Andreesen "Grows Up" 281
inah writes "The original poster boy for the old .com economy and how he's currently doing.
"The poster-child who grew up" from The Economist."
Politics: A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage. -- Ambrose Bierce
Just the pix (Score:1)
Loudcloud vs. Netscape (Score:1)
What was he doing in 1991? (Score:5, Funny)
Don't believe me?
You should [google.com].
Re:HAHA - What was he doing in 1991? (Score:2, Funny)
At least it wasn't GAY PORN.
Re:HAHA - What was he doing in 1991? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What was he doing in 1991? (Score:2)
God forbid. . . (Score:4, Insightful)
What was our posterboy doing in 1963? That's right, hanging around gay bars looking to satisfy his fetishes.
Who cares? The man's a genius. Let him do with his frickin' free time as he wishes. Not all succesful people have to be bereft of life, humor, or recklessness. Not all successful people are perfect. Some are. . . guess what, they're boring.
Re:God forbid. . . (Score:2, Funny)
Re:What was he doing in 1991? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:What was he doing in 1991? (Score:3, Interesting)
Erm? Correct me if I'm wrong, but are commercial activities on the Internet
suddenly smiled upon? It sounds very much like you know what you're doing,
but I can't say I've ever seen an Internet server dedicated to the commercial
aspects of electronic communication (short of Compu$erve, and that doesn't
really count). Mind explaining where the loophole lies?
Pretty interesting view of the Internet at the time, no?
Re:What was he doing in 1991? (Score:3, Interesting)
Can't put my finger on it (Score:1)
At least I found one thing they have in common with Netscape, besides Andreesen here [fuckedcompany.com].
They should have a good market, and it would be nice to see them succeed though.
Isn´t it time we all GROW UP? (Score:2)
Slashdot ruled by suits... imagine that!
Re:Isn´t it time we all GROW UP? (Score:2)
Eh, fuck it, not worth it anyway. The best thing that could happen to Slashdot is somebody starts running it like an actual business organization (even NPO's have a board)
Favorite Quote (Score:1)
'Nuff said
I'm not an expert on accounting by any means (Score:1, Interesting)
Link slashdotted. oh well.
LoudCloud can't compete either (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:LoudCloud can't compete either (Score:4, Insightful)
This isn't a flame. Netscape did many stupid things, like many big companies do stupid things. All of which are fair game, in my book. But, it is commonly accepted that they fell victim to M$, and that M$ cheated. A court of law ruled as such. It is always the criminal's fault, not the victim's. That said... potential crime victims do need to be careful.
*** I self censored this... didn't feel like being the first person to compare M$ to *censored german political party*.
Re:LoudCloud can't compete either (Score:2)
Re:LoudCloud can't compete either (Score:2)
Re:LoudCloud can't compete either (Score:3, Insightful)
One word: Quicken.
Yes, it is possible to defeat Microsoft. It's hard, but not impossible.
Re:LoudCloud can't compete either (Score:2)
"The case would have been a diversion from its main task, which is to compete aggressively in a way that will lead to lower prices and consumer benefits." [washingtonpost.com]
Wonder where Netscape would be had they been interested in playing ball with MS, even a little bit...
Apples and Oranges (Score:4, Insightful)
You simply can't compete against that in the business world. When your competitor is not only playing with a stacked deck but also doesn't care about winning for its own sake, then you have a real problem. As tough as things may be for companies like Quicken, it's just not impossible in that same sense. Besides which, Quicken established themselves very early on, before Microsoft became quite the behemoth that they are today. Try getting the financial community behind you for a novel product/service in ANY business that Microsoft takes seriously -- no matter how good your idea and your positioning is, it's just not going to happen.
Re:Apples and Oranges (Score:2)
Well, I agree with you in the sense that if Microsoft really wanted to kill Quicken, they could have (they could have just bundled Money with the operating system, after all). Still, I think it's also a mistake to characterize it as Microsoft not caring about that market. At one time, Microsoft fancied getting into financial services, and they cared about defeating Quicken very much -- to the point of just admitting defeat and buying the damn company (which of course was blocked by the FTC).
Besides which, Quicken established themselves very early on, before Microsoft became quite the behemoth that they are today.
Well, so did Netscape. The difference is that Netscape got suckier and suckier, while Quicken actually tried to improve their products over time.
