sound confident and even philosophical
And now it's Google asserting dominance whilst getting away with it.
Indeed
There's a Brave choice that can be made ;)
blakegriplingph chrome is very very slowly dieing as people start valuing privacy more and move to a browser like Firefox although it’s safe for at least another 3 years
Google runs half of the Internet, ruining it in the process. Dark times ahead if things don't change
This is one reason I'm distancing myself from them by using Brave Browser and Duck Duck Go for search. Being an Android user it's hard to disconnect entirely, and some of their stuff is bloody useful. Others start useful and end up getting dropped (coughG+cough)... though we're talking on a Google primary platform that's not going away any time soon.
I still miss netscape navigator to this day! it worked so much better than all the other browsers @ the time imo and i loved the simple layout
I remember the old days when every youtube video wasn't sponsored by a VPN. Good times man, good times.
Are you talking about the raid shadow legends times?
I mean, when you see what some of these sponsors are paying the youtubers, and how shakey ad revenue is otherwise, it makes sense. Some of these sponsors are paying up to $5,000 per video. Mind you, that's about half of the annual income someone working 20/hr a week on minimum wage in the us
complain about sponsors as much as you want, but they are the reason why youtube is still here.
That was the youtube's golden era.
@@laggory Way to much money going around these days... back in the day making videos wasn't a job, it was just things you wanted to share with other people for the fun of it.. nowadays it is all about revenue, subs, adds, getting x videos out a month etc... I am getting so fed up with so many channels e-begging spamming their Patreon and donate links...
God remember when the government cared about shutting down monopolies? I miss that so much
-Looks at G.M, toyota and other car companies.- 🤔 how is this even legal?
Ok Boomer. Did u just forget that the FCC just sued UA-cam for $170million
@@christiansousanis7318 not for being a monopoly they sued over a weird interpretation of a children's privacy act
yeh but obviously the government isnt just going to start suing tech companies for no reason, there are no monopolies in the tech world anymore, e.g. if you dont like windows, use mac or linux. if you dont like an iphone use any other android. like no one is doing anything that warrants being sued over. for example, what ur doing is just generic boomer talk by saying how BACK IN YOUR TIME THINGS WERE BETTER, there is no need for your boomer talk.
@@christiansousanis7318 I'm 27 there are plenty of dangerous monopolies around Disney comes immediately to mind and Google has been making concerning moves for years
Along with cable and internet companies with their exclusivity agreements and with local news networks around the country being quickly and quietly bought out by spectrum (time warner) (almost att time Warner) it's ignorant to think that monopolies can't exist in our current climate
And yet, today we have massive monopolies controlling the Internet today. So...... we accomplished nothing.
Today, Google and other companies knows they can buy favors from the government.
@@BillC-64
Google is owned by the government
The EU is still suing them. Seems like we'll have to do it since the US stopped caring about freedom.
@@evanfehr3819 you have that backwards.
I was firmly in the Netscape camp back then... Only used Win98 for games and school work while using Linux for everything else. But as a web designer for my college I ended up having to use IE 5 for HTML4 pages because Netscape had support for CSS, a single file for typeseting on all web pages. That was Netscape was too busy fighting MS in the courts instead improving their browser. Once the more bloated IE6 came out I switched to Firefox which I used ever since.
And now we have Win 10. Due to the lack of control we used to have over the O/S many are bailing out of Microsoft and going to Linux. I would have been happy with Win 98 if only they had continued support. When my Vista computer went out of support, I put Linux on it and have never regretted that.
Don't use scaretactics to sell your advertisementdeal.
I know...W T F, literally
Sponsors often have strict rules and require you to mention these things. If he's in serious need of money, he might not HAVE a choice
@@Icalasari BS. First there is something called integrity. That flew out the window here in the persuit of his own interest.
Second: The ones that NEED money, those are the ones that pick up trash, flip hamburgers, work on a factory production line, etc. They are surviving... not scaring the innocent and ignorant into paying for something that average joe just doesn't need at all.
And because there are a lot of people on the internet who are not aware that he's selling BS to serve his own pockets, THAT's why I called it out.
