Friday, Jul 25, 2008
Jun 18, 1999 | Once upon a time, back when the Web was young, when 14.4 modems were online-access Ferraris and spam was still just lunch meat, one fervent belief united many early Internet pioneers: Microsoft didn't "get" the Net. Bill Gates was blind to the Internet's revolutionary potential, ran the wistful line of thinking, and therefore Microsoft, ultimately, was doomed.
Who did capture the hearts and minds of Net citizens? Why, Netscape, of course. Netscape may not have invented the Web browser, but few people who were online in 1994 will deny that the release of Netscape Navigator fundamentally changed how people interacted with cyberspace. Navigator was fast -- fast enough to make Web surfing more than just a hobby for committed nerds. Before Netscape, the Web was cool. After Netscape, the Web was fun.
And after the Netscape public offering in the summer of 1995, the Web was for real. Netscape's stunningly successful IPO symbolized, in a very concrete way, the lucrative intersection of Wall Street finance and the still playful, wet behind the ears world of the Net. More than any other single event, Netscape's IPO ushered in the era of the "Internet economy" -- that mad roller coaster ride of techno-fueled stock market speculation that continues to this very day.
But in the long run, winning over the hearts and minds of legions of Web surfers proved insufficient. Conventional wisdom was wrong -- Microsoft wasn't doomed. Far from it. Today, Netscape is a mere subsidiary of America Online, with shrinking browser market share and sinking staff morale. Microsoft, meanwhile, reigns supreme, more powerful and profitable than ever. Threats to Redmond's hegemony still exist, but Netscape isn't one of them.
Was it all a dream -- that fantasy that the Net would free us all from unwilling allegiance to a single corporate monolith? As the critical events of the Web's formative years now begin to fade into the hoary status of myth and folklore, two new books purport to explain just what happened, to create history out of the recent past. The books, "How the Web Was Won" and "Netscape Time," complement each other nicely -- both are one-sided accounts that tell different sides of the story. "How the Web Was Won," by Seattle Times journalist Paul Andrews, pushes the Microsoft point of view. "Netscape Time," by Netscape co-founder Jim Clark, is understandably skewed toward Netscape's side of the story.
Clark's acerbic, no-holds-barred, "I've got $2 billion and can say whatever the hell I want" style is more entertaining than Andrews' painstaking e-mail by corporate e-mail reconstruction of how Microsoft tackled the Web like a pit bull on steroids. But neither book satisfies -- both stab at the truth with all-too partisan knives.
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