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December 3, 1998
from the Friends-of-the-Revolution dept
NETSCAOLPE and the Giant B2C Beanstalk
By Brian Day - December 3, 1998
I'ts Alive!
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As to be expected, the world does not
stop when I go on vaction. I returned to work this monday after
a week of relaxation to find many messages about the Netscape/AOL deal.
While I had heard rumors this was still a surprise.
Why?
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AOL
- Get 16 million users from Netcenter
- Control the leading interface to the Internet
- Was AOL5.0 going to rely on Java? Microsoft announced that they would not support Java on the Mac and Unix platforms.
- Software to connect merchants to AOL (Netscape's ecXpert)
- Netscape's consulting arm. Lots of good developers.
- Mozilla. Cute and cuddly.
Netscape
- Money
- A huge chunk of browser market back (AOL users)
- A larger base for Netcenter content
- A delivery mechanism for Navigator (AOL CDROMs)
- Use of the "you've got mail" sound.
- An ISP.
The resulting firm will be an eCommerce powerhouse specifically in the business to consumer marketplace. Here is why.
Pieces of the Beanstalk
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From a consumers perspective...
- A consumer gets a CDROM with software containing
- A browser (Netscape) to access
- A portal (AOL & Netscape) to find
- Information and Goods supplied by
- News providers and Merchants (Reuters, Amazon) which are using
- Server software (Netscape, Sun) to access
- Backend Systems (SAP, Oracle, Sun, Netscape) on
- Monsterous computers (Sun)
The money flows like this...
- Browser drives traffic to
- Portal (ads - AOL & Netscape) which drives
- Sales (percentage of sale or space leasing - AOL & Netscape) pulled through the Internet by
- eCommerce software (software sales, consulting - Netscape) connected to
- backend-systems (software sales, consulting - Netscape) running on
- monsterous computers (hardware sales - Sun)
IE Behind Enemy Lines
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AOL's decision to keep IE as the default browser makes sence from a business perspective for the following reasons.
- AOL just released AOL version 4.0 and are set up to support it. Switching to Navigator will break their stride.
- Unlike licencing Windows98 I doubt that AOL pays for the use of IE.
- Netscape5.0 will be out by the time they could integrate 4.0. Did they already start integrating Navigator5.0 when the source was released? (This is true I confirmed it!)
- Microsoft would be pissed and would take AOL off the Windows98 desktop. This is a great example of how Microsoft uses their ownership of the OS to leverage their way into non-related businesses (ISP, Portal).
I suspect that MS will boot them from the desktop before AOL switches to Navigator.
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Friends of the Revolution
by Brian Day
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