Agreed. This was one of my favourite NN videos in a long time and then... ugh.
Agree. Misjudged there NN, sorry.
The 3D card battles of the late 90's would make a nice video too.
I had colleagues into the latest, hottest video cards. They all spent the equivalent of the price of a midsize car on all their cards!
@@denny4471 What? Back then?
@@dcikaruga Sure, I'm exaggerating, but these dudes were spending $300-$500 every couple months for the latest & greatest video card.
@@denny4471 Every month? My Matrox G200 got by for a while, then I went ATI Radeon (the first generation) 2 years later, then 9800 Pro....... Looking back the biggest difference I see now is the price, resolution we play at, and how much they heat up.
The SoundCards where even crazier. It turns out today you just have a stock soundchip and it works for everything you ever need
The book written on this subject by David Bank is a firm recommendation. It is based on thousands upon thousands of emails that were disclosed during the trials and it takes a deep dive in Gates’ head, whose end goal was something termed ‘Microsoft Everywhere’.
@kasimirdenhertog3516
It was something like, "One World, one __, one Software: Microsoft" and people at the time said that was eerily similar to "One world, one nation, one Fuhrer."
@@scottspencer9043 ‘Microsoft Everywhere’ already sounds scary enough without the direct analogy - but yes, that was the basic premise 😅
What Netscape was trying to do that scared Microsoft so much would not have happened anyway. It was only much later that Chromebooks and the likes of iPad delivered, to an extent, on the promise of OS irrelevance. But even today, in the smartphone arena, the operating system matters, and we're back to most work being done in apps and not in the web browser.
I think the good part about all this, is that open standards won. How horrible would it have been, if MS was able to enforce their technology on the web and sell licenses to other companies.
As is said in the video, MS got really scared when Netscape was painting a picture where the browser was the main interface with the user and the OS could be replaced, without the user even noticing.
And in the end you could say this vision became reality with ChromeOS.
Open standards also made sure that Apple didn't get crushed and ultimately I really think Linux will grow on the desktop and laptop.
I worked software support for a large insurance company, and we used OS/2 Warp running in a virtual machine to access certain legacy apps. I had never used OS/2 before, and I really liked it, despite it being 20 years old at that time. It's a shame that OS never got a chance to develop and evolve. I would have liked to have seen what it could have become.
same for BeOS
Arca Noae OS is the successor to OS/2 actually. :)
*_Man,_* it took a really long time to settle the Netscape Vs. Microsoft court case! it took over *_*SEVEN*_* years to settle it!
Love your channel. Clear, listenable voice. Concise, detailed and informative. Much appreciated.
This was awesome, thanks SO MUCH for making this. I hear your love for it, and so many archives were new to me, and your thoughts on this story were well thought out. I also love that you voiced your own video's quotes. Kept me immersed in your vid.
Hearing about this process made me decide to not use Internet Explorer whenever possible. For years I've used other browsers, but at work we only had IE available and I've had to use it for 7 years when working. People were complaining, however, and in 2019 we finally were given the option in our work PCs to use Firefox or Chrome instead, for those who preferred it.
"This is nit picking on super heroic levels", when you are dealing with the law nit picking is the name of the game, a good technicality can win or lose a case.
Hello you used from 6:14 to 6:33 video from netscapecorp account, (was mine) by the way not a problem , just would like you ask before : )
Amazing how essentially ChromeOS and chromebox was proposed way back then.
Did the title changed? It was 'how government try to kill microsoft' before (or something like that),right?
Funny thing is that I have never used Explorer, I went from Mosaic to Netscape to Firefox. I tried Edge when I bought my first computer with Windows 10, but I gave up fast since the protection against pop-up scam (the famous call a number because there is a virus on your computer) was ridiculous. Sure I have to install a browser each time I buy a new computer, but it's better than dealing with a Microsoft browser.
Well, Edge is now based on Chromium, so, of course you'll get popups for IT Scams.
As always, your videos are very informative and comprehensive. I remember the first versions of Explorer. They were garbage until version 3.0 came out. Netscape really started to suck after they merged with AOL.
19:37 N64 with Mario 64 or Goldeneye for only £100? I'll take a couple of them please!
