I don't know, what's "client software" supposed to mean here? What's the browser if it's not "client software"? Netscape was planning to cede it all to Microsoft all along? Ok.
The thing about that meeting, the Netscape story is pretty much in character with many similar stories about meeting with Microsoft. Here's one I happen to have at hand:
Feeding the lion" is how Max Metral describes his visits to Microsoft headquarters. Metral is the 24-year-old chief of technology at Firefly Network, a small Internet software company based in Cambridge, Mass. One evening in February, he and his partners flew to Seattle to spend the next day showing off Firefly's software, which has aroused a good deal of investor interest. One of the Microsoft engineers, who have elevated the techno-put-down to high art, glanced at Firefly's software and concluded, "We could do that in a week." But they did seem interested in Firefly's business plan, Metral recalls. When the meetings were over and the Firefly team drove back to Sea-Tac International Airport, they had not only fed the lion but also felt the fear.
"The reality of the software business today is that if you find something that can make you ridiculously rich, then that's something Microsoft is going to want to take from you," Metral says. "All we can do is meet with them and try to see what they're going to do to us when they feel like doing it. If they want to kill you, they'll kill you." (from nytimes.com )
At the time, I mostly laughed at the part about Microsoft "doing that in a week". Turns out that a Microsoft week in this sense was worth $40m or so, the techno-put-down guy didn't say how many programmers "we" included. The Firefly offer was pretty good compared to what Steve Chase got for AOL in a circa '93 meeting with Bill & Co. "We'll buy you or kill you", and the offer was $50m. Pretty fortuitous for AOL that Netscape came along, requiring Bill to put a bullet through MSN's head, and pay (in kind, of course) AOL to take a bunch of Microsoft software, while scrupulously denying the existence of any alternative.
I don't know if figures ever came up, I imagine the offer would have been in a similar range, something in 8 figures for 20% of Netscape and a board seat, along with unlimited code rights. Normal kind of strings for a Microsoft "investment". Funny kind of "free market" at work here, but anything else would be "communist", I guess.
Cheers, Dan. |