Re:Apples and Oranges (Score:2)
That's really not quite right. Netscape may have had market share, in the same sense that a lot of the dotcoms had market share, but they did not have it with a stable and viable revenue model like Intuit did. Anyways, this is besides the point. No matter what Netscape might have had they lost it the moment Microsoft decided to package IE with Windows and spend a gazillion dollars to ensure its success; Quicken simply never faced that (it'd be mighty hard to make a remotely plausible argument for why MS Money needs to be packaged with Windows and it'd never bring them any return on investment.)
Re:Apples and Oranges (Score:2)
Consumer finance software != Being the bank. That's not to say that it's impossible to use it to gain leverage, but the fact of the matter is that they're two seperate things and when you combine it with the DoJ it's hardly the path of least resistance.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:LoudCloud can't compete either (Score:2)
Re:LoudCloud can't compete either (Score:2)
Yes, Microsoft did do illegal things, and Microsoft should get punished for that. But what Microsoft did wasn't sufficient to kill Netscape. Netscape killed Netscape.
Re:Wasn't this a Usenet rule? (Score:2)
'The Economist' is guilty of wishful thinking (Score:4, Interesting)
The closing paragraph of the article reads:
This is clearly the kind of thing that the editors and readers of The Economist would like to believe about the Internet: The show is over, nothing more to see, move along everyone, move along. Too bad it is total tripe...
Andreeson and LoudCloud are a real business now, true. And their revenue model is well designed and might actually work. But the Internet isn't about to turn into a buttondown, suit ruled, geeks don't make the rules anymore thing anytime soon. That is what happens to mature markets and, while the first gold-rush is over, the Internet is far from a mature market. There is still lots of room for someone with ideas to make a difference. What is less likely is that those ideas are worth twenty million in VC money.
I'm afraid the suits are in store for a hard awakening if they think differently.
Jack William BellRe:'The Economist' is guilty of wishful thinking (Score:2, Insightful)
You said it bro.
This line sticks out:
"Even though it started as a consumer-led phenomenon, the Internet's greatest impact has been on business."
The Internet's greatest impact has been on the the voice it gives the public. Business is just using it as a tool, people use it to invoke change in the systems that regulate their lives.
business. ha. this article "missed it.", and so does Andreesen apparently.
Re:'The Economist' is guilty of wishful thinking (Score:4, Insightful)
The Internet's greatest impact has been on the the voice it gives the public. Business is just using it as a tool, people use it to invoke change in the systems that regulate their lives.
That's pretty arguable. I mean, name one major social change that has happened as a result of the Internet. Sure, we're communicating faster, but has it actually provided a clear social change? Not to say it never will, but so far there just hasn't been much.
On the other hand, there has been huge changes in business. Not so much in retail, but in business-to-business data communications. That's where you see the major upheaval, and it's almost invisible to the average person. Setting up a data link between companies used to be a major operation of running leased lines, now it's completely trivial.
Re:'The Economist' is guilty of wishful thinking (Score:2)
Name one? Sure.
Two of my close personal friends have fallen in love over the 'net. And this was with people who they had almost *no* chance of meeting if not for the net. (I met the second friend after the first one had fallen for her.)
This is a distinct social change: the ability of people to meet new people that they would never have seen before, and strike a common bond despite geographic distances.
Re:'The Economist' is guilty of wishful thinking (Score:2)
I don't think you can ignore Napster. A whole generation got to see, for a brief moment, what the world could be like if no one owned information. Yes yes, I know someone will complain that without intellectual property no one would bother to have any intellect. But that's not the point- Napster was a fait accomplit, and the terms of the debate have been changed forever.
Re:'The Economist' is guilty of wishful thinking (Score:3, Interesting)
And why isn't faster communications a clear social change? Would you have cried out "name one major social change as a result of telephones!" if you were around in the early 1900s?
These days I can bank online [national.com.au], buy food online [woolworths.com.au], pay rent online, communicate in almost-real-time with overseas relatives [mutt.org], find communities [google.com] in my local area with similar hobbies/interests, or buy and sell [ebay.com.au] things with people I've never met. How is this anything other than a social change?
Government services are increasingly online [ukonline.gov.uk]. The government is nothing more than the organised administrators of society. If the Internet is helping the government then it is directly helping society as well.
Linux [linux.org] is built by online communities that wouldn't exist without the Internet, and Linux is definitely helping poorer countries that wouldn't have had any options without free software. This is leading to real social changes by giving poor schools [linuxjournal.com] access to "expensive" software.
The physically disabled can work from home [www.dias.de]. Poorer countries with intelligent citizens can now compete directly [theindianprogrammer.com] with foreign superpowers.