Yes I like internet explorer very much, because it works very good for installing Firefox.
Good to get an overview of this. I was only tangentially aware of this going on at the time as I was still waving the Amiga flag as a diehard (or rather a pauper lol) My internet use was restricted to school (where yeah, we mainly used netscape), and mainly browsing the AmiNet, stuffing floppies full of shareware Amiga software to take home to my then non-internettable A1200. It'd be a few years til I got my first modem at a car boot sale and finally got my miggy online. I think we're a similar age so I really dig your videos. Keep up the good work! :)
Congratulations on being the first poster I've seen on here that can use the English language (nearly) correctly.
Amiga is back with 080 Vampire Standalone :)
You were still using an Amiga in the late 90’s.....dude.
A big aspect of getting IE dominant (and why for all but the last few versions it ignored most actual standards and had its own) was to encourage people to use Windows in the server room, using the IIS stack rather than something like Apache.
4:20 King Kong Bundy in a Microsoft commercial wtf lol
Noticed that too, was a nice surprise xD
Watching now, I remember this happening back in 97 but I was 11 so...yeah I didn’t really care since I had toys to play with. Great topic!
I was 14 but it still brings back some nostalgia. I remember all my friends getting Pentium 1 and. 2 computers around this time and actually being impressed with the games. Plus the internet and AOL instant messenger came into prominence around this time. What a great era
I was 18 and remember being a bit worried, just thinking it would do more harm than good for the software industry in the US (ie - through discouraging companies from growing too large).
I was actually born the day after Billy tried to redefine the word definition.
On my wall, I still have the original Firefox 1.0 poster: "Are you fed up with your web browser? You're not alone. We want you to know there is an alternative..." with all the names of supporters from 2004, right after the renaming from Phoenix/Firebird. Ah, heady days.
I've been wondering when/if the time ever comes for computer memorabilia to become collectible. Guessing the limited timeframe this stuff was relevant makes them fade from memory so fast people don't necessarily form lasting nostalgia.
@@snooks5607 I trend to agree. Wanna buy a cheap modem? I'll throw in an adapter for your wall socket, and a curly cable.
RIP Firefox... 9 Feb 04 - 4 Jan 18
It's things like TabMixPlus that made it great. The whole WebExtensions thing killed it. Anyway, it's _still_ way better than Google's DCT (data collection tool), but not anymore the really cool thing it was.
People called Gates the bad guy but honestly i think it’s normal to grow cocky if your Company has such a big market share and solid foundation.
I remember netscape had the first ever back up button and I loved it. I remember thinking, i wish my dads old amiga had a backup button because im always trying to get out of trouble on that thing. Microsoft soon copied them by installing a back up button on the windows os and now everything has one.
"A buggy set of device drivers underneath the browser". This is exactly what Windows is in most use cases nowadays. I guess Netscape couldn't achieve that goal but the market was actually advancing into that direction. Google implements that even more with all of their, somewhat scary, Chrome-cloud-whatevers.
Windows 10: Early Access, eternal Pre-Alpha, forced updates make you stay in that loop, never stable, even the friggen (file) explorer has it's abundant cornucopia of bugs that never ever get fixed even in decades... literally.
This was possibly one of the worse sponsored segments I have ever seen for a VPN. This says a lot.
Welcome to another example of, 'Too Big To Fail.'
I was reading: "When Nestlé Almost Destroyed Microsoft" 😂
I wish Microsoft would destroy Nestlé, THAT would make Gates a TRUE humanitarian, and a hero for all time!
Well, If you think about it , if you pour Nestlé on your Windows computer, it will technically destroy Microsoft.
You live in such a nice wonderland, 😙😂😂😂
It is the ultimate goal of any corporation to eliminate all competition and establish a monopoly, that's the magic of the Free Market™
But they forget that competition is actually good for business!!! Competition is what drives innovation and helps to improve R&D!!!
Having worked in the Tech sector for 30 years I remember all of it well.... It's so funny how Microsoft Panicked when Netscape came along. Now it's rolling over for Chrome.... My how times have changed.
