Spyglass, Inc.

Spyglass, Inc.

Company type	Public
Industry	Internet software
Founded	1990 in Champaign, Illinois, United States
Fate	Acquired by OpenTV
Headquarters	Naperville , United States
Products	Mosaic web browser, Spyglass Server (Server SDK)

Spyglass, Inc. was an Internet software firm established in 1990 in Champaign, Illinois as a spin-off from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, later moving its headquarters to Naperville, Illinois. The company commercialized innovations originating from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), specializing in data visualization solutions such as graphing tools and 3D rendering technologies.

The company became well-known for its adaptation of the Mosaic web browser. In 2000, OpenTV acquired Spyglass through a $2.5 billion stock exchange; OpenTV itself is now part of the Kudelski Group.

Mosaic

In May 1994, Spyglass secured a license to develop its own web browser based on NCSA's Mosaic for several million dollars. Since NCSA had developed different versions for UNIX, Microsoft Windows, and classic Mac OS, Spyglass consolidated these into a single codebase that maintained most features and source code across all platforms.

Spyglass distributed a 30-day trial version but did not sell directly to consumers. Instead, it licensed the software to resellers who either offered the unaltered Spyglass Mosaic (for example, O'Reilly and Associates) or browsers derived from its code (such as those from CompuServe, IBM, and Ipswitch). A prominent example is Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which was developed under license using Spyglass Mosaic's underlying code.

In addition to major desktop operating systems, Spyglass also adapted Mosaic for other platforms like the Nintendo 64 to support the SharkWire Online service.

Browser wars

Netscape Communications Corporation, co-founded by Marc Andreessen, launched its flagship product, Netscape Navigator, in October 1994 and quickly dominated the browser market. Microsoft, after initially losing out to AOL's BookLink browser in November 1994, secured a license agreement with Spyglass in January 1995. This agreement allowed Microsoft to base Internet Explorer on Spyglass Mosaic's code, releasing it as an add-on for Windows 95 through the Microsoft Plus! package.

Microsoft and Spyglass revised their licensing terms in 1997 following disagreements over royalty payments. While earlier versions of Internet Explorer up to version 6 credited both Spyglass and NCSA Mosaic, this attribution was omitted starting with Internet Explorer 7 in 2006.

Web server technology

Spyglass created and sold a commercially supported web server product compatible with both Unix and Windows NT, known as Spyglass Server or Server SDK. Introduced in March 1995 and available by July that year, it competed directly with Netscape’s server offering. Both servers provided application programming interfaces (APIs) for server-side application execution but differed in their security protocols: Spyglass implemented Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol (SHTTP), whereas Netscape used Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). The company primarily licensed this server technology to original equipment manufacturers rather than retail consumers, with Oracle Corporation being its largest licensee.

Acquisition

On March 26, 2000, OpenTV announced its intention to acquire Spyglass in a $2.5 billion stock transaction. The acquisition aimed to combine Spyglass’ Prism server software with OpenTV’s interactive television services and strengthen its position within the mobile browser sector. The transaction was finalized later that year.

OpenTV was itself acquired by the Kudelski Group on March 29, 2010.