Download 01 Browser Wars

Download, the True Story of the Internet was a series made for the Discovery Channel in 2009, and so it quite out of date, but for anyone wanting to know how the internet got started, and how it developed, it is quite essential watching, despite the goofy presentation by John Heilemann.

The first episode traces the breakthroughs that led to the first Mosaic/Netscape browser for the internet in the early 90s and what difficulties they faced, and the huge comeback from Microsoft as they tried to retain leader position through fair or foul means.

Microsoft’s strategy was to produce their own browser, give it away for free, and prevent their partners from even installing Netscape. It basically worked and soon Internet Explorer was the No 1 browser.

It seems very ironic that IE was eventually beaten down by Chrome, and that it’s successor, Edge, has given up the fight and runs on the Chromium codebase. It is perhaps also ironic that Google is facing the same sort of anti-trust investigations that stopped MS in its unfair practices in the 90s.