Common wisdom is that Microsoft beat Netscape in what was commonly referred to as the “browser wars”. On the surface, this certainly appears to be true – after all Microsoft has an overwhelming share of the browser market now, by some estimates greater than 90%.
But what appears to have been a victory is actually a loss. Not only did Microsoft lose, they may have lost more than they bargained for.
By now you are probably asking yourself “what am I drinking” or maybe even smoking. Netscape, the company, doesn’t exist as an independent entity anymore. Heck, even AOL has stopped development of the Netscape browser. So surely MS must have won, right?
Nope. What happened was Microsoft won the battle but lost the war. Looking at two key factors we can see how the MS “win” was actually a pyrrhic victory:
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