On Bliss: The Origin Story of XP's Iconic Background Image
Reflecting on the First Browser War and digital landscapes.
Almost certainly, you’ve stumbled across Bliss at one point or another. A brilliant blue sky dotted with fluffy cumulus clouds flows across a radiant green hill with the slightest slope. Soft gradients of sun and shadow blanket the land. There are no signs of human interference in the quiet confines of this grassy knoll.
What I’m talking about, of course, is the image selected as the default desktop background of Windows XP personal computers at the start of the millennium. A digital Elysian Fields of sorts, the photograph (titled ‘Bliss’) was featured on over one billion devices sold between 2001 and 2008.
Instantaneously, the sight conjures memories of my high school’s windowless computer labs. Class often bored me and I generally kept to myself, but the familiar fields arranged in rows of five or six offered an escape from the mundane schedule of school days (if only for 30-40 minutes).
The computer is a portal to worlds far more interesting than our own. With every boot-up, Windows immediately offered an enticing glimpse at the greener pastures its operating system could shepherd its users towards.
This was by design.
The warm feelings and gentle breeze of a crystalized sunny afternoon belie careful calculation. Many might come to the conclusion that Bliss is little more than art made for masses, a lucky, empty, agreeable picture that appealed most to a group of executives skimming through catalogs composed of thousands of empty, agreeable pictures. But beyond a pleasing exterior dwells the story of a mega-corporation’s attempt to reconnect with something as simple as a stationary image.
On a Friday afternoon in 1996, Chuck O’Rear stopped his truck along the side of California State Route 121. A tributary that flows through Napa and Sonoma toward the San Francisco Bay area, the seasoned photographer frequently passed through the lush landscapes of wine country on the way to visit his girlfriend. In fact, O’Rear was in the midst of compiling a coffee table book filled with images of the region’s vineyards. Hyper-cognizant of the land’s photographic potential, making a pit stop or two on his weekend sojourns to Marin County was far from unusual.
The spot that caught O’Rear’s eye that afternoon lacked the grapevines and wineries that unified his work-in-progress. Even so, something about the way the light draped over some nearby hills grabbed his attention. The photographer grabbed his Mamiya medium format camera and a tripod, snapped four frames, and quickly got back on the road without much thought. Once the photos were developed, O’Rear sold his favorite image of the series – titled ‘Bucolic Green Hills’ – to a stock photography company called WestLight.
What the photographer could not have known at the time was that WestLight (and the 3 million images in its collection) would be acquired two years later by Corbis Images, a marketing company owned and founded by tech magnate Bill Gates.
Not far from the tranquil scene O’Rear photographed, a brutal battle was being waged. WestLight was far from the only company Gates had his eye on in the late 90’s – in particular, Silicon Valley startup Netscape was a cause of concern for the billionaire businessman in 1996.
As the World Wide Web became increasingly popular among the general public, there was a sudden demand for an intuitive internet browser. While industry leader Microsoft had Internet Explorer, Netscape’s Navigator quickly gained traction among the growing number of at-home users. Explorer’s clunky design never stood a chance against the point-and-click interface Navigator embraced. What’s more, Netscape did an infinitely better job at encrypting sensitive user information, which in turn made online transactions significantly safer.
Just a few months before ‘Bucolic Green Hills’ was captured, Microsoft met with Netscape executives in hopes of “splitting the market” by convincing their competitor to cease marketing browsers compatible with Windows computers. Since Windows was the operating system on over 90% of the world’s personal computers at the time, Netscape refused and in turn kicked off what’s now referred to as the “First Browser War”.
Rarely met with insolence or pushback, Gates and the Microsoft corporation became hellbent on destroying its rival. In order to effectively “cut off the air supply” of competitors (namely Netscape), Microsoft began bundling each of its products with Internet Explorer freeware. On a surface level, the gesture seemed innocent, even generous. Unfortunately, darker motives largely fueled the decision.
Netscape began to suffer as new computer owners, unaware of options outside of Explorer, defaulted to the internet browser already installed on their machine. Those that were already familiar with and interested in Netscape were deterred by roadblocks designed by Microsoft to discourage the download of alternate browsers. In time, IE became fully integrated with Windows operating systems, and attempts to remove the program could lead to system instability. By the year 2000, the once successful Netscape was in its death throes.
Though Microsoft ultimately won the war, they did not escape unwounded. In the process of stamping out their enemy, the tech giant earned a reputation of being a schoolyard bully. In 2001, they became the subject of a highly publicized antitrust case. Ultimately, the Justice Department found that the company had, in fact, used illegal restrictions to stifle competitive conduct. The punishment was little more than a slap on the wrist, but the reputations of Microsoft and Gates were left in tatters. They remained atop the tech totem pole at the end of the controversy, but only by default.
If you want to fully understand the disdain the public held during and immediately prior to the trial, take a few hours out of your day to watch the oft-forgotten 2001 thriller, Antitrust. Almost absurdist in nature, the Bill Gates doppelgänger played by Tim Robbins goes so far as to hire hitmen against independent programmers. Silicon Valley geniuses are literally beaten to death one by one by cronies commissioned from the comfort of the CEO’s cushy Pacific Northwest estate. A young programmer (played by Ryan Phillipe, of all people) initially views the mogul with awe and respect. But over the course of just 109 minutes, his admiration metamorphosizes into full-blown disgust.
It’s hard not to laugh at this trailer two decades later, but it illustrates an important point. Competitors and customers alike viewed Microsoft as the absolute embodiment of a power-hungry corporate monopoly fueled by greed. As much as Gates did to spearhead his company’s unprecedented success, it became clear that his cutthroat tendencies left a bad taste in people’s mouths. Looking back at the antitrust deposition footage, it’s clear to see how the billionaire’s petulance made him pretty easy to villainize into a cartoon capitalist boogeyman.