The Internet is to the 21st century what the phone was to the 20th century. Initially only in the hands of the rich, then in the hands of the middle class, then in the hands of everybody and taken for granted. Sure, most of the improvements are evolutionary instead of revolutionary. The Internet has improved existing practises: there are Internet equivalents for postal mail, telephones, television, radio, and community halls. But isn't this enough? Isn't a gradual improvement enough to be called a "clear social change"? I say it is.
Re:'The Economist' is guilty of wishful thinking (Score:2)
MP3. Think about it: would DRM or the DMCA ever have become mandatory were it not the restrictions on the flow of large datamasses lifted by the internet?
Only so many people you can connect via parcel post, telephone and sneakernet. It's controllable because it's a hassle. The internet offered this great solution to abetting content "theft," and people have taken it. That's the internet's real major social change: it's allowed us an opportunity to share the art of our lives with each other, and now that we've done so we have become criminals.
Shit, I wonder what it must have been like in the sixties, trading records and not being reprimanded for it. I'll bet it was amazingly freeing...a secret club, just like the original incarnation of Napster, only much more personal and localized.
Re:'The Economist' is guilty of wishful thinking (Score:2)
That's pretty arguable. I mean, name one major social change that has happened as a result of the Internet.
How about the change in power in Serbia? The Internet had a lot to do with creating the social and political unrest that led to Milosevic's fall from power. Yes, other sources of information also had an impact on Milosevic's downfall, but he controlled newspapers and television reasonably well. He couldn't control the Internet.
While the point has definitely been oversold, it's still true that the democratization of information is the enemy of despots and tyrants. Unfortunately, in the US, we're seeing restrictions being placed on speech and other access to information in order to protect the profitability of mega corporations.
Don't get me wrong. I'm a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist. I just don't like the thought of Disney or AOL/TW telling me what I can or can't think and what I can or can't see.
Re:'The Economist' is guilty of wishful thinking (Score:2)
What you have to remember is that there are now rich companies with high-priced lawyers playing the game, and you can be damn sure that they'll make it exceedingly difficult for "someone" to succeed unless they get a slice of the pie. And they like big slices.
Re:'The Economist' is guilty of wishful thinking (Score:2)
And Vulture Capitalists didn't? That part is nothing new. I am talking about the Internet Culture (if there is such a thing) and what it takes to succeed. My point is that the geeks continue to have the upper hand.
For now.
Jack William BellRe:'The Economist' is guilty of wishful thinking (Score:2)
The Economist is generally a well researched and rather insightful magazine which mostly covers political, financial, and business news on a global scale. Unfortunately, their technology research and reporting leaves something to be desired.
This is the magazine which tried to compare the advent of multimedia with the occurence of the personal computer, claiming it was a similar level of transition, and that it could unseat microsoft and make them irrelevant etc. This was in 1994, when it had already become clear to many that multimedia was overhyped and not going to hold any real importance in overall computing. It's one of the reasons I dropped my subscription, as it seemed so clearly ill-reserached and considered.
All in all, take tech reporting from the big E with a grain of salt.
Re:'The Economist' is guilty of wishful thinking (Score:2)
Competing with microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
It is really nice of mr Andersen (i know its misspelled) to think that he can choose not to compete with Microsoft, but that is not how things work.
He was not trying to compete with microsoft when he made netscape either.
Ultimately microsoft decides whether you compete with them or not.
So i think he should have said. "another desicision, made early on was to pray that microsoft doesnt come in and destroy our bussiness again".
Re:Competing with microsoft (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Competing with microsoft (Score:2)
Re:Competing with microsoft (Score:2)
As to monopolies, IBM was being sued under the anti-trust provisions before and during their initial dealings with MS... they ended up settling before the court reached a decision, I think, although I'm not sure if that was related to Reagan's newly business-friendly DoJ.
Re:Competing with microsoft (Score:2, Informative)
So in other words, it was perceived that Netscape and Java would soon bring about a new computing platform that would render the operating system obsolete. (IE, all applications would be delivered in Java and over the web, such that it didn't matter which operating system the app would be running on...)
MS developed/bought Internet Explorer to counter this threat.
Re:Competing with microsoft (Score:2)
You must suffer from selective memory. Whether or not Andreessen wanted to compete with Microsoft, the press was advertising Netscape as the Microsoft killerm, and Marc as the next Bill Gates when it went IPO.
The only quote I recall him making was something about the OS becoming irrelevant, which I'm sure appeared as a threat to Microsoft.
Re:Competing with microsoft (Score:2)
He might not have been trying to compete with Microsoft, but others thought the competition would be interesting to watch.
