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Can Marc Do it Again?
Someone gave us the link to Marc Andreessen's
latest company effort. He's got a good team, lotsa money, and credibility - and he wants to rule the space of "hosted applications".
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You know, he just might be able to do it again....
Go get 'em!
No matter how good the team, and no matter how much money you have, if the prodcut is flawed, the company will crash and burn. The only thing that abundant talent and money assure is success IF you have a good product. Many times, bad management has contributed to the downfall of a good prodcut, but very rarely is the opposite true. If he has a good idea, he will suceed, unless, of course, Microsoft or AOL buy him out first.
Peter Pawlowski
From the article...
In a recent conversation with Sm@rt Reseller, Andreessen declined to comment on any unannounced projects or investments.
Gee, wonder what he's got up his sleeve. Anyway, I'm pretty much behind anything that Marc tries to pull off. He's just escaped a very large evil, and one can't help but wonder why he stayed so long... to maintain control maybe? How long before he realized that it was a failed effort? Anyway, I know this comment sucks, but it's still the
First REAL Post! Hellz yeah!.! Skr1pt K1ddi35 R00L!!!
To anyone who wasn't paying attention, the above comment SARCASM.
I'm sorry, but I just can't see this succeeding with M$ hanging around. Big movement operations like this have a tendancy (as we all know) to get quickly dwarfed (or bought by) Microsoft. I'm curious if the Justice department stuff will have any effect on M$ jealous market agression.
Why should Marc's company be any different?
-- Moondog
HAHAHAHA, I recognise that from a wrestling
thing I was watching last night! It is so classic that a first poster would be a big professional wrestling fan!
HAHAHAHAHA!
It us understandable to be surly sometimes.
Who knows if they have the story right but building a platform with application server, database, directory server, etc. internaly or through aquisitions is *very* ambitious.
So what would be the value added that these guys could contribute compared to their erstwhile competition such as IBM, Oracle and (lest we forget) Micro$oft?
Either the story is wrong or this thing has a *very* high probability of crashing and burning.
Exactly how good a product is the hosted application concept, anyway?
I suppose I could see it's use within a business network, where it would be more space efficient. But I hear all sorts of people in the media talking about all the public uses of hosted applications. That it would allow people to buy smaller computers and download and use applications only when they need them. And maybe it's my geek-nature, but hearing that just gives me the heeby-jeebies.
I mean, I like owning installation disks and setting aside space for mostly stable software. It means that I know I can rely on being able to use it. Sorta.
Now I know that this is a "free market" that is supposed to be governed by the consumers. But I don't really trust our "free market" to do things my way.
Of course, for a while we'll have the best of both worlds, and maybe things won't change that much at all.
But still, hearing about industry plans for my living room sometimes makes me want to grab my PEZ and run for the hills.
All I want is for the chips to go fast, and the system to stay up.
-- "So far, I have not found the science" -Soul Coughing
You're second, fool.
It seems to me most people mentioned were suits. Who
is going to code this thing, or is it going to be developed
entirely through acquisitions (a la Worldcom)? The ASP
market seems to be taking off (as much as I hate it), so
they'll need a product within the next couple of years,
thus I expect Netscape quality of code, that is to say that
it'll be hard make a worse product (granted MS will find a way,
as with browsers).
.. this one is going belly up fast. "And he's assembled a killer management team chock-full of former Netscape gurus ... to catapult this company to success." That pretty much says it all right there doesn't it?
I personally find the concept of downloading apps (per use) quite disturbing, for a couple of reasons:
::chuckles:: (only if they're really good)
a) Why couldn't they charge per use - get people ensnared and then: "Oh whoops! We're sorry, costs are high, we're going to have to institute daily fees."
b) Why couldn't they charge TO use - don't get me wrong, owning software is great, but... giving other people money for it?
c) Bandwith/Net Congestion. Take this example: Day before an essay is due and like usual I haven't started. I go to this page, pop open the app (I assume this is the kind of app they're talking about) and the app takes 20 minutes to load, causing me to loose half my hair.
d) Internet conncetion. My modem isn't all that reliable (good ol' earthlink) and it drops my connection. Would you have to save every 20 seconds so that you don't loose work when you drop off the net?
e) "Haxors" Your arch-rival at school needs no more than to sniff your password and edit a few key phrases. When you print - in a rush, you don't notice them, and you're failed.
