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It is arguably the most significant business
tool of our time. As powerful as the television, the telephone,
and the personal computer -- and destined to subsume them
all -- the Internet has exploded from twenty-five years
of lab room obscurity to become the hottest business story
ever. The catalyst of this explosion, of course, is the
rise of the World Wide Web, the Internet's multimedia domain.
The Web itself was just an academic curiosity
until a University of Illinois undergraduate and a young
researcher wrote a piece of software called "Mosaic"
that made the Web accessible and alluring to the masses.
In the thousand days that followed Mosaic's release on the
PC and Macintosh, the Web attracted more than 40 million
users.
This spectacular growth sparked one of the
most dramatic periods of capital formation in history --
so far bringing a million dollars or more in invested capital
to over 500 new companies. One of these companies, Netscape,
quickly became the fastest growing software company in history.
And its flagship product, the Netscape Navigator, became
the most popular PC application in the world less than two
years after its release.
Architects of the Web presents the
history of the Web's creation and evolution -- as well as
its emergence as a dynamic business tool -- through revealing
profiles of its architects, the brilliant minds who have
helped thrust the Web onto desktops and corporate agendas
around the world. On the cutting edge of the online revolution,
these visionaries have all made vital contributions to the
advancement and enhancement of the Web that will define
the way we conduct business in the future. A diverse, ambitious
group, the architects of the Web include:
- Marc Anderson, Netscape: Coauthor of
Mosaic and cofounder of Netscape, Marc touched off the
Web revolution and soon became one of the most celebrated
and talked-about entrepreneurs of our time.
- Kim Polese, Marimba: Sun Microsystems'
Java language is revolutionizing the economics and competitive
dynamics of the technology industry. It is also one of
that industry's great marketing successes. Kim was Java's
"marketing department" during its early history,
and in 1996 cofounded Marimba to help further the language's
development.
- Jerry Yang, Yahoo!: Jerry was a Stanford
graduate student when he cocreated Yahoo! The Internet's
leading directory service, Yahoo! Has the potential to
blossom into the world's most powerful media property.
- Andrew Anker, HotWired: HotWired, the
online cousin of Wired magazine, pioneered many
of the business and content practices that are now standard
to Internet publishing. Andrew, a Wall Street,
not Silicon Valley veteran, has been running HotWired
since its agenda-setting debut in the Web's earliest days.
The entrepreneurs and companies profiled
herein have already begun to play a pivotal role in defining
our future business landscape. As the digital revolution
continues, white-collar professionals everywhere will feel
the effects on their business and personal choices. They
are an eclectic group -- diverse enough that their stories
will give readers a broad and thorough understanding of
the Web's history, its capabilities, and its business relevance.
They are presented in a way that makes the concepts and
forces that they discuss accessible and understandable.
All are interesting, funny, thought-provoking, and above
all, highly significant, as the changes the Web's architects
are effecting will have a profound impact on all of us.
Before writing this book, Robert Reid
worked at Silicon Graphics (SGI), a $2 billion maker of
supercomputers, workstations, and servers. There, he managed
his company's relationship with Netscape (which was cofounded
by SGI's own founder, Jim Clark). He now works at Twenty-First
Century Internet, a venture capital fund headquartered in
San Francisco. Mr. Reid is a graduate of Stanford University,
holds an MBA from Harvard University, and lives in Mountain
View, California.
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