Before long, Gates was forced to step down as CEO to preserve the optics1 of his brainchild. While the move ultimately boosted Microsoft’s overall likability, the trauma of the ordeal left many on the inside feeling lost and uneasy.
As any PR person worth their salt would note, Microsoft desperately needed one thing after the turbulent antitrust scandal – a distraction. After the loss of Gates, Windows XP served as the diversion conceived to direct attention away from the smoldering embers of what the company once was. It represented a new chapter, paving the way for a future consumers might be less critical of.
XP came to be when two projects trapped in development hell were hybridized into a single beast. Up until this point, Microsoft created entirely separate operating systems for professional and personal uses. XP aimed to create a platform capable of both business and pleasure, a previously unheard-of feat. As strong as the concept was, though, developers were all too aware that a friendly, inviting appearance would be crucial in winning back the hearts of begrudging audiences.
So, a decision was made to replace the blank blue and teal desktops of the past with something a little more engaging.
It’s not common knowledge who, exactly, was tasked with finding the perfect image to broadcast into countless living rooms and office spaces around the world. There’s no way of knowing how much time was spent debating the merits of potential candidates. What we do know is that Microsoft ultimately turned to the Corbis digital database for a solution. While sifting through images, someone came across O’Rear’s ‘Bucolic Green Hills’. Some executive eventually renamed the image ‘Bliss’. Ultimately, it became one of the most universally recognized images in human history, up there with the Mona Lisa.
Naturally, O’Rear was shocked when Microsoft offered him six figures for complete rights to the image. “Photographers like to become famous for pictures they created,” he told the Napa Valley Register in an interview in 2010. “I didn’t “create” this. I just happened to be there at the right moment and documented it.” Even so, he traveled up the west coast to hand-deliver the negative – the frame’s value far surpassed what USPS shipping insurance would cover.
In the years since the launch of XP, representatives have stated that ‘Bliss’ was selected because it "illustrates the experiences Microsoft strives to provide customers". And frankly, that makes a lot of sense. Worldlessly, it communicates freedom, possibility, serenity. There’s nothing challenging about green grass on a sunny day. The ebb and flow of the land create an effortless path for the eye to follow from one edge of the frame to the other. Though O’Rear adamantly claims that the photo did not undergo digital manipulation, many argued that such a clean and perfect frame couldn’t possibly occur in nature. Something about the color palette, the balance of shadows and highlights, seems brighter and better than whatever reality has to offer. For years, users around the world argued over the location of the fields plastered onto their computers. After all, a sunny afternoon in Ireland is just as beautiful as the one you might find in New Zealand or Portugal.
In short, it’s an image that aimed to please. And for that reason, it became the poster child for a new era of tech.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of ‘Bliss’ is its emptiness. It’s what initially caught O’Rear’s attention, anyway. Among flourishing vineyards, the vacancy of the hills was unusual.
As it turned out, the hills were so pristine because a phylloxera infestation wiped the area’s crops out entirely. Hardly visible, the aphid-like insects gorge themselves on the roots of grapevines. In time, their interference causes tumorous growths that cut off the flow of nutrients to the rest of the plants they feed on. Pesticides and chemicals do very little to slow the tenacious insects, so swarms are incredibly difficult to combat. The only truly effective way to keep phylloxera away is to breed hybrid plans resistant to their advances.
There’s a certain irony to the fact that Microsoft gravitated toward ‘Bliss’. Just like the insects that made the image possible, the corporation destroyed the early innovators that fed it. Without the threat of usurpers, Internet Explorer stagnated. Much to the annoyance of users, the browser received just one version update over a five-year span. Lacking the fruits of its competitors, Microsoft starved – despite its overwhelming market share and despite the pristine fields it identified with.
And in this space, those able to adapt began to sow seeds for the future.
Right before Netspace dissolved entirely, it made the code used to build its browser open source. Though it failed to survive the devastation, the non-profit Mozilla Foundation used the pieces left behind as a launch point for a new browser. Initially named Phoenix, Mozilla eventually rebranded as Firefox after a copyright issue. But even with the name change, the sentiment remained the same. From the ashes of a failed predecessor, something stronger was born. Decades later, in the spring of 2021, Internet Explorer was discontinued, and while Firefox struggles against a new Goliath (Google), the steps it took in rebuilding all those years ago have allowed it to hang on.
If you went searching for the hill made famous by Bliss, you'd find that it's practically unrecognizable. The crops have returned, transforming the landscape entirely. Likewise, Microsoft isn't the powerhouse it once was and it’s the landscape it navigates has changed entirely. Its vulnerabilities exposed, it has spent the last decade shoving the obsolete skeletons of its past into a closet.
Even so, the memory of a perfect afternoon remains crystallized in our collective consciousness. Why? Because ‘Bliss’ represents the beauty utter annihilation can yield, the quiet that comes after a violent storm. It promises growth and reinvention and progress to come – even if we can't see the roots at work just below the surface.
Gate’s resignation simultaneously changed everything and nothing concerning Microsoft’s trajectory. A Washington Post article from 2000 has the following to say concerning CEO replacement Steve Ballmer: “Steve Ballmer would do nearly anything for Bill Gates…Since Ballmer joined Microsoft in 1980, the two men have come to function almost as a single executive”. In many ways, the way things functioned day-to-day changed very little. But, at the same time, there was a palpable fear that Microsoft may not recover if it continued to fly too close to the sun. That trepidation played a significant role in allowing corporations like Google to grow to astronomical heights later in the ’00s.
Man, down the memory lane i go. This is tripping me out a little. Meghan - you've done it again! x