Anyways, having to d/l software every time you use it is not my idea of fun. I like software on disks - much easier to replace when the computer barfs.
IMNSHO, hosting apps for users is a waste of bandwidth and time (not to mention the piracy hassles) and hosting 'net apps has been done FOR A WHILE. It should be intresting to see what Marc comes up with.
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
An implicit assumption in the GPL seems to be that users of a program have access to the binary. That's not the case with CGI programs and similar hosted applications. I'm not sure how access to source can be preserved in these cases without resorting to terms like those in the APSL. Any ideas?
(This is a long-standing issue. It's not related to marca's new company but I brought it up in reference to the field of hosted applications in general.)
In the history of the software industry, there are the inventors and there are the businessmen. The inventors are people like :
Dan Bricklin & Bob Frankston (Visicalc)
Woz (Apple)
Bill Gates (BASIC)
Bill Joy (vi, BSD, NFS)
Douglas Engelbart (mouse, GUI, groupware, live video conferencing, hypertext help)
Bob Metcalf (ethernet)
Richie, Kernighan, Thompson (C, unix)
Seymour Cray (Cray supercomputers)
David Patterson (RISC, RAID)
Tim Berners-Lee (the world wide web)
etc.
Most of them didn't succeed commercially.
And there are the businessmen, the people who are really good at understanding a totally new fertile field and transforming technology into success:
Scott McNealy (sun)
Bill Gates (Microsoft)
Jim Clark (SGI, netscape)
Seymour Cray (Cray supercomputers)
Larry Ellison (Oracle)
Mitch Kapor (Lotus)
Steve Jobs (apple)
These are two very different fields, and very few people are good at both.
Frankly, marca hasn't invented anything, and he was never a business leader. He took an existing product (the web browser) and made it popular thru free downloading. Yes, this was an earthshaking phenomenon in the industry, but he did not invent the browser, nor did he lead Netscape on to a powerful business position. In fact, he was hardly ever in charge of netscape - that was Barksdale.
And if we are to believe news reports, he never coded anything after Netscape took off. Whatever your opinion of Bill Gates is, he still codes, and he has even participated in coding competitions as CEO. It probably explains why he's good at understanding both the technical and business end of things.
I would be surprised if anything radical comes from Andreesen. Heck, I would be surprised if anything radical comes from this new company - web hosting & e-commerce isn't likely to shock anyone at this point.
w/m.
-- I'm not a freak show, I'm a mammal. --
Given Jamies devotion to the original Mocaic effort, and later the open source push that is grown into 'M10', I think would would be a valuable asset to the Marca team, but to the open source comunity as well.
AND THE MILLIONS.....
...OF THE CHAMPS FANS....
Ob means obligatory, and BZZZZZT try again means that Gates never invented BASIC. You want to take Gates out of that top list and put "John Kemeny of Dartmouth" in his place. That's who invented BASIC, and maybe some day more people will give him credit for it than Gates.
He didn't have anyone working for him at Netscape, he was just their internet poster child. He didn't write ANY code there either.
Go read the GQ article about this, and what the people that worked at netscape at the time had to say about him.
I'm so sick of this mythic story that the upper management at NS created, I just want to puke.
A good point. I suppose it's too simple, but what would be wrong with requiring each *user* of the software to have rights to the source? The GPL assumed that you would have to distribute to each user, so I think this would preserve the intention.
However this would make new GPL'd software less attractive to Marc and Sun if many users compile the sources locally (after patching them so they'll work locally.) This would allow avoiding fees on the thin-client service for those with sufficient local resources to run binaries.
If the apps are real honkers like Word and StarOffice, I doubt the loss will be too significant, so maybe we *should* make the GPL more strict. Otherwise, I can easily see all the apps providers getting into a war of proprietary features, which is not good.
This isn't consumer apps running on a portal, this is a business to business startup, and fulfills a similar function as UUNET, Exodus, or AboveNet.
In the ole days, people got their own T1 lines to their office and hosted their web sites on their own machines, had their own network admins, their own cable/hardware guys, etc.
First step: eliminate the hassle of running a T1 and maintaining your own "high availability" stuff.
Companies: Exodus, AboveNet. Gigabits of bandwidth, earthquake proof, power failure proof, fault tolerant. Pay $1800/mo and stick a few rackmounted machines there, and they do the rest.
