To reach a big share of the browser market Microsoft distributes its browser for free. They also bundled the browser with their operating system Windows 95 , which lead to a law suit in the United States. Furthermore Microsoft forced Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to choose the Internet Explorer as the preferred browser and to distribute it to their customers. As a consequence, Netscape, making money with its Web server software and related products, refrained from selling their Communicator as shareware and offers it for free again. There are even plans to distribute not only binaries of the browser but also its source code for free. For Windows 98 Microsoft plans to merge the Internet Explorer and the Explorer built into Windows 95 to a single multi purpose application. The ``desktop'' of the Windows environment will become an ``Active Desktop'', which is capable of displaying Web pages in the background.
No matter what Microsoft does, it eagerly tries to become the market leader. Microsoft uses its quasi-monopoly of the PC operating system market to increase its influence by adding proprietary extensions. For instance, Microsoft left the strict HTML standard and invented new HTML tags such as <marqee> for
scrolling banners or <object> to include ActiveX objects. On the other hand Netscape introduced the <multicol> tag to set text in columns or <blink> for blinking text. Consequently many Web sites which were optimized for one browser (some point it out by saying ``best viewed with ...''), are rendered incompletely or inaccurately by the others. Some extensions were proposed and accepted for a new version of the HTML standard. This lead to the standardization of <table> tags for tables and <font> to select a certain font. Style sheets and layers were introduced by Netscape with version 4.0 of their browser and will be included in HTML 4.0.
Another Microsoft specific extension is ``ActiveX '' which makes it easier to develop interactive Web sites. This technology is designed in competition with ``Java''. Java , developed by Sun Microsystems , is a new object oriented programming language specifically designed for Internet purposes. It is an open standard which is supported by all big players in the software industry. Microsoft's Java Virtual Machine (JVM), which interprets the Java code, is one of the best available. Therefore Netscape considers dropping their own JVM and licensing Microsoft's. This strategy sped up the development of new HTML standards, however sometimes Microsoft takes unfair measures. In order to visit Microsoft's newly acquired picture gallery ``corbis '' it was necessary to install the Internet Explorer because all other browsers would not receive any data from the corbis server. If the setup program of the Internet Explorer found the Navigator installed, it disabled it or made it malfunctioning. With version 4.0 of the Internet Explorer it is possible again to run the Navigator and Explorer simultaneously, but it is not advisable to uninstall the Internet Explorer which has already left many Windows 95 partitions corrupted and unable to reboot. Meanwhile corbis proudly declares itself ``available on all browsers''. For a while access to Microsoft's Web site for developers was granted only to users of the Internet Explorer. After a flood of complaints all browsers were given access again. The Web is continuously growing, evolving, developing further. New standards are negotiated and passed at a breathtaking pace. At the beginning of February 1998 the standard for 56 kbps modem connect rates will be passed by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and HTML 4.0 is on the way to become an official standard.