They're baa-a-a-ack! If the Web seems haunted lately — if there's a ghost on your PC's desktop and you seem to hear the whispery voices of spirits muttering press releases — relax.
It's not a malevolent poltergeist; it's just a new Netscape product launch.
You remember Netscape, right? They were that plucky company formed to capitalize on co-founder Marc Andreessen's clever invention, Mosaic.
When Netscape set out to create a next-generation, feature-rich graphical browser to top Mosaic, investors were quick to realize the new company's potential. Just as users snapped up releases of Netscape's software in unprecedented numbers, traders clamored for shares of the upstart's initial public offering.
Netscape became the first of the Web's fortune-making IPO darlings, with a sky-high valuation that defied conventional investment wisdom. But then, Netscape's rocket-powered acceleration into prominence seemed to fizzle out. They came in with a bang, and then with nary a whimper they seemed to all but drop from view.
Sure, they were still around. Maybe you still used their software. But the rate of innovation slowed, and significant updates to the product became few and far between.
Netscape had run into a little trouble. Microsoft arrived late to the browser market, but with release 3 its Internet Explorer had become a viable contender to Netscape's throne. Worse, Microsoft was giving it away for free.
Though Netscape had consistently turned a blind eye to all the home users who downloaded and used their product without paying for it, it had always been their intent that larger corporate customers would be the mainstay of their revenue. With Microsoft offering a comparable product at no charge, the wind had effectively been pulled from their sails.
For a while Netscape flailed, trying unsuccessfully to find a niche for itself in the new Web software landscape. They decided they weren't a browser company, they were an enterprise server software company.
Then they were a content vendor. They retooled their corporate Web site into a portal with its eye on Yahoo! or Excite's market share.
And meanwhile the browser, the product that kicked them off in the first place, seemed to fall by the wayside.
Netscape's last volley in the browser war was when they decided they would become champions of the Open Source movement, and release the Navigator source code to the public.
Analysts bubbled. Surely, this move would open the floodgates for browser innovation, allowing independent developers from all over the world to contribute new fixes and features.
But when the code finally appeared, it was a daunting morass: difficult to assemble into working software, and all but unapproachable by any but the most seasoned software developers.
Most who downloaded the source did little but build the program, tool around with it a little, point out the bugs, and wait for the next revision to appear. And when it did appear, inevitably it brought with it new bugs, and took the product only inches closer to being really usable.
You had to wonder: just what was the hold-up? If Adobe could write Photoshop, and Microsoft could write spreadsheets and word processors — indeed, whole operating systems — why was it that Netscape, ostensibly the birthplace of the modern Web, couldn't seem to write a browser?
But now, at last, they have. Well, almost. The current revision of the new Netscape 6 is still labeled a "Preview Release," and it's a little rough around the edges yet.
But for the first time, the new product is cohesive enough to really be called a Web browser, and the version numbering — skipping one, to remain one step ahead of Internet Explorer — is testament to the fact that this is the real deal. It's a whole new browser, built new from the ground up and filled with cutting edge technology.
For those of us who have followed Mosaic's successor from the early days, though, the achievement carries with it a bittersweet flavor that's hard to ignore. For after all, this is no longer the plucky young upstart Netscape of yesterday. In 1998, the company was snapped up by the giant Virginia-based access provider America Online.
Today's Netscape has none of the original's maverick chic and pioneering aplomb. It's been reduced to little more than a minor development subsidiary, serving an online juggernaut whose only real rival is Microsoft itself.
So with the "real" Netscape long gone, does that mean Microsoft has won? Surely any new competition for Internet Explorer, even coming from AOL, should be a welcome thing. It evens out the playing field, promotes innovation — all that stuff we've heard throughout Microsoft's antitrust hearings. Right? Or does it really matter?
When Netscape decided to follow suit behind Microsoft and officially give its Navigator browser away for free, it pretty much put the final nail in the coffin in the idea of browser-as-software-product. While several new browsers from other vendors have appeared, among them iCab and Opera, none of these have yet dared to try and profit from software sales.
Vendors of email software could testify to the difficulty of competing with slickly produced, free competition; Qualcomm, publisher of Eudora, has taken to an advertising-subsidized model rather than trying to continue selling the software itself.
Both Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator tout their adherence to so-called "Internet standards" — basically, they implement ways of viewing the Web that have been designed and documented elsewhere, rather than trying to lead with new forms of content.
New media, like Macromedia's Flash, have typically arrived in the form of optional plug-ins, while the browser itself has remained pretty much static in the way it operates.
New features added over the years have mostly involved user interface changes, tighter integration with some online content or e-commerce, or better compatibility with the other company's browser.
So with no profit to be made from the software itself, and conformity to standards generally seen as more important than new development, who can come out ahead?
Despite Netscape 6's much-vaunted new rendering engine and XML-based user interface, you're not likely to see a return of browser wars in the old sense. Microsoft and AOL have their eye on new battlefields.
The move to wireless connectivity is progressing steadily, with handheld devices and mobile phones taking increasing prominence. Companies like Oracle and Sun want to divorce the network from the PC, proposing devices like "network computers" in place of the traditional desktop workstation.
Microsoft has already taken a leadership position in the home connectivity arena, with its WebTV products. And AOL has just announced its own "lightweight client" systems for getting users online without a computer. Any of these new pastures must look a lot greener than the tired old market for Internet browsers.
Meanwhile, Netscape's back with brand new software. Maybe, if they ever get the bugs ironed out, you might even like it better than what you're using now.
But I doubt history will remember it as any great revolution, in the sense that the original Netscape Navigator was when it first appeared. Instead, it will probably be seen as more of a footnote.
Netscape started out by kicking off what became a massive change in our society. But with the release of Netscape 6, their story effectively ends, now a dinosaur, a wholly-owned subsidiary of AOL, rolling out the last big weapon made for a war that's already come and gone. So let's give 'em a proper service, already, and let 'em rest in peace.
'Thanks for the browser, Netscape. So long; you'll be missed.