No brainer for most businesses.
Hosting servers at a professional hosting service is much better than running a T1 from your ISP. The ISP's quality of service simply can't compete.
Next step: services. Example: email. Email is a commodity. Why pay a staff $200k a year plus capital costs to host sendmail, exchange, or lotus notes on your network when you can just "outsource" it to USA.net, Mail.com, CriticalPath, for a small fee and not have to deal with the headache? There is no way your average mail admin will achieve the scalability and level of service that you will get at say, CriticalPath.
Next steps: Why go through the hassle of having to purchase your own copy of Oracle, or an Application server, and pay an Oracle DBA or CIO lots of money to maintain them, their uptime, and the quality of service?
If you have a bright idea for the Next-Big-Thing, and want to start coding immediately next week, and you can't afford to hire lots of people, why not just rent space on someone else's professionally maintained DB/Application Server/Network, etc.
By outsourcing these services, you don't need to waste time, and money, developing your own inhouse installation, and struggling to maintain the QoS that a professionally run organization has. Or for that matter, the fault-tolerance of leasing a DB/Server on an E10000!
Andressen's idea is simply to setup the DB/App server, and simply sell the right to run your servlets, CGIs, applets, etc on their servers.
I can tell you that it's a very valuable proposition to some companies. It's too distracting to have developers wasting time performing maintaince on hardware, software, network, etc.
Now, you can easily hire an inhouse admin to do it, but you still won't have the quality of running on a Sun Enterprise 10000 hosted at Exodus, with 24hr on-call staff, high security, subterranian power generators, etc Also, it takes time to hire someone and have them set it all up. With outsourcing, you make one phone call, write a check, and your developers can start coding the next day.
-Ray
When it does go belly up Marc can always go back to hocking Miller Lite with Norm Macdonald.
.company .completely sucked!
Marc: My last company didn't do so well, Norm.
Norm: I guess you can say your
*Canned Laughter*
There ought to be a law prohibiting anyone from writing or saying the phrase "dot-com" anywhere. Marketing people (especially those that try too hard, you know, technically) need help in a biochemical way. They need off this kick. They, like papa, need a brand new bag. Pronto super fast.
Otherwise, I thought the article had nothing novel to offer.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
There are long-term and short-term cycles in software industry BS. Long-term cycles include things like platform-independent interpreted code, the latest incarnation of which would be Java. The shortest of short-term BS cycles revolves around software subscription models.
Every damn year, sometimes every damn quarter, some greed-impaired schmuck regurgitates the idea of conning users into perpetually paying for software. Amazingly, even end users recognize the scam for what it is and reject it every freaking time. Why? Let's review:
1. Locally hosted software is fast. Remotely hosted software is slow.
2. Locally hosted software works whether you have an ISP or not, and is unaffected by network conditions. This is especially handy for laptops.
3. You only pay for locally hosted software once. Upgrades notwithstanding, you can buy MS Word and use it until the last x86 processor releases the magic smoke.
4. Remotely hosted software costs more than locally hosted software. That's why the moneygrubbers at software companies like the idea.
5. Privacy. Nuff said.
Why the press and investors keep falling for this crap is beyond me. The software and electronics trade are littered with the dimly remembered carcasses of countless subscription schemes. Outside of some highly specialized and hideously expensive niche markets, it never, ever succeeds.
UGGHH!!! I'm so sick of seeing VCs and Wall Street fawning over these companies that have absolutely WORTHLESS products. Has anyone here ever used Netscape Application Server? If you have, you know what a stinking turd it is. Want to scale your super-duper ".com" (and gawd, I'm so sick of that word) application using Netscape servers? Well, here's what you do: You buy several million dollars worth of high-end Sun hardware to run it and hire a flock of Java consultants to build your application for you. It will take them at least 6 months, probably a year, to develop the final product. When you're finally rolling, you'll have a bloated, unmanageable, Java-based three-tier app that barely functions, even when run on Sun's latest and greatest hardware. To support all this hardware, you'll need a room full of Solaris admins and systems support staff, and when its all said and done, your product is still as slow as a spilled bucket of tar on a North Dakota winter day. Trust me, I've worked for several companies that have gone this route and it ain't pretty.
The fact that this article touts that VCellar has hired someone who was formerly in charge of Kiva development scares me. I'll give them this, though--if you are foolish enough to go the three-tiered Java route, you'll need a company like Vcellar to help you run all the big iron you'll need to support your app.
