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Yet Another Browser Enters The Browser Wars

Yet Another Browser Enters The Browser Wars

As if there wasn’t enough competition in the browser wars yet another upstart company named RockMelt has entered the browser wars. Little is known about the company and the founders are not being forthcoming with details. Normally browsers come and go and some of them come to stay but this one has attracted the attention of everyone because of its cast of characters. Most prominent is Mr Marc Andreessen who is reported to be financing the whole project. Marc Andreessen shot to prominence in the early to mid 90s when he co-developed the Netscape browser which is credited as being the first browser which brought the Internet to the general public. Initially Netscape was successful then Microsoft introduced Windows 95 which came with Internet Explorer and in the ensuing battle for supremacy Netscape lost. Also to note is the presence of Eric Vishria and Tim Howes who are said to be the founders of the company. These gentlemen also used to work with Marc Andreessen at Opsware, a company which Marc Andreessen formed and later sold to Hewlett Packard for $1.6 billion in 2007. Previously they also worked with Marc Andreessen on the initial Netscape project.

Considering the fierce competition in the so called browser wars, the first thing to consider will be an assessment on how the new browser will fare on the current landscape. Although the project carries names of prominent people who pioneered the very formation of web browsers, names alone does not matter anymore in the game. Google found this out when their highly marketed Google Chrome browser with the full support of the Google brand behind it has only achieved an estimated 2% of the marketshare despite being a reasonably good and acceptable browser. Internet Explorer on the other hand has the full support of Redmond behind it but has been steadily losing ground to Mozilla Firefox, Safari, Opera and other smaller browsers. It is in this context that one should assess the potential of the new browser.

First, lets face it the project carries the names of Mr Marc Andreessen, Eric Vishria, Tim Howes, Joe Hewitt (iPhone app developer) and Blake Ross (credited as being the creator of Firefox) and these are the kind of names that make the IT industry sit up and take notice when they are mentioned in the same sentence. Second, there is further talk of the new browser being integrated with Facebook probably serving as a pseudo-desktop client of the social networking site. This is further confirmed by the fact that Marc Andreessen sits on the Facebook board of directors. Considering the 250 million plus Facebook users it is conceivable that there can be decent market penetration if the business model is right. Third, it might be possible that the new browser may just polish all the glitches that people found with their individual browsers and come to be the browser of choice for everyone. These days most people always have more than one browser open at any given point. A single browser that satisfies all their needs will be a welcome alternative. Marc 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. Lastly, maybe one need not read too much in the so called browser wars after all. Google entered the search competition which was already dominated by the likes of Yahoo, AltaVista and Lycos but came up wit a business model that enabled it to become the leader of the pack. If the gentlemen (so far there has been no mention of ladies) at RockMelt are smart they can as well just do that.

On the other hand, to be honest the upstart has almost all the odds against it. To start with there is no denying the sheer amount of ingenuity in Redmond and at the Google Campus (seems the word campus says it all). Here are people who think, sleep and dream browser while Marc Andreessen and his team have side projects to think of. Secondly, as already mentioned, names alone just don’t cut it anymore in the game as people now want real innovation. Even if that is achieved, some people have become so much accustomed to their browsers so much that they will just afford the new kid a casual glance. Third, whatever new innovation the browser comes up with, it is possible we may see it in the next versions of the current browsers. We have seen it with the Private Browsing feature which was started by one browser with the others implementing the same features in their next versions. Even more importantly, the new feature can be added to the existing browser and people will continue with their favourite browsers. Lastly considering the tight integration with Facebook, that’s a cool idea but which has been tried before with minimal success. The Flock browser is one that readily comes to mind.

At the moment one can only go to the RockMelt website and sign up so that one gets updated on the progress of the project and hopefully gets invited for the first beta release. Considering the entry of the new browser one observer was less tolerant, saying the world needs a browser like a fish needs a bicycle. Only time will tell.

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