Andreesen "Grows Up"

inah writes "The original poster boy for the old .com economy and how he's currently doing. "The poster-child who grew up" from The Economist."

Comments

I'm not an expert on accounting by any means

[Anonymous Coward]

but this guy's firm did one hell of a job with Enron.

Link slashdotted. oh well.

'The Economist' is guilty of wishful thinking

[Jack William Bell]

The closing paragraph of the article reads:

The Internet has changed, too, as Mr Andreessen's own journey from Netscape to Loudcloud illustrates. What was once the province of geeks is now ruled by suits. The web has become the basis of a vast and complex industry dominated by large companies. Even though it started as a consumer-led phenomenon, the Internet's greatest impact has been on business. There turned out to be very little money in selling "front-end" software such as browsers to consumers; but there were fortunes to be made at the "back-end" selling services, software, storage and hardware to companies. Loudcloud may be successful in its own way, but it will not be the Netscape of the decade, the dawn of a new world. The Internet, like its poster-boy, has grown up.

This is clearly the kind of thing that the editors and readers of The Economist would like to believe about the Internet: The show is over, nothing more to see, move along everyone, move along. Too bad it is total tripe...

Andreeson and LoudCloud are a real business now, true. And their revenue model is well designed and might actually work. But the Internet isn't about to turn into a buttondown, suit ruled, geeks don't make the rules anymore thing anytime soon. That is what happens to mature markets and, while the first gold-rush is over, the Internet is far from a mature market. There is still lots of room for someone with ideas to make a difference. What is less likely is that those ideas are worth twenty million in VC money.

I'm afraid the suits are in store for a hard awakening if they think differently.

Jack William Bell

Re:'The Economist' is guilty of wishful thinking

[nathanh]

The Internet's greatest impact has been on the the voice it gives the public. Business is just using it as a tool, people use it to invoke change in the systems that regulate their lives.

That's pretty arguable. I mean, name one major social change that has happened as a result of the Internet. Sure, we're communicating faster, but has it actually provided a clear social change?

And why isn't faster communications a clear social change? Would you have cried out "name one major social change as a result of telephones!" if you were around in the early 1900s?

These days I can bank online, buy food online, pay rent online, communicate in almost-real-time with overseas relatives, find communities in my local area with similar hobbies/interests, or buy and sell things with people I've never met. How is this anything other than a social change?

Government services are increasingly online. The government is nothing more than the organised administrators of society. If the Internet is helping the government then it is directly helping society as well.

Linux is built by online communities that wouldn't exist without the Internet, and Linux is definitely helping poorer countries that wouldn't have had any options without free software. This is leading to real social changes by giving poor schools access to "expensive" software.

The physically disabled can work from home. Poorer countries with intelligent citizens can now compete directly with foreign superpowers.

The Internet is to the 21st century what the phone was to the 20th century. Initially only in the hands of the rich, then in the hands of the middle class, then in the hands of everybody and taken for granted. Sure, most of the improvements are evolutionary instead of revolutionary. The Internet has improved existing practises: there are Internet equivalents for postal mail, telephones, television, radio, and community halls. But isn't this enough? Isn't a gradual improvement enough to be called a "clear social change"? I say it is.

Apology

[pyrrho]

What? He's sorry he tried to rip off Mosaic and commercialize a public domain effort and got out foxed by a company much better at doing that?

Ok, apology accepted.

Imposter Boy

[deanj]

The article "Imposter Boy", is worth a read. This is the ONLY article I've ever seen from the perspective of the non-Netscape people of how all that Mosaic/Netscape got started. http://www.chrispy.net/marca/gqarticle.html ALL the other articles I've ever seen are from either Netscape's or Andreesen's perspective, perpetuating the myth of what really happened in the beginning. I've seen a lot of people comment on this article before, and I'll tell you most of the comments are "sour grapes, sour grapes". Well, just look at what the article says about people that worked at Netscape.

Re:triumphalism

[nomadic]

It's typical of biz articles to blame the dot com debacle on tech workers.

No it's not. They usually blame the management, not the tech workers.

In particular biz journalists like to blame the young founders of these companies, as if their lack of seriousness and business experience caused the dot com crash.

It WAS in a lot of way their fault. It was this sheer arrogance, this slavish devotion to fads and unproven business plans that caused a lot of these companies to tank.

Re:What was he doing in 1991?

[Ratbert42]

I still remember Usenet threads like this back when he started what became Netscape. Fascinating to go back and see the mindset at the time.

Re:What was he doing in 1991?

[Cheshire Cat]

Actually I found this thread to be of even more interest. I quote:

Erm? Correct me if I'm wrong, but are commercial activities on the Internet
suddenly smiled upon? It sounds very much like you know what you're doing,
but I can't say I've ever seen an Internet server dedicated to the commercial
aspects of electronic communication (short of Compu$erve, and that doesn't
really count). Mind explaining where the loophole lies?

Pretty interesting view of the Internet at the time, no?

Personal transition - how long?

[ciole]

i thought this take on Andreesen was interesting, to say the least. It's a nice try to take a former "poster boy" and attempt to use his personal changes to analyse an industry. It seems like capital B Business has, for years, had this immense need to pull coders and representations of coders away from the maverick whiz kid over to the "smart suit" wearing, conforming manager. Re-reading the article with this in mind, doesn't the crowing seem sinister?

But i think this is ultimately a weak ploy - Andreesen no longer represents programmers - hasn't written a line since 1994? That's gotta suck! The only reason i choose to accept money for code is that i love writing code! You just won't get me in a management position, and i never enjoyed the sweeter benefits of the boom as Andreesen did.

But seriously, how long until the conforming hyphae of capital B Business change the industry i love? Require me to wear a suit to work, even if i never meet with clients? Require me to pass a MSCE and "piracy ethics" test to get my programming & compilation license? Require me to turn my music down? Isn't this the ultimate fruit of the DMCA and all *CAs? so how long?

Re:What was he doing in 1991?

[Shaheen]

Interesting that Brian Behlendorf (co-founder of Apache) posted to that thread as well.

Re:Netscape failed b/c MS abuses its power

[sheldon]

"Microsoft stole the right to choose"

Given the history of events I don't see how you can arrive at that conclusion.

At the time Netscape had given up the browser market, turned everything over to Open Source and sold out to AOL who then abandoned the market completely... IE still had less than 50% of the marketshare.

It wasn't until the release of IE 5.0 that Microsoft surpassed Netscapes marketshare... and that wasn't until 1999, long after Netscape had given up.

So basically what you are saying is that it was monopolistic and illegal for Microsoft to compete in the market. You apparently don't want competition, is that it?

You know, every time I see stupid arguments such as yours it makes me furious.