February 3, 1998

Microsoft Internet Explorer

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Microsoft Internet Explorer
In the summer of 1996 a press-release war that only geeks could love, the Browser Wars, sent disconcerting waves through the Web world. Microsoft was shoving itself onto the Internet with a new Web browser, and running over anything in its path. Rumors abound that Microsoft tried to buy Netscape to solidify its dominance. Plausible, but the purchase never happened, and the Microserfs were forced to play hardball, a game they know well.

When Bill Gates announced Internet Explorer 3’s release in August 1996, he had devised a way to persuade users to click around the Web with his product. He’d get them into popular fee-based sites like the Wall Street Journal and ESPN SportsZone for free through 1997—as long as they shunned Netscape’s Navigator in favor of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

More recently, Paramount’s Star Trek: Continuum site, then produced exclusively for MSN, locked out Netscape users due to “multimedia compatibility issues,” infuriating Trekkies and lawmakers alike. Time-Warner’s Entertaindom also initially barred Netscape users, and now offers IE4 users enhanced sound and graphics. Disney’s Daily Blast is free to MSN members, offers special features to IE4 users, and only works with Windows 95. But the exclusivity strategy may be dead: Last month Paramount withdrew its popular Star Trek and Entertainment Tonight! sites to the open Web, and Disney is poised to do the same.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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