I knew vaguely of this, but never heard it explained in such detail. Brilliant
Having worked in web development throughout ie6 up to ie10+ I can say with confidence, the money spent on cross browser compatibility cost the world's IT industry (edit: well more people paying for web sites, it frustrated the industry and slowed development more than anything) far more than $200 billion. Often it took longer to implement ie6 support than the website itself took to build. On top of that, in the early days of the internet when it was slow dial up and Windows 95 running on 16MB of ram, the woefully inefficient ie6 would slow the internet experience down to an absolute crawl. Then it would let viruses and malware and for the early years of the internet, browsing and overall experience could be quite frustrating. I think Microsoft has been a disaster for the IT software industry.
The reason Internet Explorer was so awkward to develop for is because it's rendering engine (or 'document object model') was based on MS's own renderer (I forgot the name but hasLayout was a thing). Then they tried to combine web pages and Office pages with the same file docx standard in the most fail way ever. Instead of Mozilla's Gecko or Apple's WebKit engines which were developed with the WC3 internet standards group (Google's Blink is now the primary rendering engine).
Trident was the renderer.
@@Henrik_Holst Yeah I looked it up. I remembered some other name for some reason. MS wrote a ie6 debugging tool which was pretty useful because you could see all the janky javascript.commands that were doing things. Bad things. hasLayout indeed.
@@joshmbrown42 Yeah it was the most supported that's true. Up until Firefox in the early 00's or something. I even used it on XP. It was ok at first I'll admit but too many things installed themselves onto it. It was only when I tried a different browser that I realised pages actually loaded faster and I was like omg you had 1 job ie6.
I remember I was able to start using Linux as a mainstream pc in 2009 after many failed tries, 3 of the theeting problems were dial-up which I got rid only in 2007 with 640kbit adsl, flash plugin support and IE websites compatibility which at that time was at an acceptable level
@@fabiosemino2214 IE's unique architecture was often retrofitted with plugins used by large organisations so it's use lasted alot longer as a result.
My first browser was Mosaic. About 2007, with a fresh build of s/w, Explorer/exploder couldn't read internal company sites. Downloading Safari for Windows solved the problem.
7:35 this dude wanted to make Chrome OS in 1995.
Would be interesting to see an alternate timeline where the computer industry has been dominated by the cloud-based Netscape Navigator OS since the 90s.
@@leysont pcs would be well, boring
Well researched Sir. Good work.
All the best for 2020 *NN* . Hope you & your family are well, have a great Xmas & New Year.
‘He was going to “buy” Netscape.’ Translation: have his techs interview their techs, copy the product, and then put hem out of business with a superior distribution channel giving his away for free until he owned the market.
* 16:16 its actually "20 State Attorneys General" in American grammar (since we're talking about American attorneys. Yes, I realize in the UK its said the other way, but this is a specific reference to the American job title.)
As soon as yanks start using correct English when talking about the UK, then, you can attempt to criticise an Englishman on the correct grammar for the English language.
I ditched Microsoft for Linux 13 years ago. Not much of a (modern) gamer, so no regrets. I am, however, typing on a Microsoft keyboard ;)
Microsoft Hardware FTW. Still using a 2003 Digital Media Keyboard and the glorious Force Feedback 2 stick that has something all the modern and utterly expensive shit doesn't: Force Feedback. As for the keyboard: I don't get those overpriced RGB things and the manufacturers constantly playing around with the standard keyboard layout, making literally every keyboard released since useless once you try using it without looking at the thing. There literally haven't been any worthy replacements for those in almost two decades, ongoing.
i NEVER get notices for videos on this channel. i just happen across them searching for something to watch. i am subbed and ALL selected in the bell. youtube, what gives!?
This video is great overall, but you ruined part of it with the VPN (you're at risk without one) bollocks.
