Netscape doesn't always bother to hide its disdain for industry standardssetting bodies. "Netscape's attendance at open standards meetings has been spotty," notes Eric Sink, who works for Netscape competitor Spyglass Inc., in Naperville, Ill., and chairs a working group within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), an informal grassroots Internet standards body. "While it's gotten better lately, for a long time Netscape gave the impression that it just didn't care." The crowning insult, says Sink, was when Netscape blew off an IETF meeting two years ago in San Jose--some five miles from Netscape headquarters. Even when Netscape attends meetings, he adds, its representatives don't seem interested in advancing the agenda. "It's as though someone from on high said, 'Let's not make a big deal about it, but let's not let anything go by without our knowing about it either,' " he claims.
Web-page designer Siegel becomes livid on the subject of Netscape's track record in standards efforts. Siegel is a member of the W3C and an invited member of its HTML review board E-mail discussion group. He alleges that the group is often "the last to know" about new Netscape features. "It does everything by press release," he gripes, "and conveys the message that 'we're not going to play by the rules.' " He claims that when he recently ran a page on fonts for the W3C, Netscape didn't contribute and that the company has ignored standards-setting work on style sheets. Netscape was conspicuously absent from a Web conference in Versailles last spring, he notes. "Netscape said it was too busy, which is its reason for everything," grumbles Siegel. "If Netscape is not acting as part of the consortium at this low level, perhaps it's time the W3C asked it to either be in or out of the formal standards process."
Indeed, why doesn't the industry band together to censure Netscape in some way? The answer is probably obvious and is vividly answered in an E-mail from Fred Baker, senior software engineer at Cisco Systems Inc. and current chairman of the IETF. "Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup," he wrote.
But it's not just fear of being crushed by the Netscape steamroller that keeps companies and individuals from protesting more vociferously. The fact is many, perhaps even most, people are quite happy with Netscape's de facto standards setting to date because the company arguably has set good standards. "Consider the alternative," says META Group's Lepeak. "Were it not for Netscape, we'd all be stuck with last year's browser."
Most people right now are simply concerned with getting functionality as fast as possible to the Web, he contends. He dismisses those who are upset by Netscape's actions as either Internet "purists" or Microsoft "loyalists." Many Web enthusiasts are rabid Netscape devotees, like Pepperdine University's Internet researcher Ogden Forbes, who wrote his doctoral dissertation, at the University of San Francisco, on the history of the Internet. "Netscape has given a major gift to legions of people worldwide," he gushes. "Thank you, Netscape!"
And it's true, at least in the short term, that having a single company take control of an emerging technology can provide much-needed direction and leadership. But the longer-term ramifications of unilateral standards setting is more grim, to judge by history--and one need hardly look outside the computer industry for evidence. Has anyone noticed companies rushing to restore IBM's several-decades-long dominance of the corporate computing world, maintained largely by its having set technical standards for computer hardware? Does a large percentage of today's PC users appreciate the decade it took operating-systems standards-setter Microsoft to offer DOS users a workable graphical user interface (Windows 3.1) and the additional half decade to bring out a successor (Windows 95) that equaled the functionality and usability of the Macintosh operating system of the mid-1980s?
The essential question is this: Once a company firmly controls standards, what's to keep it working hard to make sure that new features benefit customers rather than head off competitors? The question becomes all the more critical as browsers evolve from operating system add-ons to the actual core of the operating system--a direction that both Netscape and Microsoft have made no secret of taking.
But the Web industry and those of us who make use of its products don't seem to be in a position to do much right now besides cast a vote for either Netscape or Microsoft. Perhaps the best we can reasonably hope for is that the two will end up sharing control, each forcing the other to keep its offerings in its customers' best interests. What doesn't seem likely is that either will give up the battle and throw its weight behind jointly developed standards. As Clyde Seigle, vice-president of technology development for tax and legal information provider CCH Inc., in Riverwoods, Ill., notes, "The Internet has come a long way from the days when everyone was supposed to cooperate."
Alessandra Bianchi is a contributing writer for Inc. magazine.
