Today in 1975, Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the home of MITS, the company which developed the Altair 8800 PC for which they wrote a version of the BASIC programming language.
Today in 1994, Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark incorporated the Mosaic Communications Corporation, later renamed Netscape Communications Corporation. It released its first product, Mosaic Netscape 0.9, the first widely popular Web browser, in October 1994. Netscape had a successful IPO on August 9, 1995, marking the start of what later will be called the “Dot-Com Bubble.”
On May 26, 1995, Bill Gates sent the "Internet Tidal Wave" memorandum to Microsoft executives. The memo described Netscape as a "new competitor 'born' on the Internet." “I assign the Internet the highest level of importance," said Gates, proclaiming the internet “the most important single development to come along since the IBM PC was introduced in 1981.”
On March 20, 2023, Gates wrote on his blog that AI is “the most important advance in technology since the graphical user interface…. The development of AI is as fundamental as the creation of the microprocessor, the personal computer, the Internet, and the mobile phone. It will change the way people work, learn, travel, get health care, and communicate with each other. Entire industries will reorient around it. Businesses will distinguish themselves by how well they use it.”