Yeah, his listed reasons "use location restricted services, hide yourself from targeted ads, avoids mobile roaming charges and better prices, and more" just doesn't really fairly encompass the benefits of using a VPN.
yeah security on the net really isnt an issue anymore however using a vpn to access different countries netflix libraries thats a good use for vpns, also cookies bypass vpns anyway so targeted ads will hapen unless you disable cookies
True story, this happened to me. I wrote an application for a large company. It was had about 50 users. It was written in Paradox for Windows, a product from a rival company named Borland. A new version of Windows came out. The company wanted to move over to the new version but because they were such a large company, they tested it in a few departments first. Thankfully the department I wrote that application for was one of the departments. IT installed the new version and the workers came in the next day, booted their computers, and went into my application. My application quickly crashed on everyones' computer. The company paid for top support to Microsoft so I was able to talk to a support person immediately. I described the problem and the support person told me that she KNEW what the problem was and had a solution. She said the problem was that I was using a non-Microsoft tool and the solution was to rewrite the application in Microsoft Access.
It took 3 programmers 3 years to write that application so doing a re-write wasn't an option. I told my boss what the support person said and so my boss called her boss and here is what he was told. Microsoft had released the new version of Windows KNOWING it crashed Paradox for Windows !!!!!! We ended up going back to the old version of Windows.
Eventually Borland was forced out of business even though they tended to write better Windows tools than Microsoft.
"Taking a cue from Borland's low price Quattro Pro spreadsheet debut against Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Access debuted with a $99 price.[3] This undercut the traditional DBMS prices of Paradox DOS, Paradox Windows, and dBase of around $799, which negatively impacted Borland more than any other firm. "
lol no shit they priced themselves out of business.
REALLY love this documentary. Would love to see more of this as a refreshment to other kinds of documentaries out there :)
These answers from Bill in 18-19 minute of the video makes sense. It's the interview where every word could be used against him. In these fragments all I can see is a classical manipulation. Interviewer tries to present things as simple, he acts like he don't understand why Bill acts this way. Bill knows what's going on, so he tries to be very exact, define everything. In return he's asked vague questions, so he tries to be more precise and the circle closes. These answers can't be interpreted in "just talking" way, because then yeah, Bill acts like idiot. It's a legal stuff and we should see it that way - then everything seems to be in order. He's guilty or not - doesn't matter. Either way different answers than his would be digging own grave.
If you still have doubts, check out educational video "don't talk to the police" here, on the YT - lawyer (prof. James Duane) and cop give good examples how simple words can be turned against you. They propose to don't talk at all, because whatever you say, it might be bad for you, if the law wants it. Here he had to talk and he chosen the best way. I admire how he handles it.
If Gates' company had not engaged in no anti-competitive prices then he would have nothing to hide. Transparency and honesty is the best policy!
16:38 Bill Clinton did the same thing when he questioned the definition of the word is.
In both cases, normal people watch them and think "What the fuck are you doing?"
That acturally is a common philosophical question, (usually done as a thought experiment..)
I've really never understood how this lawsuit made much sense, Netscape had a browser everyone loved so they made their own and bundled it with their own operating system they built. Other than apparently bullying oems I'm not 100% sure on what they did could be anti-competitive, it's not like they blocked installing of alternative browsers. It's like for example all of the jailbreak Dev teams over the years sued Apple for anti-competition because they kept continually locking them out with software updates (but even then it would make more sense because they're actually getting locked out).
Well it's a bit controversial because defaults make a huge impact. You can see it with how Google's market share exploded after they bundled it with Android. In Russia there was an antitrust case to avoid Google from destroying Yandex and it worked, the fix was essentially to let users pick their search engine the first time you open the app. Some people prefer Google, some prefer Yandex, it's transparent and democratic. Most people sadly don't understand browsers or search engines (*especially in desktop computers and laptops) so if they manage to navigate the web they'll stick to whatever is there by default. Not everyone knows how to download, install and tweak programs and settings, we may take that sort of knowledge for granted but when we talk about the general market it's not that way. So yeah it didn't make much sense for people like us but it definitely matters for other people. The most just thing would have been to facilitate the installation of both so people could actually choose, or selling IE separately. Most people I met when I was younger used IE, this includes all my relatives in my huge family, my school and even my dad's coworkers - even though he worked in a computer related business. People just don't know or care and this difference in market share is a game changer.
Netscape is evolving!!
Netscape evolved into Mozilla Browser
Actually into Phoenix at first, Firefox is second evolution.
