By Rafe Needleman, Clair Whitmer, and Valerie Potter (4/20/98)
The Web is full of wonders: wonderful ideas, sites, products, and businesses. It lets us communicate with interesting people on the other side of the world. It opens libraries of information on our desktops. It educates, entertains, and elucidates.
That's all just peachy, but what we're interested in for the moment are the other wonders. For example, I wonder, Why does my browser crash all the time? What the heck happened to Netscape? Why I can't find anything with a search engine?
On the off chance that the average CNET reader is as jaded--we mean, as full of wonder--as the average CNET editor, we decided to make a list of our Seven Wonders of the Web: the seven things that make us wonder the most. Read on to see if our list matches yours, and check out our explanations of how everything got to be so wonderful. And at the end, we'll ask you for your opinion about the greatest wonder of all...
So come along with us for our tour of the Seven Wonders of the Web!
Rafe Needleman, formerly the editor for CNET.COM, is now the editorial director of events for The Red Herring; Clair Whitmer is the features editor for CNET.COM; and Valerie Potter is a senior editor for CNET.COM.
Why Do Browsers Crash All The Time
All computer programs have bugs, but this is ridiculous. Experts claim that No matter which major browser you use, you will eventually find yourself facing a bug of some sort: a strange JavaScript error, pages that won't print, or--worst of all--the "murder-suicide" scenario in which the crashing browser takes the whole operating system with it.
Does it have to be this way? Is it too much to ask for a nice, plain, reliable piece of software we can use to browse the Web?
Well, maybe. In today's Internet software game, it's not enough just to be stable: you have to have the most bells and whistles, as well. If stability really mattered the most, then the text-only Lynx would be our favorite browser. Yet most of us are using the 3.0 or 4.0 versions of Netscape or Microsoft's browsers. Why? Apparently, we're so wrapped up in having the latest and greatest features that we're willing to put up with the bugs.
Thus, in the battle for the hearts and minds of consumers, the two browser heavyweights have put massive resources into improving the features of the browsers. Netscape adds Netcaster push technology; Microsoft counters with Dynamic HTML. Netscape throws in a free buddy list program; Microsoft integrates IE into the Windows operating system. And the computer press (CNET included) writes it all up, hyping the features war even further.
What's more, to succeed in this field, you have to have the best features before the other guy does; after all, your competition is just a free download away. This leads to a frenetic development cycle. Navigator 3.0, for instance, went from conception to final release in just seven months, according to a study in the September/October 1997 Harvard Business Review called "Developing Products on Internet Time." The report by Marco Iansiti and Alan MacCormack states, "A significant portion of the new code, features, and technology that were integrated into the new release was developed only after the first beta version went public."
Compounding this creeping featurism is the fact that as the browsers get more complex, Web authors try to keep pace, putting content that supports the newest technologies--Java, Shockwave, audio, and video--on their sites. Often, the newfangled content causes problems, since the browsers' support for new stuff isn't as solid as their support for plain old HTML text.
So what it all comes down to is that the browser makers are more concerned with short-term market share gains than long-term reputations for reliability; consumers, frenzied by extensive media coverage, encourage this behavior by insisting on having the most features-laden programs possible; and Web authors put the final nail in the coffin by pushing the limits of what the browsers can support.
Will the browser war ever be over? Probably not anytime soon. If one browser company succeeds in killing the other one off, maybe things will settle down, and we'll get some stability for a change. But is that what we really want? We wonder.
Why Don't Search Engines Work
OK, they do work. But not the way you want them to. You want to be able to type Give me information about this topic and actually get some information about that topic. Instead, you have to play the "think like a search engine" game.
For example, say you're remodeling your living room, and you need window coverings. So you go to Infoseek, and type in blinds. Your search results? Schools for the blind, stories about blind spots, and a link to the Disney Wedding Guide (we don't know why it showed up, either). How about windows? Don't even bother--unless you think Microsoft has gotten into the home furnishings market. Window blinds, then: you get an article on how dangerous miniblinds are to small children and--at last!--some info from Fashion Tech Miniblinds.
