How a 1997 Microsoft Deal Led to the Safari Browser

In 1997, a financially struggling Apple entered a historic five-year agreement with Microsoft that made Internet Explorer the default web browser on Macintosh computers. As the 2002 expiration date of this contract approached, Apple realized the critical danger of relying on its biggest rival for access to the internet. This impending deadline, combined with the stagnation of Internet Explorer for Mac, directly prompted Steve Jobs and Apple to secretly develop the Safari web browser, ultimately allowing Apple to regain control over its software ecosystem.

To understand why Safari was created, you must first look at the August 1997 Macworld Expo. Steve Jobs had just returned to lead an Apple that was weeks away from bankruptcy. To stabilize the company, Jobs announced a partnership with Microsoft. Microsoft invested $150 million in non-voting Apple stock and promised to support Microsoft Office for the Mac for five years. In exchange, Apple agreed to drop long-standing patent lawsuits and make Internet Explorer the default web browser on the Mac, effectively sidelining Netscape Navigator.

While this deal saved Apple in the short term, it created a major strategic problem by the early 2000s. The internet had become the primary reason people bought personal computers, and Apple did not own the software its customers used to access the web.

Furthermore, the user experience was suffering. Apple had just released its modern operating system, Mac OS X, in 2001. Although Microsoft released a version of Internet Explorer for OS X, development quickly stalled. Having already won the "browser wars" against Netscape, Microsoft had little incentive to innovate on a rival platform. Internet Explorer for Mac became sluggish, outdated, and unstable, making Apple's brand-new operating system look slow by association.

The 1997 contract stipulated that Apple only had to keep Internet Explorer as the default browser for five years. With the agreement set to expire in August 2002, Steve Jobs saw an opportunity to break free from Microsoft's grip. However, Apple could not simply remove Internet Explorer without having a superior replacement ready to go.

In 2001, anticipating the end of the contract, Apple quietly hired Don Melton, a former Netscape engineer, to lead a secret project to build an in-house web browser. The project was treated with extreme secrecy to prevent Microsoft from finding out and potentially retaliating by canceling Office for Mac before the five-year agreement was officially up.

Melton and his team evaluated several existing browser engines, including Mozilla’s Gecko engine, before settling on KHTML, an open-source engine developed for the Linux Konqueror browser. Apple engineers chose KHTML because the code was small, clean, and standard-compliant. They adapted this code into what would become known as WebKit.

By August 2002, the five-year pact with Microsoft officially expired, freeing Apple from its legal obligation to favor Internet Explorer. Just a few months later, in January 2003, Steve Jobs took the stage at Macworld and introduced Safari. He marketed it as the "fastest browser on the Mac," boasting that it loaded web pages three times faster than Microsoft’s browser.

The impact was immediate. Recognizing that Apple now had a vastly superior product and the legal right to make it the default browser on all Macs, Microsoft announced in June 2003 that it would cease development of Internet Explorer for Mac entirely.

The expiration of the 1997 agreement served as the exact deadline and catalyst Apple needed to reclaim its independence. Had that contract not expired when it did, Apple would not have built the WebKit engine, which just a few years later became the foundational technology for the revolutionary mobile browser on the first iPhone.