@@MJ-uk6lu Phoenix, Firebird , then Firefox.
@Steven 1773 Or, in Linux and Win 7, Iceweasel.
@@MJ-uk6lu Firefox had 15 upgrades in seven months in, I believe, 2013. So much for stability.
And we're all grateful for it.
You and Kim make the best documentaries out there. Must be something in that English water 😁👍
Wow that was quick explanation on Ms-DOS... no mention of branches of third-party apps, Quarterdeck memory management, Xtree directory utility.
We moved right to window GUI 😅🤬
Might as well bring in the MSdos game like ID soft Doom 3D engine binary space partition
@KMSMista meaning you full of 💩
I still use xtree gold hahahaha
@@pelgervampireduck in an GUi dos shell? Oh what's the spec of the system that running Xtree Gold?
I run it on a pentium 1 and a pentium 3 that run "DOS 7 with GUI 4" (win9x).
on more modern computers that run NT windows (xp and 7) I use a clone called "ztree win" some times, just for fun.
And the Hungarian version of Windows 95 at the end :)))) My favorite sentence on the screen with orange color, before turn off the computer (when i was a child): "Most már kikapcsolhatja a számítógépet." :)
We used to call IE, Internyet destroyer.
Even while we used W95, W98, and WME, we still would download Netscape or Mozilla and use it instead of IE. Much less buggier. There were some wesites that 'required' IE, but they soon fell by the wayside.
Internet Exploder :)
@@CakePrincessCelestia Or As I Call It Internet Explore-Fail
Actually, I lived through this, microsoft plus was required to be able to access your modem from windows. This caused most of us trying to do real networking, fidonet at the time, to look at os2, which came with everything we needed.
I'm a full stack .NET developer. I've been one for nearly 20 years. From my perspective, Microsoft is no longer the evil one. They haven't been for quite a while. They are a world leader in open source software. The source of the .NET framework is largely open except for the proprietary bits. Their flagship development tool is free. And Azure is priced such that any size business can more the flourish. I'm planning a business in the near future, and starting out my platform costs will be virtually nothing.
Apple on the other hand. Well, I used to be a huge apple fanboy. Let's just say I'm not a fan of that company any more.
"Microsoft is no longer the evil one"!?
"They are a world leader in open source software"!?
You're joking, right?
With all sorts of bullshit Microsoft has brought out and tried with Windows 10, I can only see your comments as an attempt at a joke or pitching for Microsoft.
@@edinfific2576 are you a developer?
@@jsmunroe No. But I don't have to be one in order to see that Windows 10 is a buggy spyware which doesn't let me have a complete control over my PC and it acts more like a Trojan horse. Forced multi-gigabyte updates with no option to switch-off, downloaded and installed when Microsoft feels like it, drivers updated or features changed/added/removed at Microsoft's whim, causing problems when something stops working or a needed feature is gone just like that.
I don't want to go on and on with all the BS that Microsoft has rolled out with Win 10, if you are pretending like those issues don't matter or don't exist, I have no reason to waste my time and energy.
Windows was the final nail in the coffin of Microsoft, and I'm switching to a Linux OS.
Windows 2000 Professional was THE best Windows version in which MS actually CARED to make an OS which works solidly, has everything a user would need to get things done, and has no bloatware or unnecessary junk to make it large and slow.
It was a lean, mean, high-performing machine. I thought that Microsoft finally got it.
But then it started adding junk and making Windows more bloated and slower, and it has been mostly a downhill slope ever since. Windows 10 was the final and the greatest insult that I wouldn't even call an "operating system" anymore.
@@edinfific2576 Linux is a good OS. Go for it. Being a developer for so many years, I no longer hate platforms. That monoculture bullshit is what users do and it is very naive. Windows is a great operating system too. Sorry for your experience but it is not universal. Everything i said in my post is true. I stick to it.
Yeah the more I learn of current Microsoft the less I hate it. Generally speaking I still believe it's not ethical to eat smaller companies all the time (but that's a problem governments have to fix at some point), but compared to Google or any other big ones they're the best by far lol. I love their contributions to open source software and the increased revenue for Canonical as I use Ubuntu as my daily driver.