Netscape was from the start paranoid about Microsoft, some of them even thought that Redmond might have bugged their HQ and would take you outside to dish the dirt on MSFT. Meanwhile they had made plenty of enemies [chrispy.net], including me.
Microsoft at the time was snoozing away oblivious about the Internet. The entire focus of their company was on the launch of Windows 95 and the original MSN which was an AOL rip off. If Marc had not been mouthing off about replacing Microsoft or Microsoft had continued to ignore them as ridiculous rantings Netscape would have had time to consolidate its base before the Microsoft onslaught.
In order to prevent that I made it my business to make it impossible for the upper echelons of Microsoft to ignore Netscape.
Setting Microsoft on Netscape was a win-win situation, one of them would take the other out. Taking out Netscape was the win I was after however.
As Oscar Wilde said 'choose your enemies carefully'.
Re:Competing with microsoft (Score:2)
Re:Competing with microsoft (Score:2)
I suspect the outcome was overdetermined. Whatever anyone outside Netscape did could hardly compete with Marc's own behavior.
Marc took every opportunity he could find to trash Microsoft and claim that Netscape was going to replace them.
Meanwhile Gates was stating in the press that he was concerned that Microsoft would become complacent and lazy as Lotus, Wordperfect and co had become. Marc offered himself up as the perfect enemy at the perfect time.
But don't discount the fact that there were plenty of people outside Microsoft looking to stick a knife in Marc's back.
triumphalism (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:triumphalism (Score:4, Interesting)
No it's not. They usually blame the management, not the tech workers.
In particular biz journalists like to blame the young founders of these companies, as if their lack of seriousness and business experience caused the dot com crash.
It WAS in a lot of way their fault. It was this sheer arrogance, this slavish devotion to fads and unproven business plans that caused a lot of these companies to tank.
Re:triumphalism (Score:2)
No. While most of the ideas in question were really idiotic ("hey, we'll make billions by doing X online instead of through a brick and mortar store!!"), in the vast majority of cases the founders only had enough money to get things set up initially and to find funding.
Where the real money was lost was in the funding. Where did that funding come from? Venture capitalists. Now, do you really think that the VCs let the founders run the show after giving them tens of millions of dollars?
No. When the VCs didn't put in their own CEO, they made damned sure that the founding CEO did what he was told. And what were the VCs after? A quick buck, of course. They wanted to make all of their money on a flashy IPO. This, more than any other reason, is why they encouraged these dot-com companies to "grow and worry about being profitable later". They were trying to groom the company for a flashy IPO. Never mind that in doing so the company in question could never become profitable, having spent far more money on growing than they could ever recover from their business plan. By that time, the VCs would be out of there and the company would be left to rot.
So what caused it to crash down around their ears? I think it was the actual stock market investors starting to wise up and realize that while the company might look like a good IPO candidate, it wasn't necessarily one. Or perhaps they simply got overloaded with all of the IPOs happening. Either way, I suspect the actual stock market investors stopped buying into the hype. Once that happened, IPOs started to become very disappointing from the point of view of the VCs. Once that happened, they started pulling out of the companies they had invested in, in order to save as much of their invested money as they could. The rest, as they say, is history.
So the bottom line is that if the VCs had bothered to concentrate on making the companies they were investing in profitable in the long run instead of trying to make a quick buck, two things would have happened:
Bottom line is that I think the VCs are primarily to blame, though there is plenty of blame to go around.
Anybody else find this a bit depressing (Score:4, Insightful)
"
Any body else find this passage depressing? Its not that he has grown up as much as he has been assimilated made to conform.
Now he wears the suit and drives the SUV. A low key SUV, mind you (there is so much irony about an SUV being low key).
In a related matter isnt it hilarious that the Economist has to explain that Arnold is a Hollywood star. Not that any reader wouldnt know who arnold is but they would love to pretend they dont.
Re:Anybody else find this a bit depressing (Score:2)
Any body else find this passage depressing? Its not that he has grown up as much as he has been assimilated made to conform.
Or maybe some of us don't need to hit people over the head with flashy displays to "prove" how non-conforming we are.
Re:Anybody else find this a bit depressing (Score:2)
If you wear a suit you are trying to conform. (or conforming to the "monoculture")
If you wear what you had in your closet anyway, then you are just being yourself. This is argubly the only real nonconformance.
Re:Anybody else find this a bit depressing (Score:2)
If you wear a suit you are trying to conform. (or conforming to the "monoculture")
Sheesh, spoken like a true geek. Did it ever occur to you that some people like wearing suits? Some people like the fit and feel of a quality garment?
