You're right, Matthew, it is intriguing that Microsoft devotes more effort to developing and promoting its free browser than it does to advancing any of its other desktop applications, like Excel. Why? Probably because Microsoft is worried that someday soon, Web browsers like Netscape's could dethrone Windows, particularly on office PCs.
Browsers are capable of running applets such as spreadsheets, database programs, even word processors, thanks to languages like Java and programming technologies such as Microsoft's own ActiveX. On an office intranet, a PC can run application software that resides on the network server, downloading documents to the PC via the browser. The only software you need on your desktop PC is a browser. Can you see where this scenario is going? Netscape could turn Navigator into the next PC operating system standard.
If any Web browser is going to supplant Windows, Microsoft wants to make sure that it's a Microsoft browser. To this end, the company has been feverishly assembling the other pieces that will help it rule the corporate intranet -- pieces like Microsoft Internet Information Server (a Web server bundled with Windows NT Server) and ActiveX. And Internet Explorer 4.0 will be a key component of Windows 98, making it hard to tell where browser stops and operating system starts.

What's Windows? What's a Web browser? As Microsoft merges its Internet Explorer browser into Windows 95, standard Windows components can take on a Web-like feel. Here's one view of My Computer on a Windows 95 PC with Internet Explorer 4.0 installed.

So don't think of Internet Explorer as just another Web browser. It's fast becoming your next operating system.
- Judy Heim