It feels very unfair that people seem to like Google while hating on Microsoft though, can't really get that logic anymore.
Very interesting. I hope you keep making videos about computer business affairs. No a lot of content like this about!
Someone needs to destroy Google's current grip on the Internet, as they control a big search engine, the most used browser and the most used mobile operating system.
Splitting the company into 'Alphabet' and separating the different divisions was a preemptive strike to try to prevent that.
Stop using chrome
Problem solved.
Just don't buy iphone . Problem solved.
@@CDRiley what? Do you mean don't buy android?
The difference is Google products are actually good, that's why people use them. Google defeated MSN search, AltaVista and Yahoo not by being anti-competitive, but because their search engine was actually superior. Android defeated Windows CE/Mobile and Symbian because it was actually superior. Google Maps defeated other map applications because it actually worked better in most instances. Microsoft on the other hand have rarely delivered high quality products, instead providing clumsy products that barely work and crash frequently (particularly Windows 95 & 98, and of course the horribly sluggish Internet Explorer).
Awesome look back. The frequent ads in this video also had a monopoly with interruptions every 5 minutes.
I am Microsoft FREE and will remain so! Switched to Linux!
Likewise, brudda!
Yep, been on debian for years now
Microsoft still forces Edge onto users. Like if an app is bundled with web browser extensions like some live apps are, the default browser used is Edge.
WOW! two whole weeks after this went up and they pushed me a notification today! Thanks to youtube, the bell notification means bugger all if you just push notifications whenever you feel like it!!!!!!!
surprisingly entertaining. guessing it has something to do with there being so much less coverage of 90s tech history. all that 80s Commodore, Atari, Nintendo stuff is coming out of my ears.
How much did running IE on Windows cost the world economy over the years via bad code, malware, and poor products? It's like they held slowed everything down and in the process transferred money to themselves, effectively like a tax on productivity.
re: the email gates sent out in 1995.
Gates published his book, The Road Ahead, the same year as the Memo he sent out. It detailed a lot of what we called the information super high way back then and even now, still tells the story of what we're experiencing. It's a great read to see how he was seeing the future that we're living in now and how much he got right.
Simon Johnny Except that at this time he wasn't even shipping TCP/IP drivers with MS.DOS or Windows, and was having his networking lunch eaten by Novell. TCP/IP was a third-party industry to Bill, which is why we have Winsock. He didn't wise up for several more years.
Seeing Bill tapdance the issue on that tape... Aw man.
Anyone who wants to debate on the Internet should watch religiously Bill’s performance on this video.
ur posts are sending me "back into the past" .....this case was the main key to keep Windows platform open for developer, it was a great event of trusting the Law and the new born of digital law , and to put a spot light on the integrity of Tech developers ... and clients relationship with tech vendors ...
2019 in IT and I still deal with IE only websites and activex extensions.
Watched this 3 weeks ago but forgot to leave a comment. I really enjoyed this video and learnt something too. Thank you and well done on a great video 👍😃
9:44
Searching for "sun" in a Microsoft commercial... Balls of steel.
Guess they didn't name XP's GUI Luna for nothing :D
In the end, Microsoft was right: the internet would soon become so integrated into our lives that the operating system needed some form of browser built in. And, in the end, NOBODY was going to pay for a web browser or media player.
Very well done! It was a crazy time and did indeed shape the future more than many thought at the time. Microsoft these days is sadly dysfunctional and has made epic mistakes where they have failed to innovate and been shamed by other companies (failing year after year in mobile phones being just one the more obvious examples). One thing however is still true: They continue to ignore what their customers want, produce substandard products, and focus on mostly just their stock price which mostly serves senior management.
"They continue to ignore what their customers want, produce substandard products" Spot on! MS Office's insistence on the clumsy "ribbon" menu bars is comical, when other products like LibreOffice or Google Docs are perfectly happy to provide the conventional menu bars that most users prefer.
During this fight I was still using Lynx browser through a dial up connection. Lynx if you've never heard of it, was a text only browser that was compatible with generic terminal software.
*is. I use it often while on CLI. It is actually actively developed.
