Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: What would peace look like?

Author:antb@geocities.com
Posted:12/2/1998; 7:01:43 AM
Topic:What would peace look like?
Msg #:686 (In response to 678)
Prev/Next:685 / 687

I have one thing to to say about the post written by cshotton@biap.com:

Simply OUTSTANDING.

Anyone who reads his post along with some articles by Dave Winer and still feel sorry for Netscape are speaking more from the heart than with a mind for business.

At the height of its power, Netscape fell into the same trap that Apple did in the 1980's; the love for maximum profit.

Instead of taking risks or merging with say an AOL or Apple years ago to continue their momentum, greatly expand user the user base and

By all rights Apple should have been the standard for modern day computing, but they chose not to license their OS (like Bill Gates asked them to) to enable the creation by of low price clones and a large amount of 3rd party software.

They kept their machines expensive and to themselves, by doing this they were able to keep all the profit. They chose profit over progress, and now Netscape has followed Apple down this path.

Netscape has had chance after chance to become a major player in the industry, they simply chose not to take a chance.

If Netscape had taken a chance, it by no means that they would been successful at it, but in this industry business is about taking risks not playing it safe and playing with your money.

When IBM and Microsoft had their famous split, the industry was at a crossroad.

Microsoft could have played it safe and stayed in the IBM camp and continued with the OS/2 development but they gambled on a very immature product, Windows 3.0

If Microsoft succeeds, they will dominate the industry (they did), if they fail however, OS/2 will dominate and Microsoft will be rendered obsolete in the OS arena when they could have played it safe and went along with IBM and counted their money as a junior partner.

As a businessman myself, I respect companies that have goals and take risks to get to those goals.

But I have little respect for companies that set certain goals for themselves and do not do what is truly needed to get to those goals; instead they depend on the fact since their tiny company is the only game in town everyone will flock to them.

Are you kidding me?

I cannot feel sorry for Netscape.

ab

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