Not to mention that you someone "being yourself" can be different things at different times. Just because I normally like a T-shirt and jeans when I'm programming doesn't mean I also don't enjoy wearing the full-blown suit to a formal party, and not looking like I just rolled out of the rack wearing yesterday's clothes.
Re:Yawn (Score:3, Funny)
I've honestly never seen pure managers work harder than the engineers. They're usually in at 9, out at 6.
Of course, one could make the argument that this is proof that the managers are smarter than the engineers. :->
Re:Anybody else find this a bit depressing (Score:2)
I'm still waiting for that list of what a "pure" manager contributes, BTW.
"
They talk to the other pure managers on the other side of the deal - hopefully the managers from two companies will tie each others time up completely allowing the engineers from both places to talk freely to build something that works.
A steady stream of buzzwords to achieve full buzzword 4.3 compliance as required by the client?
e.g. 'We supply the Solaris Workstations' becomes 'delivered in a robust 64bit security enhanced custom configured appliance terminals'
No (Score:2)
Apology (Score:3, Interesting)
Ok, apology accepted.
Imposter Boy (Score:5, Interesting)
Who? (Score:2, Funny)
Schwarz...en...eg... Oh--a hollywood star! Funny, never heard of him...
Netscape failed b/c MS abuses its power (Score:5, Insightful)
And contrary to what this idiot in the Economist says, "growing up" for the internet does not mean conforming to the previous business regime and becoming nothing more than TV on speed, nothing more than a huge space for corporatization.
Contrarily, the internet is growing up as it realizes its full potential -- more and more user-interaction: more "grass roots" power. As time progresses, the ratio of non-corporate:corporate web-sites will become larger, as: (1) The number of people in this world is increasing faster than the number of corporations; (2) Many people have interest in creating sites or putting information online (not only via web-sites, but via P2P); (2) The bandwidth and computing power becoming available to consumers is increasing. P2P and file-sharing technologies represent a sign of maturity for the internet.
But really, using the word "maturity" in reference to the internet is nonsense. The internet is flexible, and new uses for it will be found continually. There is no "goal" for what the internet should become. It will simply evolve, step by step, web-site by website, idea by idea.
I feel very sorry for anyone who's mind is so small, who's imagination is so bleak, that (s)he can only think of the internet as ultimately useful as an avenue of corporatization and commercialization.
Re:Netscape failed b/c MS abuses its power (Score:3, Funny)
That, and the fact that they built a better Web browser.
Re:Netscape failed b/c MS abuses its power (Score:3, Insightful)
Many people don't get this. It doesn't matter if it was better or not. Microsoft effectively took the "better" gauge out of it when they chose which browser their consumers would use. If it truly was better, then the free market and capitalism in general dictate that it would come out on top because the users would make the choice. Microsoft stole the right to choose from the consumer, and that is infinitely worse than killing a company.
(You know, it's been a while since they pulled these tricks, but every time I think about Microsoft's monopolistic, illegal actions, it still makes me furious.)
Re:Netscape failed b/c MS abuses its power (Score:2)
We'll never know, will we? They won, after all.
Microsoft effectively took the "better" gauge out of it when they chose which browser their consumers would use
Shyeah. Just like General Motors effectively takes the "better" gauge out of the car-stereo market when they choose what radio their consumers will get free with the car.
By your reasoning, Alpine, Kenwood, and Blaupunkt should be dead at the hand of Delco.
Re:Netscape failed b/c MS abuses its power (Score:2)
That argument would fit if A) GM made the cars that 90% of people bought, and B) if they were GM brand radios in the cars, and C) if GM said (under oath) that removing the radios was impossible to do if you wanted the car to run.
Re:Netscape failed b/c MS abuses its power (Score:2)
/me goes off to find a new needle for his irony meter.
Re:Netscape failed b/c MS abuses its power (Score:2)
Re:Netscape failed b/c MS abuses its power (Score:3, Interesting)
Given the history of events I don't see how you can arrive at that conclusion.
At the time Netscape had given up the browser market, turned everything over to Open Source and sold out to AOL who then abandoned the market completely... IE still had less than 50% of the marketshare.
It wasn't until the release of IE 5.0 that Microsoft surpassed Netscapes marketshare... and that wasn't until 1999, long after Netscape had given up.
So basically what you are saying is that it was monopolistic and illegal for Microsoft to compete in the market. You apparently don't want competition, is that it?
You know, every time I see stupid arguments such as yours it makes me furious.