@@Vlad-1986 I've heard that people still used it, but I wasn't sure I believed it. It has it's advantages. Low power, low bandwidth requirements.
@@rayceeya8659 It's pretty good, especially when setting up UNIX-based OS installs that don't have a GUI installer (like Arch and Gentoo Linux). I prefer w3m or links, given they have more modern features IIRC.
@@benh.635 It's been a solid 20 years since I worked IT. Good to see the old tools still work.
@@rayceeya8659 Yea. I'm a newer player in the field of IT and computers (primarily a hobby for me), but the old standbys still work amazingly well. :)
I think a vacuum was created when ATARI and Amiga disappered from the home market. With more operating system out there it probably be easier for software provider like Netsacpe, the escudos of software companies from Commodore/Amiga and ATARI for not being able to keep up on the hardware front, created a approximately OS monopile on home market, Macintosh also barely able to stay alive, the one thing that kept it alive was it focus on true color graphics, assuming that some different decision was made back then I sure thing might have looked really different. The argument about DRDOS and MSDOS and so on, I think is false, as was more or less the same thing, noting really to do with the OS monopoly.
I miss TOS too.
Great video. Just one thing... that VPN Shilling in the middle of the video seemed to use the scare tactics too much. I know you tried to use it to match the theme of the video, but it needed some refinement IMHO. On the flip side, you didn't take an offer to shill the shit out of NordVPN as it gets on my nerves with the amount of shilling it gets.
So I guess my VPN grumble neturalizes out - it's a VPN advert, but it's not NordVPN. Keep up the great content!
I've used both and I preferred #OS/2...
And SSL which they invented.
Rich nerd in 1990s wants to force everyone to use his OS: REAL SHIT
Rich nerd in 2020s wants to force everyone to use his vaccine: I sleep
16:43 "I define the word 'definition' more strictly than you." --Bill Gates trying to weasel his way out of a question by LITERALLY arguing semantics.
Ok Mr. Gates, who would you define 'definition' exactly?
So that's where Slick Willie got his line, "Could you please define what 'is' is?" in his impeachment deposition.
Classic deception tactics. Argue what I'm saying is right therefore what you're saying must be wrong because words can only mean what I say they mean. Also known as bald-faced lies.
It might seem callous at first, but if you have ever done any real debates, this can be proven to be a smart and ingenious tactic. I make this assessment coming from the mindset and mentality of an avid Chess player. I'm a strategist.
Gooey is an adjective used to describe macaroni and cheese, not an acronym for graphical user interface.
Nostaligia Nerd, I'm disappointed to see sponsored ad breaks in the middle of your videos, especially scare tactics shilling VPN subscriptions. I thought you and this channel were above that.
I was going to subscribe to this channel but not after that bullshit.
Is he just supposed to never make money? If you don't like VPNs, don't buy it.
You all never heard of Adblocker ??
@@shrike6259 The ad is in the video idiot
Very cool story. It fills the holes in my knowledge that exist because at the time, I was too young to care about stories of legal cases in the news.
More appropriately titled: "When Microsoft set the IT industry back 15 years"
Nobody wants the 2010s 15 years before the 2010s
More like 25 years almost 30
What needed to happen was adjustments to Software copyright. Intel was the power house that was setting back development more so than Microsoft. Intel was actively spending a huge amount of resources and money to stop competition and limit it. by 1992 Intel was the undisputed king of hardware and every year it was sabotaging other silicon companies. Let's not even get into the bullshit Apple pulled. For setting back development it would go in this order Intel > Apple > Microsoft
@@Thickcurves I would say Microsoft > Intel > Apple
Microsoft got screwed over because it spent no money in lobbying at the time.
Thanks again for that stroll down RAM lane. I remember reading this in the Seattle Times while it happened. I was working my way through school at the time.
I was 6 or 7 so this was definitely nostalgic
Hmm... I was going to say how silly it is to consider human memory like RAM but then had to think about what it means to power down in the human context and got all into a spiderweb of life/death/sleep/coma/stroke. Not as simple as I had initially thought!
Wow, I never realised Gates was like that. Very eye opening.