Meet your bundled browser
Back in the early days of computing, you typically went with the browser provided by your internet service provider or operating system. Internet Explorer 4 was initially introduced in 1997. But when Windows 98 was released a year later, it officially became the bundled browser for “surfing the web,” as we cringe-inducingly said back in the day.
This practice of “forced bundling” created some issues for Microsoft, as it later saw itself under anti-trust scrutiny by the U.S. Department of Justice. But it also helped IE quickly overthrow its chief competitor at the time, Netscape Navigator,
