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Background

Microsoft suddenly realizes . . . OMG . . . the internet is NOT just a fad, as Bill Gates had famously said.

OMG, web applications on browsers could make non-Windows platforms competitive! OMG!

Microsoft scrambled. Needs a browser. (classic) Mac already has good internet connectivity baked right in, and a couple good browsers (at that time). Microsoft finds company SpyGlass that makes the SpyGlass browser for Windows. Microsoft buys SpyGlass for $100,000 up front, plus royalty percent of sales. Renames the product Internet Explorer. Guess how many copies of IE are ever sold? Zero.

Microsoft then, over coming years, spends $150 million on IE to develop it into a 'great' browser, if you're a Windows only developer. With addictively great features (if you're a Windows developer). To create a Microsoftized "internet" that excludes non-Windows systems from running web applications. Windows developers (the monopoly) will naturally target IE as their favorite browser. Especially since it has such addictively great sugar coated features.

To further cement a Microsoft-only internet, there is IIS and Front Page.

(aside: Front Page has a four page license agreement, among its terms is that if you create a web site using Front Page, you cannot ever disparage Microsoft, Expedia, and a list of other Microsoft properties. Thus if you visit any web site, and it has tags in the html header section indicating it was created by Front Page, then you know just how credible that web site is when it comes to Microsoft.)

It's like a story of evil, upon evil, upon evil.

Fast Forward

IE loses. Standardization wins. At some point FireFox share goes over 50% and suddenly Microsoft is in panic mode again. IE share is declining. Also this new upstart Chrome browser is gaining market share. So in panic mode a 'kinder gentler' IE that is a bit more standards compliant: IE7.

But not good enough, so IE 8, IE 9, etc. Each becoming more standard compliant. But Microsoft find this is hard to do when the very purpose of IE was to break standards compatibility.

Then Edge, which is an admission that IE has failed. A humorous TV ad by Microsoft about how IE sucks and Edge isn't quite so terrible. You should try it.

Recently

Then Microsoft throws in the towel on Edge, and change its guts to Chromium.

Wow.

Rewind 20 years

Edge is based on Chromium. (Microsoft's doing)
Chromium is based on WebKit. (Google's doing)
WebKit is based on . . . (Apple's doing)
Konqueror.

Remember KDE 3? About 2000. (Before the pooch screw of KDE 4?) It had this cool browser called Konqueror.

In about 2000 I remember reading this on the green site.

First comes the Navigator.
Then comes the Explorer.
Then comes the Konqueror.

Wow. How true those words turned out to be!