However, since I was the Project Lead for the Spyglass browser team, there is one correction I can offer: We licensed the Mosaic code, but we never used any of it. Spyglass Mosaic was written from scratch.
In big picture terms, Marc's recollections look essentially correct, and he even shared a couple of credible-looking tidbits that I didn't know.
It was a crazy time. Netscape beat us, but I remember my boss observing that we beat everyone who didn't outspend us by a favor of five. I didn't get mega-rich or mega-famous like Marc (deservedly) did, but I learned a lot, and I remain thankful to have been involved in the story.
While Marc recounts that Microsoft offered for Spyglass to sell "Microsoft Mosaic" as an add-on while still offering your own independent version - despite MSFT eventually making its own browser free anyway - is there anything within that part of the larger story that you would elucidate to tell differently, or clarify deeper into its weeds? It was always one of the parts of the story that was more glossed over.
In my recollection, the initial payment from Microsoft to Spyglass was higher than what Marc said, but I'm not sure.
But I am sure that the deal was later renegotiated at a substantially higher number.
I'm also pretty sure that even after that rework of the terms, Spyglass didn't get enough from Microsoft to compensate for the fact that Microsoft, er, you know, killed the browser business. And insofar as that is the essence of Marc's point, I agree with it.
"The Microsoft guys call Spyglass and they're like, yeah, we want to license Spyglass Mosaic so we can build it into Windows. The Spyglass guys say, yeah, that sounds great. Basically, how much per copy are you going to pay us for that? Microsoft says, you don't understand, we're going to pay you a flat fee, which is the same thing that Microsoft did when they originally licensed DOS way back when. But Microsoft said, basically, or at least my understanding of what Microsoft said was, don't worry about it. We're going to sell it as an add-on to Windows. We'll have Microsoft Mosaic and then you'll still have Spyglass Mosaic and you can sell it on other operating systems or compete with us or whatever, do whatever you want."
Thank you for your response!