The future of online computing, IMHO, is:
Perl
Mason
Apache
FreeBSD
mod_perl
Oracle
Dell hardware
VA Linux hardware
Unfortunately, many of the above will probably never be as popular is the "Vcellar" type solutions, because large companies love to spend huge amounts of investors' money. It's the nature of the beast.
If he does anything like any of his previous work, then it's a waste of time.
The browser was so fucking lame that *microsoft* topped it, with a product that only crashes four times a day.
The application server was designed to run up as many hours as possible for the likes of Arthur Andersen and similarly worthless custom-bloatware coders.
What I expect from a Marc Andreesen product, is a half-assed buzzword-chasing load of crap.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Netscape was founded in 1994, five years ago. In five years, the company couldn't make a web browser for unix that doesn't crap out on large tables. Also, has anyone ever accidentally clicked that little button to the left of the Back button and had to wait ten seconds for the toolbar to disappear and then ten more seconds for it to reappear? Please. Now he and a bunch of the other managers from the failed company are going to start a new company? Forgive me if I'm less than enthusiastic.
> I suppose it's too simple, but what would be
> wrong with requiring each *user* of the
> software to have rights to the source?
Copyright law. It only restricts copying, not use. A license that required each user to get the source would thus require a signed contract, as copyright law doesn't apply.
Usually, on Slashdot I'm the one defending MS, but this is ridiculous!!
Bill Gates did not invent BASIC - it has been around since the 1960s
I don't think he even coded it - I know he & Paul Allen bought MS-DOS of another guy.
I, for one would
- LOVE
to see one of thse codeing contests the Bill Gates takes part in. A URL, or a reference somewhere would be nice.I do agree with the basic point of what you are saying, though.
Here are some ideas I've had:
Declare that the output of the program is a derived work of the program. I think that's the essential property we're trying to get it. For example, if Andrew writes a GPL game server, and Bob puts it up on www.bobsgames.com and offers access to it, then Andrew could require Bob to give Bob's source + modifications to Bob's users (because Bob's users are getting derivatives of Andy's work).
Go to a different license where the first copy of material received is covered by the license -- similar to those "click to agree" licenses that people stick on binary-only software such as Netscape Communicator and Adobe Acrobat Reader. (Or, for that matter, Windows 98!)
Give up and accept that GPL'd code used on someone else's web site degenerates to a BSD-like license. I don't like this option, but it's the state of reality today.
[sure, you could go out and buy all the movies on vhs that you wanted]
This is emphatically NOT TRUE. You cannot buy the latest, greated moving or other programming on VHS (or DVD, bummer). If you want the content, you have to get it via the means it is provided.
So you watch it on TV (with 100 commercials per hour or whatever), or you pay $7 to see a movie at the theater.
It's all about control of the content.
What if MS Office 2005 comes out as a "hosted" app only? Then if you want to upgrade, you have to go to an ASP.
Can we really say "he" did it before?
What is this, The Mick Molloy Show?
"Hope is the denial of reality, it is the carrot dangled before the draft horse in a vain attempt to reach it" - Raistl
In order to 'do it again' wouldn't this fellow have to steal off with another open source program like Mosaic that he co-developed with public funding, and turn it into a closed-source success story?
Maybe he could steal Apache this time, or something like that. Oh wait! He didn't co-develop with his peers, as was the case with Mosaic.
I fail to see any other "magic spell" that this man posesses that he could use to strike it rich a second time.
Let's face it. The guy is a boob. If anyone knows him (from his college days), the guy isn't brilliant. He has a lot of money. He didn't "invent" the browser, he was merely porting it to Windows when Jim Clark contacted him.
I give him credit for what he has done (mainly make a lot of money), he is far from being a brilliant guy.
Anyone ever hear him talk at a conference? Geesh. What an idiot.
I am not trying to make this a bash-fest, but to put this guy up on a pedestal is ridiculous. That's like saying Steve Case is an Internet guru. Geesh.
As far as ASPs go. Chalk that one up next to the network guru, the Java OS, and all the of other crack-pot ideas Sun as come up with.
The web is a nice medium for information, and very basic apps, but I would absolutely hate to have to use a web-based app for something complex or time consuming.
