WHEN Microsoft launched Windows 95 exactly a year ago, many industry analysts warned that Bill Gates might have missed the real boat: the Internet. A few months ago, too, it still had only a paltry three or four per cent of the market for Web "browser" software.
But behind the scenes, the Microsoft empire was rapidly shifting gear, though on its own admission its own network almost creaked to a halt last week, when well over a million people downloaded the latest version of its Web browser.
This is the most serious challenge yet to Netscape's dominant position in the sector: take over the browser market and you control the way that people see cyberspace. Literally.
Within days of each other, both Microsoft and Netscape have launched version 3.0 of their respective browsers. It's almost impossible to rank one higher than the other. Both Netscape's Navigator 3.0 and Microsoft's Internet Explorer 3.0 are free to download (warning: these programs are around 8 megabytes), although Microsoft stresses that Netscape will be charging after a 90 day trial period.
Both browsers run the all important Java applets. These are turning Web pages into true multimedia experiences, although Netscape has shunned Microsoft's sort of answer to Java, ActiveX, on security grounds.
Both companies are also wooing users by adding free access to some pay only sites for a limited period, from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal.
On the surface then, Netscape - which has nine tenths of all browsers - ought to have the edge over Microsoft. Its marketing director for Europe, Eric Broussard, said last week that Navigator 3.0 was faster than Explorer 3. 0 and functioned on a much wider variety of platforms.
But despite all the claims and counter claims of whose browser is smaller, faster or sexier, it does seem that the pieces of Bill Gates's grand Internet plan are beginning to fall into place.
Deals with 2,500 service providers
. First, Microsoft has struck a bold set of deals with most of the world's leading Internet service providers (ISPs). Internet Explorer 3.0 will be distributed by over 2,500 ISPs as their preferred software. In Ireland alone, Microsoft has signed up most of the largest ISPs, including Ireland On Line (IOL), Indigo, Internet Ireland, Club Internet, Internet Exchange and Business Network Ireland.
"We believe this is the best interface we can offer our subscribers," IOL's Colm Grealey said at the Irish launch of Explorer last week. "We have been shipping
Netscape 1.2 up to now but we expect the vast majority of users to switch to Internet Explorer." In return, new users of Windows 95 will also have an automatic, "seamless sign up" option to these Irish ISPs via Microsoft's referral server.
. Internet Explorer comes preinstalled with Windows 95 software on most new PCs. This will net it some 46 million potential users in 1996 alone, giving it a huge advantage over Netscape.
. Microsoft has targeted both Net newcomers and existing Navigator veterans, making Explorer more backward compatible with Navigator's features. Or as Microsoft's Martin Gregory put it at the Irish press launch last week, "we found what was important for customers when they transition. They can use all the plug ins, keyboard shortcuts and bookmarks from Netscape.
"The first wave of Internet users were reasonably technical people. But with the kind of people going online now and in the future, you have to make all these things much easier to use and absolutely seamless."
. Under a very clever deal with Yahoo (one of the main Web "indexers"), Explorer users won't have to type a full Web address (called a URL) any more: they simply type key words or phrases into the Explorer's address bar. This kicks off a search for corresponding listings in Yahoo's "pages. A simple but brilliant idea.
. Gates will up the ante even further next spring with version 4.0 of Internet Explorer. This will be fully integrated into the Windows operating system; in other words, users will be able to "browse" through their local computer just as they do the Web. Again, Netscape will be at disadvantage because it doesn't own the operating system.
Legal battles
Netscape has taken the battle into the legal arena, asking the US Justice Department to take action against Microsoft's "farreaching, anti competitive behaviour".
It accuses Microsoft of having made written offers to computer manufacturers, ISPs and others, providing for "either clandestine side payments, discounts on the Microsoft desktop operating system (Windows) or payments in the form of `real estate' on the Windows 95 (opening) screen". Netscape's lawyers said these inducements were made on condition that the parties involved would make competitors browsers liar less accessible to users than Microsoft's own browser".
Microsoft has countered the claims, and as one legal expert told Reuters last week, "in the browser category Netscape is the elephant and Microsoft is the mouse".
But perhaps like so many other software products Bill Gates has touched, in the end none of this matters. It won't be a question of who's best, or who's right or who was there first. Marketing and financial clout will out.
Then again, such are the open standards of the Internet that maybe no single company not even Microsoft - can maintain an absolute dominance.
Java fund
By sheer coincidence, last week 10 other leading high tech companies set up a $100 million fund, for start up firms to develop Java based software. The group includes Compaq, IBM, Netscape, Oracle, Sun and TCI.
While Microsoft has embraced Java, it is not participating in the fund. According to the company's development director, Greg Maffei, Microsoft has a policy against investing in venture capital.
And last week the Irish firm Iona Technologies also announced the largest Java deployment in the world to date. Hongkong Telecom is using Iona's Orbix and OrbixWeb object request brokers to implement its Interactive Multimedia Services.
This has been a busy month for Iona: besides announcing the latest version of its Java object request broker, Orb ix Web 2.0, and forming partnerships with NeXT and Powersoft, it is participating in no fewer than four major international tradeshows - in San Jose, Singapore, Sydney and San Francisco.
Other network products launched.
Overshadowed by the Microsoft Netscape battle, several dozen other major companies announced new network products last week.
. Oracle has released version 6.0 of its Express Server, and Novell has belatedly joined the intranet race - its IntranetWare collection includes new versions of its network operating system and Web server program, and should be available within about 10 weeks.
Novell has been a major player in conventional networking software since the early 1980s, but fell behind Netscape and Microsoft in the competition for intranets, private networks which function like the Web. Digital has also announced AltaVista Forum V2.0, an enhanced version of its Web conferencing tool (tel Cian O Mongain at 01-838-5433 for further details).
. HomeCom Communications has a free demo version of its Post-on-the-Fly Web-based conferencing system on its web site (http://www.homecom.com/ applications/conference). It also allows each user to create and maintain a personal home page. "If you're reading a message and want to know more about the author, just click on their name and up pops their home page," a spokesman said.
. And Net Speak, which makes
WebPhone Internet telephone software, is working with Rockwell International to develop Internet based call centres on the Web.
. Perhaps the most unusual Web software announced last week was CyberPuppy Software's PigMail. It's "the first Internet browser for kids". While most browsers concentrate on rendering pages of data to the user, PigMail's focus is on the visualisation of other kids, (or, er, PigMailians). More intormation at http://www.cyberpuppy.com/pminfo. html