Re:Netscape failed b/c MS abuses its power (Score:2)
Re:Netscape failed b/c MS abuses its power (Score:2)
Whether or not Microsoft used heavy handed tactics is irrelevant, the problem is whether these tactics had any effectiveness. I claim they did not, that they were extraordinarily inept until the point Microsoft had a clearly superior product. Market share figures support this claim of mine.
It is *YOUR* burden to prove otherwise. Oh, and just so you don't forget... calling an opinion a fact does not make it so. (I notice you have been guilty of that twice now)
Marketshare figures and other relevant facts support my claim, not yours. This is the same problem the Justice Department faced, that while they had proof of actions being taken, they had no proof that these actions caused any harm.
Re:Netscape failed b/c MS abuses its power (Score:2)
Maybe you don't remember what happened?
MS made a deal with Spyglass whereby they would sell their browser as Internet Explorer. Spyglass would get a portion of those sales.
Deal in hand, MS then declared that IE would be free and bundled. This screwed Spyglass and Netscape at the same time; the former because the "portion" of sales would now be zero, and the latter because they could now no longer SELL their software.
Is it all coming back now? Netscape needed to sell the browser, because that was part of their business model. That was how they funded further development of it -- the standard model. Now screwed, they then tried to change their business model to become a portal, when portals were big and everyone thought being a portal was the way of the future. (As we now know, that's no way to make money...)
Also remember that at the time most of this happened we are talking about IE3 and NS3 competing, and while each had their quirks, you couldn't really say one was definitively better to the point where it was a clear winner. The only advantage MS had was that IE was bundled.
I've left a lot out but that's my recollection of the events.
Re:Netscape failed b/c MS abuses its power (Score:2)
There are quotes from Marc Andreessen dating back to Netscape's IPO where he said they would be giving the browser away for free, because the real money was in the server space.
You obviously don't remember what happened.
Re:Netscape failed b/c MS abuses its power (Score:2)
Had you been around when it was released (97?), and working in an a productivity challenged envrionment such as I was, you too could've spent a day getting it to compile. Fsck, it was hysterical, and when the sodding thing finally built it had an uptime hovering around the five minutes mark. If you didn't use it much.
Netscape lost the hunger, started producing crap, didn't refactor, and hired losers - according to Mr Zawinksy that is: "you can divide our industry into two kinds of people: those who want to go work for a company to make it successful, and those who want to go work for a successful company. Netscape's early success and rapid growth caused us to stop getting the former and start getting the latter."
Or even "Netscape was shipping garbage".
http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nomo.html
Anyway, we all know who lost, and I can't remember why we're now rehashing it three years after it happened.
Dave
Re:Netscape failed b/c MS abuses its power (Score:2)
And the CTO from Spyglass - is now the head of Abisource which makes a GPLd word processor compatible with GNOME.
Spyglass was actually just leasing Mosaic code from University of Illinois. Gates cost those academic institutions billions when he gave away IE. Spyglass musta had pretty ridiculous contractual lawyers, or idiots running the business end.
Burrow-owls live in a hole in the ground. Why the hell do you think they call them burrow-owls, anyway ?
Re:Netscape failed b/c MS abuses its power (Score:2)
That is not really fair. Spyglass had already given up on the Web browser when they licensed the code to Microsoft. They found they could not make a profit because Netscape effectively gave the browser away for free (sound familiar?).
The Spyglass browser for Windows started from the worst of the Mosaic code bases. The X-Windows code was completely separate. The Windows code was a mess for many reasons, not least the fact that Windows 3.1 was a crock.
By the time Spyglass had cleaned up the code Netscape were way ahead and were puring far more effort in than Spyglass management would pay for. Spyglass Mosaic lacked basic features like tables support, adding something like Javascript or SSL was just not happening on 'Internet time' - or any time come to that.
Microsoft took the spyglass code base and used it for their first IE release, but the later releases share very little code. I doubt there would be much if any of the original code left by now.
Re:Netscape failed b/c MS abuses its power (Score:2)
Netscape lost because MS bundled IE and because Navigator was an abomination to HTML rendering engines. The product has to do what it's supposed to (render web pages) somewhat well before people will use it. Ever tried to get CSS to work in Navigator 4?
(actually, part of IE is ALWAYS loaded in Win9x, as that's what the file browser is)
Nope. The Internet Explorer integration didn't start until Windows 98. Internet Explorer wasn't even [functionally] alive when Windows 95 first came out. And part of IE isn't always loaded; take a look at 98lite [98lite.net] for an example of how IE can be de-integrated from Windows.
Re:Netscape failed b/c MS abuses its power (Score:2)
As it is, Mozilla is the successor to Netscape 4, and CSS, I understand, works just fine in the more recent builds.
