Netscape founder backs new browser

Now a prominent financier, Marc Andreessen is backing a start-up called RockMelt that is building a new Internet browser.
(From The New York Times)

The story "Netscape founder backs new browser" published August 13, 2009 at 8:54 PM is no longer available on CNET News.

Content from The New York Times expires after 7 days.

[Mendz]

The business idea is brilliantly learned from the mons... err... master. But, another browser? Good luck!

[only_buy_FLAC_4_quality]

"Internet browser that introduced millions of people to the Internet. "

THE first? really?

Did wiki*edia have no article on either WorldWideWeb or Mosaic?




"Netscape was roundly defeated by Microsoft "

Too bad Andreessen did not have an Operating System of his own to bolster his numbers in the same way... much like Sony does with PS3 for blutardray




"We have backed a really good team,"

Hopefully they will not turn out to the sellouts like the Mozilla Foundation.




" the new browser would be different"

I should hope so. Otherwise they will get a delightful letter from someone's intellectual property attorneys



" a company that Andreessen co-founded "

It is nice to know Andreessen is not myopic




"Little else is known about RockMelt,"

If it is shiny the itards will love it.



"waned and innovation ground to a halt"

That would be the effect of a monopoly. The very same that brings us "innovative" products like windows 7: the 32bit version incapable of addressing enough ram to FULLY function correctly.




"Microsoft's share has dropped to 68 percent"

Ah, but now they empire has SilverLight.




" Microsoft ...introduced greatly improved versions of their browsers"


"improved" how? Sure, it's new. Is that per se an improvement?



"Google said it would build an operating system ...with its principal function being to support its browser. "

And that does not strike you as odd? No article yet on that?




"The days of working in isolation on your computer are mostly gone,"

No, they are not.

Why should I trust a third party to manipulate- or store my workproduct?




"could use a Facebook ID to log into RockMelt"

And no questions on why one would "log into" a browser?



"Despite Google's heavy promotion of Chrome, the browser has gained just 2 percent of the market. "

Aside from the viscous privacy invasion issues, the Chromium project from which Chrome is forked has no natively adblocking.

That shortcoming is currently only addressed by an alternative fork, Iron, by SRware.net.

Iron, the best fork of Chromium available, also sates the need for privacy. That little issue that allows for the free exercise of liberty.

[t8]

The biggest hurdle for the Internet is still Windows. So long as everyone is forced fed Internet Explorer, all other browsers no matter how good they are will find it almost impossible to compete fairly with IE as most people use the default.

Hopefully the EU will make good on it's promise to give all users the opportunity to choose a browser. It would be good for the consumer and innovation of the Web is the US did something like this too.

[codynews]

People in the EU are already free to DL whatever browser they want. Wow, amazing what can be done without the government telling a private company how they must make their product.

[MadLyb]

And yet, Firefox continues to gain marketshare.

MS may have an 'in', but replacing IE is pretty much a trivial affair these days.

[t8]

@ MadLyb

Yes for many it is trivial to download a competing browser. 22% usage for Firefox proves that.
For mom and pop, and many others will stick with the default browser just as they stick with Paintbrush and don't bother downloading a better free alternative.

That is why IE still has a commanding lead and is at the same time the crappiest browser on the market.
You can't argue with stats.

Microsoft didn't invent the browser, and they quietly know that being the default usually hands them any market they want by bundling their stuff in Windows.

Sounds like you are supporting this to me.

[FF2009]

the guy who's browser sucked so much want a re match? This is funny one.

No thanks. We got too many Browsers competing this time around, besides, your past record with Netscape showed us one thing. No one wants to suffer another round of primitive innovation of Netscape clone.

[t8]

The guy who helped invent the browser. Without the browser we would likely be still stuck with private BBSs such as MSN and AOL before they jumped on the Web. And because of Windows market share, MSN probably would have won the BBS wars and you would be using Windows to access World Wide Windows for $30 per month.

The browser changed everything. You should thank Mr Andreessen. He helped make the Web mainstream.

Besides Internet Explorer is way behind the other browsers and because it is built into the Windows kernel it will always be a security nightmare not to mention slow. Marc Andreessen has a real chance to make something much better. But I suspect his real competition will be Chrome/Google, not Windows.

[donsms]

Habits are hard to break.IE works fine so why change is the mantra of most computer users which appears to be correct.

