>>>Well, Chaz the question should be what, if anything, is to be done?<<<
True. However, this is not exactly a trivial question.
Historically you have had a situation where MSFT would destroy a business or a competitor just because they were about to get market share in a new part of the software business MSFT hadn't seen fit to enter.
The last year or so they have been more or less behaving, because of the DOJ and various lawsuits.
What should Netscape do? Since they have so much less money than MSFT, and MSFT uses their company like an artillery bank, they need to be *far* more agile than MSFT to compete heads up. This is not the old, slow IBM of the seventies that Bill Gates was up against. Despite his 40 billion, Gates seems to still be hungry.
Now before you have to remind me, I admit that the last year or several years I was much more sanguine on the prospects for the Internet Browser and/or Java to become the new development platform and so allow a breathing space for developers where they were free of MSFT for a moment and so could innovate. Now while this has happened to some extent, MSFT has proven that they could use their Windows franchise to distort this process and damage their competition, leaving the platform firmly in their hands for the moment. They still have Windows, and have made inroads toward taking over the Internet platform(s). So, I was too optimistic.
But to the question you posed:
Do you expect that there are lots of executives out there that are so much smarter than Gates, Ballmer, et al, that they can go heads up in an established business against a unscrupulous and intelligent giant and win?
Take the alternative - the great new idea for a product and industry. One that MSFT can't grab and/or destroy, ala Stacker, Java, etc. OK, but isn't that what you and I, the little guys, are supposed to do in our garages?
The one thing that I see that Netscape could truly do better is their core product development. There is no excuse for it being such sloppy code. They have way too many newbie programmers over there, and they don't know how to structure code, debug, or profile. The design is also atrocious, being market driven at this point.
The server line is way too complex, being based on marketing's ideas for nickle and dimimg the customers rather than technical sense. This is the kind of thing that hurt IFMX. IFMX has since unified their server lines into one line, one product, on all platforms, and Netscape should do the same thing. Then do something about the pricing. They lose lmost all the new small websites to competing products like Apache, WebSite, and IS. Eventually this will tell, sooner rather than later, probably. It is only the erstwhile rapid expansion of the internet that kept them afloat with this product strategy so far. So, they should get the marketing people out of the design decisions. Let them figure out how to sell the more unified, simpler, cheaper, more popular server line that is so badly needed. I know this could be done because they use the same code base for all these servers, and the distinctions between products are highly artificial.
You expect this technical sloth at a giant like MSFT, with all their people, and indeed MSFT has the problem too, in spades. This should be the area where Netscape could be smaller, tighter, better, faster, *in their established business.* But I don't see any sign that Barksdale or Andresen have the technical chops to be able to see what is wrong with their people or development cycle. They need to bring in a heavy hitter. MSFT hired away Cutler and his team, and then I think the guy who did the Borland IDE (I forget his name) They are not averse to going out and getting the best and letting them run with the ball (for a little while, after which, as the marketing people like to say about programmers, they are 'put back in their boxes'.) NSCP should do the same, put new technical people in at the very top, and retire Andresen to Advanced Technology, Special Projects, or some other classic semi-retired position where he has time to enjoy his money.
If Netscape wants to stay in the business, they need to keep developing the browser. I have lost my enthusiasm for the browser code giveaway, so called, as I have realized than this giant piece of code is more likely to be a big hairball for any enterprising folks wanting to use it as a start than anything else. If it took 500 people to hose it up, it will probably take 25 people at least to fix it. And why would anyone else fix it, let alone innovate, when you have to give away browsers to stay in that business?
Netscape may give it away, charge for it, or whatever. I prefer forcing MSFT to charge for IE, thus allowing them to charge. As it stands, they are tacitly joining MSFT in shutting out any third party with great ideas for new browsers (Sun, Oracle, me and you), by giving it away. The fact that there are now two companies cooperating in predatory pricing doesn't amuse me that much, in fact. They undercut the DOJ on that. This is the Coke vs Pepsi strategy - while appearing to compete, two large companies force everybody else out of the public conciousness and off the store shelves. (Think of Javagator and Mosaic as Nehi and RC cola.) I regard both the NSCP and MSFT browser givaways as attacks on the rest of us in the business.
A pox on both their houses?
Cheers,
Chaz
P.S. Was that button marked 'Hot' by any chance? ;-) Sorry about the disorganization and typos - I haven't the time today to do it right. |