Search engines work by starting at each page they know of, then following each and every link on each and every page, and putting all the words into a database. The best engines do an almost magical job of keeping track of every word on the Net.
Of course, "every word on the Net" is sometimes overkill. Searching for a general topic like cars can turn up millions of pages. Search engine programmers try to prioritize the results based on the relevancy of the site to your search term. They determine this relevancy by the position and frequency of your term on the site in question, by the site's title, and by the site's <META> tags--plus other jealously guarded secret formulas.
But clever Web authors are always trying to get their sites to show up at the top of search results, so they often try to suss out the formulas and adjust their pages accordingly. For instance, hiding repeated keywords or strings of text on a page was once a favorite way to fool search engines--until most of them got wise to the trick and began to discount heavily repeated words. One of today's methods is buoying pages--that is, setting out several copies of the same page on the Web (often with different titles or <META> tag text) in the hopes that at least one of them will score high on the results. What all this means is that what you're really looking for may be buried in the results list among lots of irrelevant sites.
Search engines are also frequently out of date--even the best of them (which update their databases and weed out broken links as often as every two weeks) contain dead links (pointers to pages that no longer exist).
What we need is a new concept--"find engines"--where the vendor makes money by helping you find stuff instead of helping you search for stuff. Many people would be willing to pay for a utility that could really find relevant, up-to-date, helpful information on the Web. Of course, this would require real natural-language processing, intelligent agents, and other technology that works mostly in theory at this point. How long will it take? We wonder.
Why Isn't Anybody Making Money On The Web?
Of course the real question is, Why aren't more people making money on the Web? Or, Why am I not making money on the Web? After all, Yahoo, AOL, and Amazon.com have all made (and lost) money on the Web. Some companies who use the Web to sell their products, like Dell, are making money, as is the case with businesses that sell Internet-related software and hardware, like Cisco Systems. And lots of Web design firms are raking it in. But that doesn't account for the other 2,672,843 other Web-based businesses. (Don't write in--we made that number up.)
The problem is that most Web businesses are content-driven, and people don't want to pay for content they're used to getting for free. While a few online publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, successfully charge subscription fees, the vast majority have failed in their attempts to make a buck directly off their readers.
That leaves advertising dollars, but advertisers just aren't buying the whole Internet spiel either. Advertisers don't spend money on media that are innovative or interesting or that will dominate mass communications in five years. They spend money on media that will help them sell more products right now--this quarter. And for the most part, Internet sites can't prove that they do that--yet. Even companies like CNET--which sell to computer vendors, the ones you'd think most likely to advertise on the Net--aren't profitable yet. Here at CNET, we obviously think it's just a matter of time before content companies are profitable.
The second category of Web business is comprised of companies who use the Net to bypass traditional business outlets (storefronts and commissioned salespeople) and sell directly to the consumer. Dell, Apple, and Gateway 2000 use the Web to sell their own products; Amazon.com, CDnow, and a variety of computer catalog companies sell other companies' products directly over the Web. These people actually have a better shot at near-term profitability than the content companies, partly because the consumer is already well trained by toll-free phone catalogs.
It's obvious, however, that this profit thing turned out to be harder than many expected. Why is that?
Because everyone is greedy. The media companies were having such a hard time selling ads in newspapers, magazines, and on TV that they rushed to the Internet as their salvation. Then it turned out that the business model--based on advertising sales--wasn't so solid.
As for the technology companies, they are under such pressure from shareholders to keep their quarter-to-quarter growth rate up that they'll latch onto anything that promises to increase the size of the market for software and hardware. The Internet boom--with millions of new users signing up each year--made it appear that a brand-new market had opened up, one that would recreate the stunning growth of the PC revolution in the 1980s. But it turns out that many of these users are signing up for the Net not to buy products, but to get free content and to send email. Which brings us back to the original problem--not enough ad sales.
It's a chicken-and-egg problem. But everyone is still convinced that the egg is going to hatch. Let's all say it together until it's true: it's just a matter of time, it's just a matter of time, it's just a matter of time, it's just a matter of time...