[zyxxy]

Because IE does not really 'work fine'. It only seems that way until you run something better. Now, IE7 is much better than IE6, and IE8 is incrementally better than IE7. Neither is as good as FireFox 3.5. They are good, mind you, just not quite as good.

I would run FireFox just for the ABP add-on alone.

Chrome has some nice features as well, and I have had very good luck with Opera, but the add-ons for FireFox seal the deal for me. That, and the browser itself works so well.

[dennisheadley]

Unfortunately that is the way of most computer users. They use IE because it is already right there on the start menu and the default when they click a link in email etc. I have IE8, Safari, Chrome and Opera 10 all installed atm just testing all of them and seeing which one works best. So far after about 10 days of playing around with it, i have stopped even including IE8 in the mix because it is so far behind the others in speed and usability. Opera is shaping up to be the next to drop.

I know people will say you can change the default so thats not an issue. But it requires you to know the other browser exists, go find it, download it, install it, then figure out how to change the default. That is more than the common user is willing to do. The truth is, unlike the sort of people that read this kind of tech site, the common user goes to places like MSN because, despite what people post here, most people that aren't computer savvy leave MSN as their homepage. Which means they don't really know that the other browser even exist unless someone tells them about it.

[dennisheadley]

Shoot. forgot to include Firefox in my post. It is still in the running on my computer also and the add-ons are a big selling point for it. But I think it is slower than Safari and Chrome, and i have had some issues with it rendering pages incorrectly for me at times. I have one site I go to a lot that the menus are impossible to use, but on all four of the others they work fine.

[jimcbr]

What is amazing to me is how even people not really affiliated with Microsoft consistently fail to notice the elephant standing in the middle of the room -- Internet Explorer causes all sorts of viruses/maleware to infect one's computer on a regular basis, whereas the two other browsers I use (Opera and Chrome) have never done that.

[pdbrickhouse]

lol @ jimmy

One of the reasons that you get a lot less viruses/maleware with Opera/Chrome is that less people use them. IE8 (or IE7) are good enough at stopping viruses/maleware.

What you can not stop is "unthiking users", they tend to get most of the viruses/melware, they are also the people most lickly to be using IE. However if another brosers was standard on most PCs, then the other broser should have these problem users.

[Pointedly]

Microsoft didn't defeat Netscape--AOL did. When the sale of Netscape to AOL was announced, Netscape's developers left in droves. Some went to Mozilla to develop what became Firefox. Meanwhile--and as usual--AOL could only pawn off the former (but not real) AOL version of Netscape on clueless AOL users. With no real competition, Microsoft gave us a version of Internet Explorer that they saw no reason to update for years. Now Microsoft has real competition from Mozilla and Firefox...apparently with the possibility of more competition coming.

[SergeM256]

I don't really understand economics of this free browsers business. Companies invest billions to create and distribute free software and they compete who could give away more freebies. I know Google pays Mozilla for making Google default start page and default search, MS makes MSN default start page and Bing/Live Search default search engine in IE . Does it worth it? Default start page (almost) always gets changed and default search could be changed easily - apparently, most users of IE change default search and use Google. How do they make money giving away freebies?

[zyxxy]

Corporations and individuals also donate to Mozilla, both through direct donations and through merchandise purchases. The same is true for FreeBSD and NetBSD.

[codynews]

I think a lot of it isn't based on economics, but rather ego. Everyone wants to have their "ME TOO!" browser.

They support their decision by saying the economic justification "is coming soon!"

[Seaspray0]

Just the mention of netscape brought back that image of the commercial with the flaming logo.

[kjaristy]

Competition is always a welcome to us consumers. But the one thing that comes to mind are web browser standards, which is where my frustration comes along sometimes in that i need to switch browsers for certain pages to work properly.

[zyxxy]

Frustrating for you? Try being a web site developer and try to make your site work on every browser, along with every browser ever made. Yes, there are still people out there using Netscape and AOL browsers. Scary stuff. Yes, it is easy if you don't try to make the site 'pretty', but as soon as you try to build a complex site, all the browser conflicts show up. Bleah!

[Seaspray0]

Here's something I don't understand yet. You form a company to make a browser that will most likely be given away for free. How do you pay your bills?

[Vegaman_Dan]

Through volume, of course. ;)

[Tod Smith]

I hope they have allot of money!