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Technology Stocks : MSFT Internet Explorer vs. NSCP Navigator -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: damniseedemons who wrote (15887)	1/7/1998 8:14:00 AM
From: mike iles	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

To all, Just a stray thought which relates to MSFT's long-term goal of penetrating the enterprise space. I think it will be more difficult than they imagine because of the cultural differences between their behaviour and what enterprise customers want from their vendors. One of the articles quoted someone as saying that the real damage from the DOJ imbroglio will be that potential partners will be extremely cautious about getting into bed with the Redmondites after seeing how they behaved with CPQ and others.... i.e. terminating their Windows licenses because they wanted to use Navigator. This kind of behaviour may be OK in the retail market but in the enterprise market custies are looking for vendors who behave like partners (IBM, Peoplesoft come to mind). MSFT doesn't understand what this means ... e.g. the delays in Windows 97. I don't think enterprise custies will tolerate this when it comes to their business-critical apps, not when they have alternatives. Although I'm sure they would admire the ECH approach to business (ethical, courteous, and humourous) -g- regards, Mike

To: damniseedemons who wrote (15887)	1/9/1998 3:38:00 PM
From: Charles Hughes	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24154

>>>And I guess I also disagree with the amount of credit you give Andreessen--my understanding is that others at Netscape (Clark, Barksdale, Eric Hahn (!), Mike Homer, etc.) are the ones who did all those great things.<<< Maybe you are right about that. I was referencing his work on the Mosaic project as a student (credit for which he doesn't share enough), but particularly capitalizing on that experience to contact the right people with the idea of taking Mosaic commercial. Now if you were to tell me that Barksdale et al thought of that and just recruited the student who seemed to be most central to the project I would rethink that. No matter how you look at it though, Andresen and the rest of the folks at Netscape had to actually build the product, help invent the business (along with thousands of other developers and small companies), show that the whole thing was important, would pencil out, was a big part of the future, before Microsoft budged. So on the innovation comparison level vis-a-vis MSFT and the Internet, Netscape is the clearly more innovative company. As are the rest of the cast of thousands who worked on the Internet before MSFT got the picture. After which MSFT came in dead last. Netscape product development lately has shown some cracks, but I think that is due to rapid expansion and the experience level as a software development organization. Certainly they have released some stuff I would never have let out of QA (as has Microsoft.) This is partly due to competitive pressure to get things out fast at both companies. I have no clue how much influence Andresen has now on the style of product development. Personally, I would take my foot off the gas for a month a put out a debugged and faster release. Then just stay at that level for a few months to allow the company to regain it's quality perception. Chaz