Did Microsoft basically miss the internet in the late 1990s?

Yes and no.  The best accounts of Microsoft and the Internet that I’ve read are Breaking Windows by David Bank and How the Web was Won by Paul Andrews.

There were parts of Microsoft that were inspired by the opportunity of the Internet and its potential for transforming Microsoft, both its products and culture.  And there were parts of Microsoft that were either oblivious to the Internet or saw it as a threat and tried to develop non Internet Microsoft proprietary solutions. 

The company developed the best TCP/IP clients and included them for free in the OS, versus charging $ per client as third party ISVs were doing.  And it innovated to make connecting to the Internet simple for normal humans (e.g., with DHCP) versus the nightmare it was at the time that prevented the Internet from becoming a mass phenomenon.  Internet Explorer3 &4were ground breaking, innovative products of vision and hard work.  What’s now called Ajax was developed by the IE4 team (dynamic HTML, DOM).  CSS first appeared in IE.  IE3 had a componentized architecture that allowed any app to incorporate the Internet, not just the browser.

By contrast, the first version of MSN in was completely non Internet.  It had its own proprietary formats and protocols for everything.  It was, believe it or not, X. based, not TCP/IP based. Yikes!

There was a struggle inside the company over the future strategic direction of the company, of Internet first vs. Windows first.  In the end, after IE succeeded in building the fastest, best, most reliable, and most popular browser, the company decided to essentially abandon IE.  The company saw it as Internet vs Windows, rather than how to advance the Microsoft platform so that it was “and” rather than “versus.”  And the rest is history. 

Microsoft went off in its own singular direction while the rest of the world went in a different direction.  The exciting innovations now had a different, non Microsoft center.  For consumers there were innovations like search, social, ecommerce.  In infrastructure, large scale distributed systems, big data, cloud, powerful new frameworks, all developed on Linux not Windows.  That is changing now as Microsoft is rejoining the outside world.

Basm allah alrahman alrahim

The internet invented by america ( the idea start at arpanet ) , started from connecting universties and others , bill gates ( graduated at and start his first real project with IBM at ) born inside all of that , so what will be the result ?

agree with the answer to Mr..................  Mohammed Ashraf 

I agree with Mr Muhammad answers, thanks for the invitation. ..

Agreed with your answer Mr. Mohammed Ashraf

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i agree with experts answers

Agree with given answers

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agree with ur answer sir and Eng. Adam

Got to agree with your answer...

We know what is the world with inertent and without internet, although internet has its own disadvantages as it made human being like a robot and early blindness due to excess use of internet through mobile. We really amazed to know how the world used to function smoothly before internet revolution. Every thing made easy and convenient whether it is use of microsoft tools or not with the advent of internet 

Agreed Mr. mohammed,.

Thank you