30 years ago, AT&T gave Internet Explorer the default advantage

It is 30 years since AT&T handed Microsoft a valuable foothold in the browser wars by making Internet Explorer 3 the default for its WorldNet service. Windows 95 was barely a year old when AT&T set out to challenge CompuServe and America Online with its WorldNet service in 1996. The telecommunications giant needed a browser. Netscape Navigator dominated the market, but Microsoft was keen to make up lost ground. A promotion and distribution agreement was announced on July 25, 1996, with a further announcement in October. Under the deal, AT&T WorldNet software was included in versions of Windows 95 supplied to PC manufacturers, with Internet Explorer 3 designated as the service's default browser. Netscape Navigator remained available, but Internet Explorer secured the valuable default slot. Microsoft's browser-bundling strategy would later draw antitrust action on both sides of the Atlantic, including the EU's browser choice screen in 2010. At the time, Tom Evslin, Vice President for the AT&T WorldNet Service, said: "Users now will find that everything they need to sign up for AT&T WorldNet Service is pre-loaded on their new computers, along with the Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 browser." Thirty years on, Evslin told The Register the deal came down to price. AT&T had to pay per copy activated, and he reckoned Microsoft pretty much gave its browser away (but wasn't completely sure - it was, after all, a long time ago). Netscape Navigator was, however, better known at the time, and so was offered as an option. By January 1997, Microsoft claimed Internet Explorer's corporate usage had more than tripled since August while Netscape's share declined. WorldNet was also attracting users by offering straightforward internet access rather than another AOL-style walled garden. It rapidly became the world's largest ISP by one contemporary measure, although it eventually wheezed its last in 2010. Internet Explorer proved more influential, dominating the browser market for more than a decade before its grip began to loosen in the late 2000s. AT&T's choice was only one factor in Internet Explorer's rise, but it put the browser before WorldNet's growing audience just as users were moving beyond the walled gardens of AOL and CompuServe. Microsoft may have been late to the browser game, but it already controlled the operating system on millions of PCs. Three decades later, the deal remains an early demonstration of the value of being the default. (R)