Why is the Web So Slow?
You want to read the latest article from your favorite online 'zine, Sugardaddy. So you click your Sugardaddy bookmark, and wait...
and wait...
and wait.Why is the Web so astoundingly slow?
It's not. In fact, it's astoundingly fast, considering that the Internet was never designed to handle the current rate of traffic online. In the pre-Web days, only the government, the universities, and a few cutting-edge companies used the Net. Now, every time you wait for a page to download, you're sharing routers with millions of other users. According to a recent study by the U.S. Department of Commerce, the number of Net users doubles every 100 days.
The Net was cobbled together from existing wires and networks owned by the U.S. government and various phone, cable, and satellite companies. Most of the companies that built the Net can't afford to upgrade the wiring infrastructure to keep up with demand. And since there's no single authority that runs the Net, universal maintenance or upgrades are a pipe dream.
But the real problem involves economics, not technology. The Internet industry is really no different from the PC industry. In the PC industry, software and hardware companies have a symbiotic relationship to make sure the consumer is under constant pressure to upgrade: software companies cram in new features that run only on new, faster PCs; as a result, new, faster PCs come out that tempt consumers to upgrade their software. And so on, and so on. In the Net industry, bandwidth takes the place of the new, faster PCs.
What really slows down the Web are the companies and the Web sites that constantly try to push the bandwidth envelope with the latest/greatest features and technologies. In a classic case of form over function, Web sites incorporate Java, streaming audio/video, push technology, Shockwave, and other new innovations that they know are bandwidth hogs.
Why? They want to be perceived as cutting-edge visionaries or to position themselves so they won't miss upcoming markets. The problem is there's no concern for what the market is now. Everyone is worried they'll miss the next wave, so they ignore this one: the one where plain old HTML pages are really the most appropriate carriers. Other vendors simply want to get you to buy more hardware. Intel, for example, pays sites like CNET to create superhigh-bandwidth pages that show off what you can do if you buy a Pentium II machine. (Intel is an investor in CNET.)
Never mind that cable modems and DSL are on the way. Never mind that the U.S. government is developing Internet2, a new, superfast backbone network. Once they finally show up, new bandwidth-hungry Web sites featuring live video, 3D navigation, and so on will spring up to put us right back where we started: too much data, not enough capacity.
So what's the solution? Stop upgrading your PC and browsers? We wonder.
Why Does Everybody Hate Microsoft?
What's that? You say you don't have any bad feelings against Microsoft? Well, you must be the only one. Pretty much everybody else loves to hate Microsoft--because it is huge and powerful and because it uses its power for its own advantage (and because its software crashes too much).
Besides, every drama needs a villain, and Silicon Valley is basically one long soap opera with three recurring subplots:
- Two buddies in a garage build an empire. Dozens of new millionaires are born.
- Established company comes up with a Big Idea, but fails to recognize its value. Small, upstart company sees its value, figures out how to market the Big Idea, and builds an empire. Dozens of new millionaires are born.
- Microsoft starts competing with either of the above and utterly destroys them.
So, let's see--is Microsoft a true, unredeemably nasty villain or the kind of heavy that, at the end of the story, everyone realizes was simply misunderstood?
Microsoft is certainly not a warm, fuzzy, save-the-world company. It has taken over the markets for desktop operating systems and applications, and it's now taking over the server software market. Microsoft owns 90 percent of the operating system market, and by many accounts, that makes it a monopoly. What's worse, it has used its control of operating systems to try to take over the browser market.
Microsoft might say that everybody is mad about this simply because they're jealous--that the ugly truth is that nobody likes a winner. Bill Gates also says that Microsoft's control has, in fact, helped the consumer by lowering prices and creating technology standards.
And, in some way, isn't that true? When you're talking about core technologies like operating systems, word processors, and browsers, what does everybody want? They want standards. They want to not worry about whose technology they're using and whether it will work with somebody else's. And, like it or not, Microsoft has largely given us that--at least as far as operating systems and office applications go.
