How Microsoft Almost Killed JavaScript
In its quest to dominate the web, Microsoft once tried to annihilate JavaScript.
In the early 2000s, Microsoft Internet Explorer was the world’s most used browser. Its competitor, Netscape Navigator lagged by many percentage points. The two browsers used similar client-side scripting languages to power interactivity, JavaScript and JScript were battling to shape the web in the coming decades.
Holding approximately 96% of the market share, Microsoft felt no need to keep advancing an initiative that promoted the universal use of JavaScript across browsers through a standard. In a series of events that led to antitrust charges in 1998 and caused Bill Gates to resign, Microsoft almost caused the death of JavaScript.
The race
The first web browser with a graphical user interface, Mosaic, was released in 1993. Accessible to non-technical people, it played a prominent role in the rapid growth of the nascent World Wide Web — Wikipedia.
When the Mosaic project was terminated, Microsoft licensed the software and built Internet Explorer on top of it. Some engineers who had worked on the Mosaic browser founded a new company called Netscape. The two companies found one another in a struggle to dominate the market. The consequences of which would be long felt.
Around a time when computers were reasonably sophisticated and interactive, websites in 1995 were static and uninviting. The challenge of people working on browsers was to develop tools that allowed web designers more flexibility to create sites with dynamism.
In 1995, Netscape started thinking about solutions to the problem of a static web. Their approach was twofold: On one hand, they reached Sun Microsystem to negotiate the use of Java as a scripting language on their navigator. On the other hand, they hired Brendan Eich to devise a new language for the same purpose. Upper management decided on the second route and a prototype was successfully developed within the year.
That same year, Microsoft launched Internet Explorer. A year after, they released a reverse-engineered version of JavaScript called JScript. The development of the two browsers was going so further apart that at some point, it became extremely difficult to create websites that looked the same on different browsers. Labels such as “best viewed in Netscape” and “best viewed in Internet Explorer” became frequent on websites.
The merciless siege
By the early 2000s, Microsoft was the clear winner. 9 out of 10 people were using Internet Explorer. Even though Netscape had started with a comfortable share in the mid-90s, it was Microsoft that held 96% of the market at the beginning of the 2000s. How did Microsoft manage such an extraordinary feat?
Many reasons accounted for such an accomplishment, a few of them were later disputed in court. For one thing, Microsoft was already a publicly traded company with vast financial resources when Netscape went public in 1995. The market cap of Microsoft at some point in 1996 was 10 times that of Netscape.
There were two important moves on behalf of Microsoft that changed the position of the chess board dramatically. One was when Microsoft decided to bundle every copy of Windows with an installation of Internet Explorer. And two, by granting the use of the browser free of charge not just to Windows users but also to those using the Apple Macintosh.
Jim Barksdale the then CEO of Netscape was quoted saying “Very few times in warfare have smaller forces overtaken bigger forces…”. Their struggle for survival proved to be the norm rather than the exception. Unable to keep fighting, Netscape was acquired by AOL in 2002.
The one blow that was meant to be fatal
In 1996, one year after the launch of JavaScript, Netscape submitted a proposal to ECMA International to standardize the language. Microsoft joined the effort in its early days. In the late 90s and early 2000s, Microsoft was in a completely different situation than it had been in 1996.
It would not be inaccurate to say that JavaScript was a proprietary technology of Microsoft Corporation in the early 2000s
At some point, Microsoft abandoned all efforts to standardize JavaScript and focused instead on expanding the reach of Internet Explorer. The rationale behind the decision to halt any progress towards standardization makes total economic sense. Since Microsoft had already complete control of the market, any attempt to unify JavaScript across browsers would hurt Internet Explorer more than it would hurt any other browser.
It would not be inaccurate to say that JavaScript was a proprietary technology of Microsoft Corporation in the early 2000s. Microsoft had absolute control over it. Open source does not flourish under corporate censorship, very few were developing tools with the language, and as such growth was insufficient.
The trajectory of JavaScript started to change in 2004 when an heir to Netscape, Mozilla, released the Firefox browser. Mozilla's strategy centered on JavaScript standardization. They revived the failed ECMA experiment in 2005. Firefox gained popularity very quickly. Possibly due to its liberal approach or because creative designers were much more excited about an open environment than the “Big-Brother-like” technology of Microsoft at the time.
The revival
As Internet Explorer grew dormant, newer players were entering the market to claim the spoils. One such product is Google Chrome, it was debuted in 2008. Most entering the scene were in favor of standardization. The consensus was reached in 2009 when the dominant players met in Oslo to work out a compromise that became known as ECMAScript 5 or ES5.
Final Thoughts
This story represents my interpretation of the history of JavaScript and does not intend in any way to malign Microsoft. The developments of events, especially those where economic entities are involved tend to take the route of greater economic benefit. Microsoft like any other corporation acted in its best interest when it fought and won the browser war of 1995–2001. Please leave your thoughts and join the conversation. Thanks for reading!
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