The New, New Thing: Networking, the Internet and the World Wide Web

The New, New Thing: Networking, the Internet and the World Wide Web

The PC Revolution c. 1995

The view from Silicon Valley

PC manufacturing:

"IBM Clones" dominate market (Dell, Compaq in Texas; Gateway in North Dakota; etc.)

85% built with Intel chips
Pentium I released (1993); Intel begins "Intel Inside" brand-name marketing

Apple remains viable, innovative, but a fringe company

PC Software

Microsoft controls 85% of PC OS market; similar domination of other PC software niches
Adobe (founded in 1982) continues to develop innovative graphical software
Symantec (founded in 1982) and McAfee pioneer virus protection software
Intuit (founded in 1983) pioneers home business software (Quicken, TurboTax, etc.)

Defense downsizing shrinks power and influence of Lockheed and other defense industries

The New New Thing: Networking, the Internet and the World Wide Web

Computer networking and "ethernet"

3Com (founded 1978)

Bob Metcalfe develops ethernet for the Alto Computer at Xerox PARC (1970-1975)
Metcalfe founds 3Com to sell PC network hardware and software (1978)

Novell develops IBM compatible NetWare; quickly captures network market for IBM PCs (1980-1990)

Microsoft and 3Com discuss alliance to challenge Novell; alliance ends in biiterness

Metcalfe fired by 3Com Board of Directors (1990)

3Com acquires U.S. Robotics (1997), maker of the Palm Pilot Personal Digital Assistant (first released in 1995)

Palm, Inc, the 3Com spinoff which makes the Palm Pilot, currently controls 75% of the PDA market

3Com earned $4.3 billion in revenues in 2000

Cisco Systems (founded 1984)

Stanford Connection: company founded after Len Bozack and Shelly Lerner successfully link Stanford University computers

Key product: router

Don Valentine and Sequoia Capital (founded 1972) invest in Cisco Systems; Initial Public Stock Offering (IPO) in 1986
Shelly Lerner fired; Len Bozack resigns (August, 1990)
Cisco Systems earned $18 billion in revenues in 2000

Networked computer work stations

Sun Microsystems (1982)

Stanford connection: company started by Stanford students on the Stanford campus

Andreas Bechtolsheim (Stanford Computer science grad student)
Vinod Khosla and Scott McNealy (Stanford MBA students)
Bill Joy (UNIX programmer at UC Berkeley)

Venture Capital funding from John Doerr of Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, and Byers (founded 1972)
Open architecture; open software
Sun earned 15.7 billion in revenues in 2001

Silicon Graphics (1982)

Stanford connection: company started by Stanford Computer Science Professor Jim Clark

Clark used technology developed at Stanford and hired Stanford graduate students as first employees

Pioneers work stations and softawre for high-end computer graphics

Birth of the military-entertainment complex?

SGI earned 2.3 billion in revenues in 2000

The Internet and the World Wide Web

The Internet spins off of the ARPANet (1970-1990)

Rapid Growth: 1981: 213 internet hosts; 1991: 617,000 hosts; today: 109 million hosts.
Stewart Brand founds The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (The WELL) in 1985

First on-line chat room/bulletin board

The University of Minnesota launches Gopher, a user-friendly internet file transfer program (1991)
Tim Berners-Lee develops the World Wide Web at CERN (1994); quickly becomes the internet standard
The "Browser Wars" begin

Netscape

Marc Andriessen develops Mosaic at the University of Illinois, the first "Web Browser" (1993)
Marc Andriessen and Jim Clark found Netscape Communications (1994)

Venture Capital funding from John Doerr of Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, and Byers (founded 1972)

First Netscape browser appears (1994)
Netscape IPO sets off "Internet Mania" in Silicon Valley (August, 1995)

Microsoft

December 7, 1995: Bill Gates gives "Pearl Harbor Address" to Microsoft employees

Microsoft Internet Explorer to be included free in Windows 95 OS

By 1998 Microsoft and Netscape each control roughly half of the browser market

U.S. Justice Department files anti-trust suit against Microsoft; browser war with Netscape the focus
America On-Line (AOL) (founded in 1982 by Steve Case) acquires Netscape for $4.3 billion (October, 1998)
Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson rules in favor of the U.S. Government, declares Microsoft a monopoly (April, 2000)
AOL acquires Time-Warner Communications to become world's largest media conglomerate (October, 2000)

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