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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Daniel Schuh who wrote (11638)	10/22/1998 12:52:00 PM
From: rudedog	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

Dan - Clark wrote: "No one in my organization knows about this message." IMHO, given that Clark was chairman and CEO, it doesn't matter who else knew about the message. This was a very clear and direct request from the founder and lead executive of Netscape for MSFT to consider taking an equity position in Netscape, more than 6 months before the infamous June 95 meeting. If Clark failed to communicate that information to his 'new hire' Barksdale, I'm not surprised. I would assume that Clark would want at least a few months to take the cut of Barksdale's jib before spilling his guts, given the 'revolving door' executive ranks in silicon valley startups. Warden may have made another key point with Clark's testimony, regarding Netscape's awareness of MSFT plans to include browser functionality as a part of the OS before Netscape fielded their first product. I have a little inside knowledge on this particular piece of history and none of the players saw the browser itself as the revenue piece. Netscape was in a pickle over their abuse of trademark and IP given that Spyglass had the licensing rights from U of I for mosaic, and Netscape's best move would probably have been to get MSFT to do a licensing deal and square things up all around, but they were a little too greedy. Spyglass, which actually owned the rights, took a leaner deal than the one offered to Netscape, who did not own the rights. Go figure. Netscape's behavior over the next 6-9 months was therefore driven by the legal issues around the U of I mosaic IP to some extent. I think you will see some interesting details come out as the legal teams bear down on this particular point in time.