Re:Netscape failed b/c MS abuses its power (Score:2)
Far from the only reason... (Score:2)
Kjella
Re:Netscape failed b/c MS abuses its power (Score:2)
You must have been thinking of Zeus and iPlanet.
Asleep (Score:3, Funny)
Was there a memo about this?
Re:Asleep (Score:2)
poster boy not so impressive (Score:5, Informative)
(Background: LoudCloud was attempting to take over my former employer's web operations; not just make a pitch for services, but actively -- and with much hostility on the part of their sales team -- denigrate the infrastructure we had built in our own data center and convince upper management that we were being negligent in our work. We ended up fighting them off by showing that they would have had to lose money on us for several years in order to provide us equivalent services for less cost. They pressed on for months, fueled by our CEO's irrational desire to have Andreessen as a personal friend. The highlight of my career there was the day we canceled our letter of intention with LoudCloud.)
At a meeting in which his local and regional salesmen were in a shouting match with us (my favorite comment from their regional sales director: "You'll never be able to keep up with your little shareware schemes!" -- this was in response to our use of Apache/mod_perl), Mr. Andreessen sat there, first looking at us all as if we were speaking in a language he didn't understand. When talk turned to leasing schedules and other evidence against LoudCloud's value proposition, he became bored and began checking email on his RIM. Eventually he went and made a phone call at the other end of the room, and then sat down away from us so he could fill out his forms for a Federal security clearance (after the meeting I had to show him where our FAX machine was so he could get it in under deadline).
That's how he behaves in meetings with potential clients -- clients that his staff spend insane amounts of money and energy to woo, and bring him in to impress the savages. When we finally ceased talks with LoudCloud, he was very petulant and sent our CEO a near-illiterate email message about how disappointed he was that we had chosen not to contract their services. I understand the CEO still tries to woo him on occasion, despite.
He may very well be the richest (or luckiest) media darling I've ever shaken hands with. I am pretty certain he's also the most shallow.
that doesnt sound good (Score:2)
Re:poster boy not so impressive (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:poster boy not so impressive (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:poster boy not so impressive (Score:2)
They're not like us. They don't think as we do. We are interested in working software; they are interested in expensive designer-label software that they can add to a checklist. I remember hearing similar things when I met two guys from a l33t design firm. They were switching away from Zope and to Cold Fusion: "The problem with Zope is, it's open source." Hello! That's a feature, not a bug. I don't think I'd use Zope, though, for other reasons.
Services a better business than software? (Score:2, Informative)
A software company has terrific gross margins: as we know, software costs almost nothing to reproduce and distribute once it's developed. Sure, the costs of developing it can be high (in a commerical setting), but each additional product costs virtually nothing to stamp onto a CD (or make available on a server for download). The basic point is that the inherently high margins in software provide a great cushion of potential profit, and one can grow a business to vast proportions with little additional development effort (but with some sales effort). Selling a product to one person or 1x10^6 people takes little additional development effort, in theory.
In a services business, however, each additional customer requires expensive infrastructure and personnel to develop. Whereas software has high fixed costs and low variable costs, services businesses (like IT consulting, lawyers, etc.) tend to have high variable costs (mostly labor) and low fixed costs (rent, etc.). The problem comes when you try to grow these businesses to tremendous scale. It is extraordinarily expensive to hire, train, and retain talented people, especially in IT.
For a place like Accenture (or a tiny 4-person consulting firm), the people are the assets--growing the business means growing the employee base, period. This is a fine model, and tends to have low fixed costs, but the profit margins tend to be lower than in packaged software. That said, people-based services businesses don't depend on expensive equipment with which to perform the service.
In Loudcloud's case, you have the worst of both worlds. On the one hand, you need racks and racks of expensive servers, storage, etc. with which to provide the service. On the other hand, you need extremely expensive people to manage all of these complicated setups. You have the high fixed costs of a product-style business, and the high variable costs of a "bodyshop" type business. In addition, you typically don't have proprietary offerings--one can buy managed hosting from a many companies, large and small. Loudcloud tries to address this in two ways, namely by developing "Opsware" (to lower the number of people required to run the business and to give it a pseudo-proprietary edge) and by (presumably) purchasing new equipment as it adds new customers.
From a profitability perspective, though, Andreesen is wrong--packaged software is, as an industry, one of the highest-margin businesses going (both gross and net), while services (esp computer services) tend to have lower margins and lower profitability.
