Netscape: RIP
<< [Move our conversation] Feel free to do so. >>
Thank you, Don.
<< Personally, I still think it's a shame Microsoft was allowed to get away with the business tactics they did, which eliminated the possibility of Netscape (and many others) surviving as a stand alone company. A lot of good technology, much of which had the potential to be great technology, was burred as a result. >>
In a sense so do I ...
... but Tit for Tat ... and Microsoft has certainly had its brushes with DOJ and other regulators worldwide ... Netscape killed itself.
Netscape had 1st mover advantage, and initially best mover advantage, and Netscape attempted to set the de facto standards for web browsing and establish proprietary control of the architecture of same, with total disregard and disdain for other (slowly) evolving standards.
They got overly ambitious and got bogged down in some buggy code as they evolved Navigator (4) and Communicator (4) and concurrently Microsoft stabilized IE, and debugged their own code more rapidly than Netscape, and as the desktop gorilla (using Geoffrey Moore's terminology borrowed from Morris and Ferguson's "Computer Wars") exercised their competitive advantage to set de facto standards, utilizing proprietary extensions. Such is the nature of corporate battles to establish marketplace power.
The counter-tactic, of course, is to use committee based standards which is what Mozilla (and others) are attempting to do. I applaud that.
Netscape simply got beat at the game they tried to play, which was the same game that Intel, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, and others (Moore's "gorillas"), had played more successfully.
As an investor, I invest in market leaders, or wannabe market leaders, and particularly those market leaders that establish proprietary architectural control of an open standard, or appear to be doing so.
OTOH, as a user, I prefer to use products that adhere to committee based open standards.
Eighteen months ago according to oneStat, Netscape Navigator 4 had 1% usage share of worldwide web sites visits, and Netscape 7 had 0.64 % with "other" versions of Netscape (including all Communicators and Netscape 6) at 1.2%.
One year later (January) 2004, Netscape Navigator 4 had declined to <0.4% and today its probably on the order of <0.2%. Even Microsoft IE 4.0 had only 0.6% usage in June of this year. These are oneStat's June 2004 usage stats:
1. Microsoft IE 6.0 69.3%
2. Microsoft IE 5.5 12.9%
3. Microsoft IE 5.0 10.8%
4. Mozilla 2.1%
5. Opera 7.0 1.02%
6. Safari 0.71%
7. Microsoft IE 4.0 0.6%
All other ~2.5%
Netscape is now virtually extinct except for 7.x which appears to have peaked and now appears to be declining. The Mozilla variants - especially Firefox - are on the rise. As a consequence, as a practical matter, and because there are so many free alternatives (some of them quite "light" resource wise) there is absolutely no reason why a website designer today needs to factor any version of Netscape (other than Netscape 7.x) into their compatibility plans, worry about "Netscape Safe" colors, or any proprietary non-standard Netscape proprietary hooks from the nineties. Its a CSS world, and Netscape never worried too much about the evolving CSS standards back then.
BTW: As a beta tester of Netscape from almost day one, back when few people knew what a winsock was, and much less when few individuals could configure dialup networking using it, and by 1996 a certified true blue Netscape "fan," if anyone had told me back in the 1995 to 1997 era that by the end of 98 I'd probably be using IE instead of Netscape as my browser of choice, I would have laughed at them. Little did I know.
Meantime, SillyDog701 reported this today:
>> Windows Lite, A Stripped-Down Version Coming?
Microsoft said Monday that it is prepared to "put a stripped-down version of Windows on the market if its appeal to suspend a March antitrust ruling that found in favor of the European Union," according to the Associated Press. The original landmark decision included a "record €497 million (US$600 million) fine as well as orders to hand over software code to rivals in the server market, and to change the way it packages its own Media Player software into Windows."We'll certainly be ready to comply," Microsoft's chief lawyer, Brad Smith, said at a news conference. He said the U.S. software giant had "spent millions of dollars over the past few months" to prepare a version of its ubiquitous operating system that would satisfy EU regulators. <<
And as part of Netscape's self-inflicted, however unfortunate, death knell:
>> Red Hat Acquires Netscape Server Products.
October 1, 2004: Marek Stepien has reported that Red Hat, Inc. has intended to require the server products of Netscape Communications from AOL, as part of the company's strategy to expand beyond its core Linux products. Red Hat then plans to release Netscape Enterprise Suite as open-source software. <<
In business, as in life, there are Winners and Losers. It is a survival of the fittest (not necessarily the bestest) Game.
The Epitaph:
Netscape: RIP
Time for Robert E. Lee Prewitt to blow a Taps!
Best,
- Eric - |
