Thread by @AiEvolutio58513

At 22, Marc Andreessen invented the modern web browser now used by billions.

By 24, he was worth over $100M.

Then Bill Gates buried his company alive with ONE decision.

But what Andreessen did next triggered the bloodiest tech war in century... 🧵

The year was 1993.

The internet existed. But almost no one could use it.

To get online, you basically had to be a programmer typing commands into a terminal.

Then a 22-year-old college student decided to fix that.

And what he built next changed the world forever...

His name was Marc Andreessen.

With a programmer named Eric Bina, he built Mosaic, the first browser that felt human.

Clickable links. Images beside text. A simple "back" button.

Suddenly, anyone could explore the web.

But he had no idea what he'd just unleashed...

Mosaic spread like wildfire.

Andreessen knew he was holding something that could rewire the world.

So he teamed up with Jim Clark, founder of Silicon Graphics, and launched Netscape in 1994.

It grew faster than anyone imagined.

And that's when the trouble began...

Netscape was a rocket ship.

By the end of 1995, over 15 million people were using its browser.

When it went public, Andreessen, barely 24, became rich overnight and the face of the internet.

He looked unstoppable.

But 1,700 miles away, someone was watching...

That someone was Bill Gates.

Microsoft was built entirely on Windows. And Gates saw the threat instantly.

If the browser became where people lived online, who would need Windows anymore?

A college kid could make his empire irrelevant.

So Gates started a war...

In August 1995, Microsoft launched Internet Explorer.

The goal wasn't a better browser. It was to make Netscape impossible.

Netscape charged money. So Microsoft made IE free.

Then shipped it on every Windows PC on Earth.

And they were just getting started...

Then Microsoft did something no one expected.

It buried browser code deep inside the core files of Windows.

Removing IE could now break your entire computer.

A leaked memo revealed the goal: make rival browsers "a jolting experience."

It worked terrifyingly well...

Netscape's market share collapsed.

The company that once ruled the internet, crushed by a browser people never chose.

It just came bundled with the computer they bought.

By 1998, Microsoft's own studies confirmed it: they were winning.

But Andreessen had one card left...

If Netscape couldn't win the market, it would fight in court.

Its evidence helped trigger one of the biggest antitrust cases in history.

In 1998, the Department of Justice sued Microsoft.

The most powerful company in tech was on trial.

And the verdict stunned everyone...

The case was devastating.

Internal emails exposed a clear plan to crush the competition.

In 1999, the court ruled Microsoft an illegal monopoly and ordered it broken into two companies.

The giant was about to be split in half.

But Microsoft wasn't done fighting yet...

Microsoft appealed and escaped the breakup.

But it was forced to open up, drop its worst tactics, and accept oversight. On its way down, Netscape did one final thing.

It released its browser's code to the world, for free.

That move would haunt Microsoft for decades...

That free code became Mozilla.

Mozilla became Firefox, which broke IE's grip on the web.

A lawsuit-scarred Microsoft turned slow and cautious. In that gap rose Firefox, then Google, then the modern internet.

Andreessen lost the battle. But the open web won the war...

The same war is happening again, right now.

This time the battlefield isn't browsers. It's AI.

ChatGPT, Claude, and Google are racing to be the internet's new front door. Just like Netscape and IE once did.

The browser war wrote the playbook. The AI war is running it...

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