What might have happened? WebObjects was highly admired at the time of its release, and in fact powered Dell’s original online store. WebObjects was significantly more flexible and advanced than many competing technologies. But with its purchase by Apple, WebObjects gradually languished and was discontinued. Would an independent, post-IPO NeXT have dominated the web application market in the 1990s with WebObjects? Could it have ridden out the burst of the dot.com bubble in 2001? We will never know.