I think local apps (like Win32, Linux) that are made for the OS and use the "Internet" as a network are much more powerful. Let's face it, the Internet is just a big WAN.
The infrastructure required for this (to be reliable, have QoS, security, privacy, etc.) is a long, long way off.
Why did he stay so long? He stayed because he said he would in order to make the transition work.
Oh, and a bucketload of cash didn't hurt - check out his recent 88 million dollar AOL stock sale...
Of course I don't speak for my employer. My employer doesn't speak for me, either.
"application server" is just another meaningless buzzword. All it is is a middle tier sitting between the DB and the web server. BFD. Servlet engines have been doing that for years. Have you seen the outrageous prices for these apps servers (which do very little, IMO)? 35k per CPU, in some instances. What a crock.
Come on guys - RedHat isn't even in the same league as Oracle. Most of RedHat's "business" is repackaging other people's stuff. BFD.
You are already wasting your money if you buy a single CPU Intel system. When SMP Athlon comes out and VA Linux doesn't support it, they will go bye bye. Penguin Computing is already taking Linux machine market share from them with their Athlon machines.
1) The link is to an article that doesn't say or even hint at what exactly variety of the applications.
2) Therefore, if the new company has a www site and somebody around here knows what it is then plz post it.
3) There are a variety of highly data intensive analytical applications for which this sort of model makes a lot of sense:
* The front end is used to model the business and establish business rules and requires some substantial initial customization. This is the part of the app hosted over the www.
* The back end requires a lot of data and also requires services to clean and load the data. The back end requires on going maintenance and is really harder to keep working (and performing) on an ongoing basis.
* After processing, another "front end" (again hosted over the www) is used to browse and analyze the results of the backend processing...perhaps with an OLAP engine behind it.
* In a sense the companies that do this are actually service bureaus: they get sent a buttload of data every month and produce results with it. However, the www architecture makes it simple to host pretty, complex, necessary GUIs remotely -- this was not so simple to do 10 years ago.
4) However, if the new applications produced by the new company are HTML editors and word processors, then in spite of your overwhelming ignorance, you guys are correct and it'll never work...
Do you really want the output of you're programs to be forced to be GPL? That would mean that every program you compiled with GCC would be under the GPL, every webpage you made with Emacs you wouldn't own, every graphic you made with the GIMP would be public property. That's a terrible Idea. Also, those 'click to agree' licenses arn't legaly binding.
The GPL alows 'interal propritary versions' of software, so don't sweat it. I'd be willing to bet that most of the extra features will be custom perl/java/VB scripts anyway, and not modifications to GPL software. You'll still be able to get the origional software, so don't worry
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Sadly, every product that exists is in some way flawed.
:-(. If Microsoft's does, it's because they have the applications mainstream users want.
The Ford Contour I'm renting right now has great handling but a mediocre ride and a buzzy engine. Despite this, due to the handling it's one of the best rental cars I've driven.
Windows succeeded because people were ripe for the graphical interface. For mainstream folks, there is no doubt that the graphical interface is better, and so the product succeeded even though it had no reliability. In addition, and most importantly to its success, it was bundled with every non-Apple computer made. People could start with their familiar DOS applications, and slowly migrate over to Windows - which is, of course, exactly what happened.
What rivals existed - Unix on workstations and OS/2 on hopped-up PCs - required way too much in resources for the average computer user to consider. And the Mac was priced far too high for mainstream folks to afford.
This is what made Windows win. For the average consumer, it was the best product. That doesn't mean that it was a good product in any absolute sense. It just means it was the best at the time, or perhaps we should say the least awful.
I think you can see, though, that many of these factors simply would not apply for Marca's latest venture. He has no installed base of people who can be coaxed to try his product without additional effort. But he'll probably get a pile of money, and if he can get a good reputation, I think he has a shot. But only if his product really works, and works well. There will be enough competition in this sector to assure that either the working product will succeed, or Microsoft's will
I'm hoping that in the coming years, "least awful" will no longer be something you can build a viable business over. The fact that even the corporate lemmings seem skeptical about Windows 2000 is a nice start.
It's interesting to reflect that when there were only three TV networks, executives had a concept called "least objectionable program". The idea is that you have a little momentum that keeps you watching a program. When something comes up that you really hate, you change channels. Cable TV and the 500 channel universe has changed this; now people can actually find stuff they actively want to watch on some channel or another, so the principle just doesn't work as it used to.
