Summary:

Netscape has set the standard and taken the lead. But how long will it last? We take a step backwards in this episode and examine why Microsoft was so dominant at the beginning of the Internet Era. We ask the questions: Did Bill Gates really miss the Internet? And: Was the Information Superhighway and the Internet one and the same thing? And we look back on all the things that were distracting Microsoft at the dawn of the Internet Era.

Bibliography:

Breaking Windows: How Bill Gates Fumbled the Future of Microsoft; Bank, David, Free Press, 2007
How the Web Was Won: How Bill Gates and His Internet Idealists Transformed the Microsoft Empire; Andrews, Paul; Broadway, 2000
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/22/business/judge-clears-antitrust-pact-for-microsoft.html
The New New Thing : A Silicon Valley Story; Lewis, Michael; W.W. Norton & Company, 1999
http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/r14/1994/0113/13021.html
How America Got On-Line: Politics, Markets, and the Revolution in Telecommunications; Stone, Alan; M E Sharp Inc., 1997
http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,978216,00.html
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.02/smith.html?pg=8&topic=
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/12/business/time-warner-s-time-machine-for-future-video.html
Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace; Wallace, James; Wiley, 1998
Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire; Wallace, James and Erickson, Jim; HarperBusiness, 1993
Netscape Time: The Making of the Billion-Dollar Start-Up That Took on Microsoft; Clark, Jim and Edwards, Owen; St. Martin’s Griffin, 2000
The Billionaire Shell Game: How Cable Baron John Malone and Assorted Corporate Titans Invented a Future Nobody Wanted; Davis, L J; Doubleday, 1998
The Highwaymen: Warriors of the Information Superhighway; Auletta, Ken; Random House, 1997
http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,984696,00.html
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1998/07/20/245683/index.htm
Road Ahead, The (Hardcover Version); Gates, Bill and Myhrvold, Nathan; Viking, 1995
The Road Ahead: Completely Revised and Up-to-Date (Paperback version); Gates, Bill and Myhrvold, Nathan; Penguin Books, 1996

Image Credit:

LurkerTech.com

Internet History Podcast