Besides, there are lots of ways to deal with the "end-of-quarter" haggling. You think Nike and Ford don't haggle on the price of services that are provided to them?
they're all sheep (Score:5, Insightful)
To wit: You don't judge the severity of a climate change by seeing how well the oldest and fattest animals are. Many of the dead dotcoms were old-school organizations that took on new names and attempted to shovel their wares onto the internet, only to fail miserably. Although Microsoft gained a lot from the dotcom era, it's worth noting that Microsoft was the domain of "suits" from shortly after its inception. Gates himself railed against open code as far back as anyone can remember, insisted that the Internet was irrelevant to the software market, and has only recently noted that security in network-connected applications is of some importance. Microsoft stock has essentially plateaued -- it's been bouncing around $50-70 for about two years, and dividends are not paid to shareholders. The days of MSFT stock splits leading to the purchase of a new house are over. Microsoft may be a reliable internal moneymaker for some time to come, but it's no longer a realistic investment growth vehicle. Likewise the traditional model technology product business have suffered -- the computer hardware industry has become a lean area, squeezing the life out of traditional middle markets (and driving it online). Traditional old-school service organizations (KPMG and the like) have laid off tens of thousands.
On the other hand, new types of businesses are having an interesting go, and there's been a *lot* of irreversable change. Who'da thunk that Redhat could actually reach profitability? Proprietary networking protocols are dead. Sendmail has been commercialized. Apple has adopted an open-source core, and is now the world's most prolific UNIX software company. Major movies are being rendered with open-source code on clustered commodity computers. More women than ever are finding paths to executive status and power through the technology sector. The center of innovation in browser code is coming from Mozilla, with code more stable than either IE or Netscape on Windows. Java/J2EE has finished
The dotcom world has grown up and joined the old world? I don't think so. Surely anyone who thinks about it for more than a minute can see the clear differentiation between dotcom-era companies that had good ideas such as Palm, and the multitudes of con artists whose shell corporation names are enumerated on the likes of fuckedcompany.com. What's happened is that the dotcom survivors (the ones who actually had ideas and value) have learned to adapt in ways that position them for survival (accepting small but dependable margins), and surprising dominance in others. Some are successfully selling things that are openly available. Others are successfully selling services where the old-school said there was no need or opportunity. The curious thing is that the old-school property sellers (software, music) are being slowly killed by the new-school service/access sellers, and the old-school service sellers are being slowly killed by the new-school open-source/property sellers who find smaller margins attractive. Only in the White House and the oil industry have we returned to the glory days of the 80's and early 90's (and after people look at the balance sheets, the next election will take care of that).
Jon
Re:they're all sheep (Score:2)
Java/J2EE has finished
I know, I've been a Java hater for a good long time and only now am I starting to realise how wrong I was. Yes, it pisses all over C++'s parade. And yes, it does attract lamers like flies to horseshit. But look how entrenched it is... Look how it does at least attempt to support standards... Look how much developers like it... That's one hell of a lot of mindshare Microsoft have lost - go Java.
Dave
Yes, fun Slashdot stories (Score:2)
Sure. And Java is going to make Windows irrelevant. Or was that Netscape that was going to make Windows irrelevant. No, that's right, it was Linux....
Well, anyway, the day of Microsoft is over, and we all know that. These technologies make Windows irrelevant, and now that Netscape has such a huge lead, IE will never catch up. People are going to code directly to the Netscape API, with Java applets for the power stuff like word processors and spreadsheets, and MS-Windows, MS-Office, you're toast....
And
Re:they're all sheep (Score:2)
Lord knows the majority of others won't think more, that's for sure...
Woz
Personal transition - how long? (Score:3, Interesting)
But i think this is ultimately a weak ploy - Andreesen no longer represents programmers - hasn't written a line since 1994? That's gotta suck! The only reason i choose to accept money for code is that i love writing code! You just won't get me in a management position, and i never enjoyed the sweeter benefits of the boom as Andreesen did.
But seriously, how long until the conforming hyphae of capital B Business change the industry i love? Require me to wear a suit to work, even if i never meet with clients? Require me to pass a MSCE and "piracy ethics" test to get my programming & compilation license? Require me to turn my music down? Isn't this the ultimate fruit of the DMCA and all *CAs? so how long?
at the right place, at the right time... (Score:3, Insightful)
Until... The re-incarnation of NCSA's mosaic: Internet Explorer takes over that front seat. Andreessen doesn't care. He sells Netscape to AOL and gets over 1billion dollars.
Was the strategy, the plan that brilliant? Or was it just luck?
Exactly, and it's even worse than that (Score:2)
you forgot to mention (Score:2)