December 3, 1998
from the Friends-of-the-Revolution dept
NETSCAOLPE and the Giant B2C BeanstalkBy 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?
----
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
A column that comes out every so often, and talks about something or another... To subscribe to Friends of the Revolution email bcd2@cornell.edu
The information contained in this newsletter reflect the opinions of Brian Day, and do not represent actual fact. Any decisions made based on these opinions is your own fault. Yadda...Yadda... Yadda...
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