I'm hoping the same thing will happen in computing. "Least objectionable software" is one heck of a way to run a business. But it's certainly how things work now.
D
----
In fact, one could offer that other than IE and Expedia, they still don't "get" the Internet.
Yahoo lets you do calendaring, file storiage, and private clubs.
How can you say this sector is dead when it is so obviously burgeoning?
Who cares if there isn't a remotely hosted word processor or spreadsheet...when was the last time you used one?
Heck, I've never once used the CDROM version of FreeBSD to install - the network install or FTP install are both excellent.
As for applications, centrally hosted apps is the best way to remove bugs...even better if open sourcing is used.
Why? because when a bug is found, the fix is reflected immediately in the copy you are using. No more waiting six months for the next "release". Developers need to forget outdated notions of "gold code". Your code on the web changes daily. As an employee for a large web company, I can tell you that I am tweaking my apps on a day to day basis.
Added to which, version inconsistencies are removed, and hopefully even OS dependencies are limited.
If you use EBay, Schwab, Hotmail, Travelocity, or My Yahoo, you're already using web apps.
I don't see how you can even debate whether this is the direction of software at this point - the tide has already started.
People in this forum seem to take great pride in poking at rich people who amazingly can't leap tall buildings in a single vound.
Guess what folks, some of them are brilliant, but a lot of them were just lucky. If you haven't been, deal with it - your life could be a hell of a lot worse.
Why would VA machines be any more "the future" than any other PC? Come on, look at the specs...its all stock equipment.
I'm tempted to laugh along, but I'm ready to give this a bit more credit.
The folks he took from Netscape include one of the two LDAP leads they got from UMich, and one of the Kiva appserver people. These two things were the strongest technology pieces they had in their core server line--and indeed, they're staying in the product line at Sun/iPlanet.
Still don't know what they're going to do.. the speculation is less than compelling. Netsacape tried to sell a product line of bare servers with no bundled finished apps (in contrast with Notes, for one), and fell on their collective arse. Hosted bare server apps? Ehh.
And Andressen himself was very much a figurehead much of the time at Netscape. But even if you think of Andressen as a money guy instead of a tech guy, he's an asset. He has a good rolodex.
While I agree that current technology is clunky as in all the cables that get in the way inside the machine and lack of any sort of owners manual for computers. Even a damned car comes with one.
However, there is one things that raises a red flag.
WTF is wrong with learning? Does it take time away from Jerry Springer or daytime soaps? What the fuck is the problem?
Or is it just hypocrisy?
Why are people worried about a failing education system if they don't want to learn anything in the first place?
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
When Netscape went big they were in the right place at the right time. Few of the big guys had clued in on the web and Netscape got a BIG head start and made a name for themselves before anyone else caught up.
This time is different. In the last few weeks, both Sun and M$ have announced their plans for web-hosted applications. If Andreesen thinks he can "rule this space" he is suffering from extreme delusions of grandeour.
Just my $0.02
I know this has already been pointed out, but no one seems to be paying attention to it, so I'll point it out again.
Application servers like the article is talking about are NOT for end-users to remotely run software off. It's for companies to outsource their web-based applications. If you ever read all those free magazines you get at work, you'd see a lot of hype and speculation for Oracle's effort in this same vein.
--- Where's my X.400 protocol decoder?
Let's see. He build a company with no credible business plan. Making money off of browsers is not a plan because there's no real intellectual property there. The real value is in the web content.
His company failed. Yes, M$ hastened its inevitable death. But death was definitely there.
Can he build a company with no buisness plan again and fail? Absolutely. 90% of all startups do and Marko is part of that 90%.
I read that Slashdot is Marc's favorite web site!
This guy is the most overhyped, overrated, clown in the entire history of technology. He takes credit for other peoples work, did nothing positive at Netscape or anywhere else, and goes around making a bunch of clueless speeches. Ask anyone who knows him or worked with him at the University of Illinois and they will tell you the same.
Wonder what they're up to this time. :)
They're running their site offa *single* FreeBSD 3.x box so chances are they're going to be Open-Source OS oriented.
Or, they're a Wine Auction house
ASPs with Akamai's technologies could be the biggest thing since Ebay - marca seems to be on this. Everybody's pushing on this front - MS, Sun, Cisco,... Distributed computing has arrived, and everyone wants a piece of the action.