Netscape Founder Backs New Browser

wirelessjb writes to share that after a resounding defeat at the hands of Microsoft in the first major browser war of the mid 1990s, Marc Andreessen is looking to have another go at the market by backing a new startup called "RockMelt." "Mr. Andreessen suggested the new browser would be different, saying that most other browsers had not kept pace with the evolution of the Web, which had grown from an array of static Web pages into a network of complex Web sites and applications. 'There are all kinds of things that you would do differently if you are building a browser from scratch,' Mr. Andreessen said. RockMelt was co-founded by Eric Vishria and Tim Howes, both former executives at Opsware, a company that Mr. Andreessen co-founded and then sold to Hewlett-Packard in 2007 for about $1.6 billion. Mr. Howes also worked at Netscape with Mr. Andreessen."

It looks like a browser, it smells like a browser

[JamJam]

That article was so light on on content all that we can summarize is that RockMelt is another browser. A browser with a creative name, that has a "browser rock star" who is backing it, and one that has some new "plug-in" features with Facebook. So why am I lacking any excitement by this? Correct me if I'm wrong but it's not like Andreessen is a Steve Job's visionary or anything.

Re:Chrome 2

[EvanED]

..its about the changes under the hood!

Yet the user's experience is only little refined because of it.

I don't want to knock that; believe me, I have enough problems with Firefox on Linux because of the lack of separation between the tabs that I can't wait for when Chrome has a decent Linux build. From what it sounds that this guy wants to do, it sounds like he doesn't want behind the scenes changes, he wants to revamp the user experience. (Whether or not this browser will, or will in a good way, we'll have to wait to see.)

Re:Chrome 2

[Hurricane78]

Your mind is not able to think very far, is it? Like those Star Trek "aliens"*. Or "new and innovative" car models that look *freakin exactly* like the old ones, so you have to look twice to even see the difference!

It's so very common that I see people coming up with things that they call great innovative thinking, and I can show them multiple boxes and outdated philosophies that they still think inside of, on the spot.

Chrome is still showing HTML pages in tabs that you navigate trough with the virtual interface of links, a history to move through, etc, and a physical interface of the mouse and keyboard. In a window. With no new widgets, concepts, philosophies, or anything new of any kind. And we're not talking about two years. We're talking about time span since Mosaic 1.0 in 1993. Because other than the Addons or Firefox and Greasemonkey, pretty much nothing innovative in browsers has appeared or changed since then. (Maybe Flock was an approach. But it was a half-assed one, and failed because of that.)

___
* I really liked the show, but I hated what they called extraterrestrial, including the "explanation".

Might be based on Chrome

[voidvektor]

I did some digging around and found an e-mail to a google group from a guy settings up RockMelts site:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[e-mail]/msg02866.html [mail-archive.com]
The same guy asked questions on the Chromium mailing list, "helping a co-worker get the chromium src".
http://groups.google.com/group/chromium-dev/browse_thread/thread/105e19e8d4f6c650?pli=1 [google.com]
Probably nothing, but could be something...

Re:Chrome 2

[Anonymous Coward]

years?

What's the profit model for this startup? That's the most interesting question, to me.

See, that's why you and I aren't on yachts cruising the Caribbean.

I've been quite closely watching the careers of several people who made substantial fortunes in the first Internet boom. As far as I can tell, startups simply have to employ one of this small group of people in order to be sold a couple of years later for insane amounts of money.

I wish I was making this up, but I'm not.

My thoughts on Netscape

[leamanc]

Once on a flight, I was reading a book about web standards, and the guy sitting next to me struck up a conversation. He said that he knew a lot about the web, joining Netscape in 1995 and staying near the end, being one of the last two or three employees. He said that Netscape was undone because upper management got extremely arrogant over their initial dominance in the browser market. They thought nobody, not even Microsoft could take them down.

He said they would laugh at feature requests by users, play foosball and drink beer all day...basically one big party while IE slowly and surely crushed them.

Based on this, I would be very wary that anyone associated with the original Netscape has the management skills to make a new browser a success.

Re:Chrome 0

[Enderandrew]

The Mozilla devs seem to give the Linux version of Firefox very little love. I've been secretly hoping for a Qt version of Firefox for ages, which supposedly Nokia was working on. They said they did the bulk of the port in a month, but then it never seemed to finish/surface. But now there are browsers like rekonq and Arora which are very small, and extremely fast. Rekonq is eventually moving to a per-process design like Chrome, and integrates well with KDE.

my ultimate tip suggestion

[cheekyboy]

Remove ALL GUIs that use traditional windows/dialogs/menus and make them all like PVR OSD menus that
are easy to use, look pretty and most of call can be accessed by a remote control or touch screen easily.
Use overlays with transparency for status bars/widgets/addons.

Re:Chrome 0

[Enderandrew]

I find KDE 3 to be my desktop of choice on netbooks because I have so much control over every theming aspect. I can get great functionality with pixel real estate being a premium.

Re:Chrome 2

[lena_10326]

Brainstorming a little bit... some advantages could be:

• Creating a distinct unambiguous brand name. It's harder to do that if you're piggy backing on Firefox which has it's own brand name.
• Andreessen's position in the industry brings notability so it'll be newsworthy (news articles = free advertising). His expertise is with browsers, so I imagine leveraging his name is more congruent with a new browser rather than a new browser plugin.
• They believe a plugin is a harder sell because there could be less perceived value in a product that sports conceptual features described in the language of business-speak. Language such as social networking, advertisement engine, productivity tools, website integration, bridge software, blah blah blah; as opposed to Flash which has concrete, visible animation features. Everyone knows what a browser is, so it's conceptually more concrete. It has an installation program, desktop icon, application window, and title bar.
• Maybe they feel the concept of "browser" is a hot topic at the moment (due to Firefox and Chrome) and they want to ride the wave. "plugin" isn't so desirable anymore because it recalls the legacy of the 1990's: implying old, "been there, done that", ho-hum, ancient.
• Maybe they feel owning their own browser platform lends more technical credibility over owning a browser plugin because the technical challenge is greater. Technical credibility could translate to bu$ine$$ credibility.
• Maybe they want control of proprietary source code, so it'll obfuscate the plan to spam the hell out---err, I mean--provide useful related links to web queries.
• Maybe they want full control of the browser in order to make good on business partner contracts. It's harder to make those guarantees when disinterested 3rd party plugins can disable or intercept your plugin with very little effort.
• Maybe they want control of the installation base in order to directly sell plugin access or communication channels--as opposed to rev sharing with 3rd parties (such as google).
• Maybe they plan to build and sell in order to be accumulated by another business. They'll need a flagship product and user database to do that.

Re:The problem with the "plug-in" model

[icebraining]

"If there are a hundred password remember-ers, maybe the built in one sucks?"

No, it doesn't. I don't need a new password remebering system, and I DON'T more bloat to include stuff "other people" find useful. If you want that, I heard Opera is nice. But let me keep my Firefox feature less, thank you.