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(More customer reviews)This is a well-written, interesting book. However, in my opinion, it tells only part of the story. It looks at how Netscape formulated its strategy, but not at how (or whether) this strategy was executed.
This is like explaining a football game entirely on the basis of the diagrams that the coaches drew on the chalkboard. What actually happened on the field gets no attention.
For example, the authors claim that one of Netscape's strategies was to leverage Internet standards. However, the reality is that with its browser Netscape thumbed its nose at Internet standards, particularly when it dominated the market. Even today, its browser generally is seen as less compliant with standards than is Microsoft Explorer.
Another alleged Netscape strategy was to "eat your own dogfood," which means using your own products. The reality is quite different. For example, Netscape released a production version of Enterprise 3.0 and kept its own web site on Enterprise 2.0 for several months afterward.
In 1996, a key component of Netscape's web server was something they called LiveWire, which provided scripting and database connectivity. I adopted it for my web site in the second half of 1996. However, after several months of trying to get it to work reliably, we had to abandon it, moving to Java servlets instead.
Meanwhile, as of late 1997 (when I stopped following it), Netscape's web site still had not adoped LiveWire. They let other users suffer with the bugs and problems in LiveWire, while they ran their own site using the older technology of CGI/Perl. That means they spent at least 1-1/2 years in real time (multiply by 7x to get Internet time) NOT eating their own dogfood. In contrast, Microsoft used their competing Active Server Page technology immediately on their sites.
To return to the football analogy, my epitaph for Netscape is that it is a company that told the press and its shareholders that it was aiming to play in the Super Bowl, but disdained to practice blocking and tackling.
While Netscape's executives were formulating these nifty strategies, Sun and Microsoft were getting their code in shape. In my opinion, that is most of the story.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Competing On Internet Time: Lessons From Netscape And Its Battle With Microsoft
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