.

A L S O__T O D A Y 21st Log "Nerds 2.0.1": PBS's all-too-brief history of the Internet - - - - - - - - - - T A B L E__T A L K The Microsoft antitrust trial: Discuss events as they unfold in the Digital Culture area of Table Talk - - - - - - - - - - R E C E N T L Y Thought-activated computing By Sam Witt and Sean Durkin The brain/computer interface becomes real -- as a boon for the paralyzed (11/23/98) The copyright boomerang By Peter Wayner A new copyright law bans tools that "circumvent" copy protections -- is cutting and pasting illegal? (11/20/98) Court puts new Net censorship rules on hold -- for now By Janelle Brown First ruling in "CDA II" case goes the way of law's opponents (11/20/98) Let's Get This Straight By Scott Rosenberg Windows on the wane? Open source and information appliances squeeze the PC from both sides (11/19/98) The return of the queen of cyberpunk By Andrew Leonard Science fiction novelist Pat Cadigan watches her imagined futures turn real (11/18/98) - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE 21ST FEATURES ARCHIVES - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.

STRANGE WEBFELLOWS? | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - Of course, those who believe the Net stands for something more importantthan an incredible business opportunity are bound to bridle at the focus on "eyeballs" and "e-commerce." Some Web developers feel that AOL still represents the antithesis of the freewheeling Web. Glenn Davis, chieftechnical officer of ProjectCool (and creator, back in 1994, of the groundbreaking "Cool Site of the Day" Web site), worries that an AOL-Netscape merger could spell trouble for traditional Web values. "This may be the death knell for the openness of the Web," says Davis, "making the Web into a closed thing in which only big corporate entities cansurvive ... I hate to see so-called giants merge and become more gigantic; I'm all for diversity, and the Web has been this wonderfully diverse thing,full of choices." Davis' point of view is undoubtedly representative of a large chunk of Net opinion. But it skips over a key point. Netscape may never have really deserved the status it was granted as emblematic hero of the Web. Sure, Navigator 1.0, with its significant technological advances over the original Mosaic Web browser, played a major role in boosting the Web's popularity. And yes, Netscape founders Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen did understand the Net's potential far earlier than Steve Case (who once proclaimed, "AOL is the Internet") and Bill Gates did. When Microsoft finally entered the "browser wars" it seemed natural to portray the battle as a stark contrast of good and evil. But Netscape was guilty of playing by exactly the same rules of business behavior as Microsoft. Just as Microsoft is accused of leveraging its power over the operating system market to promote other products, Netscape took advantage of its huge browser market share to unilaterally add "extensions" to HTML code, thus ensuring that its browser would stay one step ahead of potential competitors. Ultimately, Netscape hoped to transform its browser popularity into a dominant position in the software marketplace. At one point, Netscape executives even claimed that the browser would be the heart of a new Net-based operating system that could challenge Microsoft Windows hegemony. That did not come to pass. Instead, Netscape was forced to recognize, in the wake of Microsoft's blitzkrieg assault on the Web browser market, that one of its main hopes for revenue lay in exploiting its traffic -- the millions of people who came to Netscape's home page (in large part becausethat page was the default page that the Netscape Navigator browser first looks up). And as part of its desperate attempt to fend off Microsoft, the company even took the bold leap, in March, of joining the open-source movement by making access to its source code available to the general public. With that move, Netscape reclaimed some of the grass-roots support that its earlier embrace of proprietary extensions had alienated. But already, some observers of the high-tech scene are asking whether an AOL buyout of Netscape would mean continued support for the open-source movement. Is open source a concept even remotely visible on AOL's radar screen? No one knows yet, although Jamie Love, director of the Ralph Nader-founded Consumer Project on Technology, said on Monday that his organization plans to pursue the question. C-Net's Alex Cohen suggests that just by buying Netscape, AOL is implicitly endorsing "the move to open standards and the Internet which they had previously been uncomfortable with." But to focus on the underlying technology is to miss the point of what is really going on here, says Tim O'Reilly. Software, he says, in part as a result of the open-source movement, has become "commoditized." In other words, there's no more real money to be made there. The money is in the users. And on that level, a purchase of Netscape by AOL makes tremendously good business sense. "It's clearly a very powerful consolidation," says Cohen. "The two together will be a tremendous force. And there's no question it's aimed at Microsoft ... AOL has been massing the hugest online registration inexistence. With the addition of Netscape you have a very powerful force. Itmay ultimately be more powerful than an operating system." The Wall Street Journal has suggested that Microsoft's reaction to the proposed buyout will beone of fury -- that it will demand that the Justice Department treat apossible AOL-Netscape merger with the same harsh antitrust treatment it hasbestowed upon Microsoft. But Joshua Quittner, a journalist for Time magazineand the author of "Speeding the Net," a history of Netscape, says his firstreaction to news of the proposed buyout is that "the big winner is Microsoft." The alignment of AOL with Netscape would prove, suggests Quittner, that Microsoft doesn't have an unchallenged monopoly. An AOL switch to endorsing Netscape's Web browser (AOL currently has a deal to support Microsoft's Internet Explorer, but that deal expires in January) would dramatically pumpup Netscape's declining browser market share. "It makes it very clear that the information economy is by no means sewnup by Microsoft," says Quittner. "In the end this will guarantee a two-partyposition. This will keep Netscape alive for the foreseeable future -- so we will always have Netscape and we will always have Microsoft. That's the mostexciting part to me -- we don't have to sit around and say, Will Microsoft take over the world? We now know that there will be Microsoft and the AOL coalition, as a bare minimum. That's good for consumers and Net users." One might question whether a choice between AOL and Microsoft is really achoice. But it's definitely better than no choice at all. SALON | Nov. 24, 1998 Additional reporting by Janelle Brown. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - E-mail Andrew Leonard - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here.