How The Web Was Won (by A Bully)
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday June 21, 1999
The writing of Internet history has begun. Andrew Leonard shows there are already markedly different views of what has happened in its few short years.
Once upon a time, back when the Web was young, when 14.4kbps modems were online-access Ferraris and spam was still just lunch meat, one fervent belief united many Internet pioneers: Microsoft didn't "get" the Net. Bill Gates was blind to the Internet's revolutionary potential, and therefore Microsoft, ultimately, was doomed.
Who did capture the hearts and minds of Net citizens? The young fast-moving software company called Netscape, of course. Netscape may not have invented the Web browser - the key software that allowed the Net to become a graphics environment - but few people who were online in 1994 will deny that the Netscape Navigator browser fundamentally changed how people interacted with cyberspace.
Navigator was fast - fast enough to make Web surfing more than just a hobby for nerds. Before Netscape, the Web was cool. After Netscape, the Web was fun. And after the Netscape public float in 1995, the Web was for real.
More than any other single event, Netscape's float ushered in the era of the Internet economy, that mad roller coaster of techno-fuelled stockmarket speculation that continues to this 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, threats to Microsoft's hegemony still exist, but Netscape isn't one of them. Today, Netscape is a mere subsidiary of the world's biggest Internet service company, America Online, with shrinking market share for its browser. Microsoft, meanwhile, reigns supreme.
As the critical events of the Web's formative years now begin to fade into 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 journalist Paul Andrews from the Seattle Times, pushes the Microsoft point of view. Netscape Time, by Netscape co-founder Jim Clark, is understandably skewed toward Netscape's side of the story. Netscape time? Well, let's just say Clark has a unique take on the browser wars between Microsoft and Netscape. His young band of programmers, living on pizza and cola, sleeping under their desks - to Clark, they're the true heroes. Microsoft, on the other hand, is basically a breeding ground for ruthless exterminators, led by a living fiend. Clark writes: "I for one had no doubt about what lay beneath Bill Gates' jolly nerd exterior - a killer instinct and sheer, relentless aggression."
Clark and Andrews differ on more than just their characterisation of individual players. Both are writing with an eye to readers likely to be following the current anti-trust trial between Microsoft and the US Government.
For Andrews, the trial seems like an unfair imposition on a hard-working company; near the end of his account, Andrews notes that "the battle that Microsoft had won in the market . . . was shifting to the vastly untechnological terrain of law and justice". For Clark, however, the trial is a just reward: Microsoft wouldn't have won the battle if it had not abused that market - "normal, tough business tactics, when put into practice by monopolies, become illegal", he declares.
Right from the outset you expect Clark to make a strong case for viewing Netscape as the abused victim of a rapacious monopoly. Clark is a player, after all. But Clark is also at his worst when he is whining about Microsoft. After pages and pages celebrating the glory of the Silicon Valley entrepreneur, all of a sudden it's time to call in the federal cavalry. And he's only a little bit better when he's going on and on about his other obsession, the fabled initial public offering. Netscape Time starts with the public float, returns to it in the middle, and then finishes with it. After all those references to 22-year-old millionaires, it's hard to feel much sympathy for Netscape's eventual fate.
Netscape Time is good, though, when Clark is being most frank, such as when he delivers his unvarnished impressions of venture capitalists (a species he delights in calling "velociraptors") or former business colleagues, such as Ed McCracken, the chief executive of Silicon Graphics, who forced Clark out of his own company. Clark is best when he's most biased. You don't expect him to be fair. And he does have reasons to be excited, as well as angry.
While he occasionally overstates Netscape's role in cyberspace, he doesn't exaggerate by much. Netscape's rapid-fire release of new versions of its browser for free downloading really did rev up the software product cycle to unheard-of speeds. Net veterans like to joke about the fast pace of Internet time - Netscape, more than any other company, opened up that throttle.
Life simply hasn't been the same since. Every company interested in doing business in the software market has had to react, including Microsoft.
But Microsoft certainly wasn't as clueless as its critics suggested. One of Andrews' best contributions in How the Web Was Won is his detailed portrayals of the lower-level Microsoft employees who did "get" the Net.
But Andrews leaves out crucial parts of the story. He fails even to consider the possibility that Microsoft's dominance of the operating system market could have given it an unfair advantage in the browser wars. The book does not once address accusations levelled by hardware vendors that Microsoft twisted arms to ensure that its browser, Internet Explorer, would receive preferential inclusion on new computers.
People are lazy. If there's a browser already installed on their new computer, they're likely to use it. It was inevitable Microsoft's share of the browser market would rise as consumers bought computers and started the default browser.
More books will undoubtedly be written about the birth of the Web. These two advance the story beyond what was known publicly before. Netscape may no longer be the knight in shining armour, but the Net has plenty of others willing to charge into the fray. Salon.com How The Web Was Won (by Paul Andrews; Broadway Books) Netscape Time (by Jim Clark with Owen Edwards; St Martin's Press)
© 1999 Sydney Morning Herald