The company hasn't yet taken over the browser market, and as a result, we don't have all-encompassing browser standards. (In theory, HTML and JavaScript have been standardized, but in reality, Netscape and Microsoft browsers don't react to them the same way.) But if the Microsoft juggernaut continues unchecked, its browser's behavior could become standard simply because everybody's using it.
Sure, some of Microsoft's technology is inferior to that of its competitors, and sure, Microsoft's dominance means it can jerk around other companies. But it also means we have de facto industry standards--core technologies that most people use. Would some international standards body accomplish this any better or any faster? Would Sun be more altruistic than Microsoft if Java replaced Windows? We wonder.
But that doesn't mean that Microsoft isn't dangerous. We're not just talking about PC technologies anymore. We're talking about the Internet: an entire mass communications medium. What will it mean if the only way to get to the Net is through a Microsoft interface and if the first thing we see when we get there is Microsoft content? If we truly are moving toward a Web lifestyle, as Bill Gates proselytizes, Microsoft could someday influence every aspect of our lives.
So is Microsoft an unredeemably nasty villain or a misunderstood one? We wonder.
What Happened To Netscape?
Just 18 months ago, Netscape was everybody's darling. With 80 percent of the browser market, the company had defined its role as the gatekeeper to the Web, the most important new medium in the world. It had moved from the market-share-building business model of giving its browser away for free to the profit-turning model of charging for Navigator; its stock had undergone a 2-for-1 split; and the media had anointed its cofounder, Marc Andreessen, as the next great boy genius.
Now, the company is rumored to be a buyout candidate, and Wall Street thinks this is good news. Netscape is hanging onto roughly 60 percent of the browser market, but has been forced to resume giving away its new browser suite, Communicator, to compete with Microsoft's Internet Explorer. In January, Netscape posted a $115.5 million loss for 1997 and announced plans to lay off 300 employees, nearly 10 percent of its workforce. Its stock has been way down for months, with brief upswings whenever buyout rumors recirculate. Even the company's top executives have dumped huge chunks of their stock.
What happened?
In a word, Microsoft. After showing little commitment to the Web throughout most of 1995, producing only pale imitations of Navigator in Internet Explorer 1.0 and 2.0, Microsoft suddenly announced in December that it was "hardcore about the Internet." In other words, it went after Netscape in a big way. In perhaps the fastest turnaround in corporate history, Microsoft released Internet Explorer 3.0, widely regarded as Navigator 3.0's equal, just six months later.
What hurt most of all was Microsoft's tactic of taking a page from Netscape's rule book and giving away Internet Explorer (even to businesses) just as Netscape began charging for Navigator. Netscape had the better product, the longer Net history, and the appealing underdog status--but Microsoft's browser was free, and that's all a lot of newbies flocking to the Web care about.
The lesser-known, but equally important, part of the Microsoft/Netscape war takes place on the server side. Netscape used to dominate the Web server business, but Microsoft is coming on strong on that front, too, cutting off yet another revenue generator for Netscape.
Maybe no small- or mid-sized company can withstand the onslaught of Microsoft. Maybe Netscape's biggest mistake was being too successful too soon and attracting Microsoft's attention before it was really capable of defending itself. After all, Microsoft can afford to give away its Net products. It simply absorbs the massive research and development costs for its servers and browsers with other sources of income. Netscape doesn't have many other sources of income left.
The company has looked to its Web site's advertising revenue for sustenance, but now after three straight quarterly gains, revenue from its Web site dropped 22 percent in the fourth quarter of 1997. After all, people come to Netscape's site because it's the start-up page for their browser. If Netscape loses its browser market share, its Web site traffic will inevitably decline, too.
We'd like to say that Netscape will be able to reorganize, recoup, and recreate itself. But we can't help but remember what happened to Lotus. And WordPerfect. And Novell. And Borland. Will Netscape prove the exception? We wonder.
What Happens Next?
We feel kind of duty-bound to answer this question. After all, we are supposed to be the pundits and pontificators. But heck if we know. So we thought we'd ask you.
(NOTE: The poll will not work from here - go to the original page if you want to be polled!)
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