![]() The other thing that was missing at the time was what we now call "cloud computing" – the technology that enables processing to be done not by one's PC or laptop but by huge server-farms located out there on the internet.Ĭoincidentally, tomorrow sees Apple's first big move into the cloud. And there wasn't much of that back in 1995-6. For the browser to become the centre of the computing universe, a number of other conditions had to be met, of which the most important was universal broadband connectivity. With hindsight, we can see that Netscape was too far ahead of the curve. But by the time the US Department of Justice got round to prosecuting Microsoft, Netscape had been crushed, and the vision of the browser at the heart of everything was airbrushed from the record. ![]() So Bill Gates & Co set about destroying the upstart rival with a brutal efficiency that eventually landed them with the antitrust suit that nearly resulted in the breakup of the company. The only problem was that Microsoft, the 800lb gorilla of the computing business, had built an empire round operating systems, which meant that Netscape's epiphany represented a mortal threat. And if that were the case, then who needed a full-blown operating system? Clark and Andreessen saw a future in which the PC, with its complex and crash-prone operating system, would simply serve as a life-support system for a browser. Suddenly Clark and Andreessen are sitting atop the hottest company in the technology world.Īs their enterprise grew, the Netscape boys had what James Joyce called an epiphany – a sudden, blinding flash of insight: that most people could do most of the computing they needed in a browser. Netscape has a frenzied stock market flotation in August 1995 and triggers the first internet boom. So demand for access to the internet explodes, and a technology entrepreneur named Jim Clark hires Andreessen and his student friends and sets up Netscape and they write a new browser called Navigator and they're off to the races. He calls it Mosaic, and the moment people see it they suddenly "get" the web. Big deal.īut now it's 1993 and a kid called Marc Andreessen has just launched a new kind of program which gives you a graphical window onto this web thingy. You navigated it by using the arrow keys on the keyboard and hitting return whenever you came on a string of characters beginning " This took you to another screenful of text with more of these character strings. Two years ago Tim Berners-Lee launched something called the world wide web which caused a bit of a stir in those rarefied circles, but left the rest of the world cold. ![]() The internet is still something exotic, a preserve of geeks and Comp Sci researchers. If this were a film, then the screen would go blurry at this point, signifying a flashback. That and a WiFi or 3G connection to the internet. The browser is effectively all you've got. There don't seem to be any other programs: well, no serious ones anyway. So you move to put it away because you want to see what other programs come with the machine. There's an annoying dialogue box in the middle of the screen inviting you to sign into your Gmail account. And it brings up a web browser (Google's own Chrome browser, naturally) straight away. Whoosh! It boots in eight seconds from cold (and wakes in less than a second from sleep mode). ![]() The surprises start when you hit the on button. ![]()
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