Neil McIntosh
The company many like to paint as the Internet’s David finally got its slingshot working again last week. Netscape, once synonymous with the Web and the Internet boom, unveiled its latest Web browser a day after Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson delivered his damning findings of law against the Internet’s Goliath – Microsoft.
The new software, Netscape 6, got a mixed welcome: while its speed and small download size won praise, it was criticised for being buggy – although this was only a “preview” release ahead of the final version to be launched in the second half of this year. However, Steve Case, America OnLine’s (AOL) chief executive, proudly announced that the old Netscape magic was back.
This was Netscape’s first major release in almost two years, during which time the company’s market share was overtaken by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and Netscape was subsumed into AOL. Microsoft’s conduct towards Netscape was at the centre of the court case.
Officially, Netscape denies the timing of the release had anything to do with the court findings being published but was always intended to coincide with a large trade show in Los Angeles. Its defence is supported by the problems in managing the “open-source” collaboration between voluntary programmers who wrote a large portion of the new browser.
And as a former Netscape executive said to the Wall Street Journal: “It wouldn’t help AOL to come out with a revolutionary new browser right as the trial is considering how the Netscape browser is being defeated by Microsoft’s anti-competitive practices.”
Jim Hammerly, vice-president of AOL’s Netscape browser division, says the court case did have some bearing on the new launch, but only in terms of the practicalities of getting the product to consumers, rather than courtroom tactics.
“One of the reasons Netscape has been quiet for a long time is because we had been prohibited from participating with many of our partners in distribution,” he says, referring to contracts which bound PC makers to using both Microsoft’s Windows and Internet Explorer.
“Over the past few months we have announced major new partnerships with manufacturers to embed Netscape 6 on new machines. So that will give consumers the choice of which browser to use. We see ourselves re-emerging in that market.”
But can the company really compete against Microsoft? Hammerly says Netscape has no targets for attempting to claw back market share in the desktop PC arena. Instead, the emerging new markets of Internet devices such as TV set-top boxes and Internet-enabled mobile devices will provide the greatest opportunities for Netscape – and AOL.
“There is the new class of Internet appliances for the home and business. We have a lot of partners who are porting this technology to additional platforms and many of these smaller devices, and wireless devices, are major growth areas.”
But while it has been proved that Netscape was crunched by the might of Microsoft, this is no longer the David versus Goliath battle that Net old-timers – and Microsoft’s many enemies – like to pretend.
Netscape’s parent company, AOL, sees its browser agreement with Microsoft expire later this year, shortly after the final version of Netscape 6 is due to ship. AOL is being coy about its relationship with Microsoft, saying only that it would like to maintain its prominent position on the out- of-the-box Windows screen, given in return for making Internet Explorer the exclusive AOL browser.
But Microsoft’s once-iron rule over its desktop may wane after the United States court’s findings against it, and AOL has been busy forming its own partnerships with large PC makers like Gateway which could make it less dependent on Microsoft.
At the very least, should it decide to, AOL could then put Netscape on the desktops of its 16-million users worldwide, almost overnight. That kind of power makes this battle very much Goliath versus Goliath.
ENDS