Architects of the Web: 1,000 Days that Built the Future of Business

Architects of the Web presents the dynamic 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. A diverse, ambitious group, the architects of the Web are: Marc Andreessen, Netscape

• Ariel Poler, I/PRO
• Rob Glaser, Progressive Networks
• Andrew Anker, HotWired
• Kim Polese, Marimba
• Halsey Minor, CNET
• Mark Pesce, VRML
• Jerry Yang, Yahoo!

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 Andreessen, 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.

The first chapter tries to credit Netscape with the invention of the web, and pretends that they lead the development of HTML. The truth, of course, is that Netscape has never managed to fully implement any of the HTML standards, let alone improve on them. Most of the HTML "improvements" thought of as Netscape's were defined in HTML 3.0 long before Netscape implemented them via gratuitously incompatible tags.

As the book goes on it gets even worse. CNET and HotWired as architects of the web? Yeah, right, and I suppose the Psychic Friends Network invented the telephone? I'll be generous, and assume that this book happened because some poor soul started believing the nonsense Internet companies put out in their press releases. The alternative is that it's a deliberate attempt to re-write history. Unfortunately, judging from the 'professional' reviews there must be plenty of suckers who actually do think CNET and WIRED magazine invented the web. I wish it was possible to give this book a score of zero; you could learn more about the real history of the web by spending half an hour browsing the W3C web site.


Interesting, Timely, but flawed   July 21, 1997
 5 out of 7 found this review helpful

The main impression you take away from this book is that there are a lot of millionaires in the Internet world that got there by accident and timing rather than outright brilliance. Written as if Microsoft is a dark malevolent force (which is how it is obviously perceived from the other side), this book goes too far in trying to canonize the newcomers. While many recent books have been written from the " MS is great" side, this counter view can be interesting, but takes many cheap shots. The hardest part of reading this is the horrible editing. You realize that you are noticing constant typos, grammar and layout problems as you go. In many cases, it looks like a quick spell check was done on dictated text as same sounding words show up totally out of context in their other spelling. This apparently was rushed to the press. The best part of this book is recognizing the significance of the sub-title.It truly has only been 1,000 days since the Web exploded


An education and entertaining as well.   June 14, 1997
 4 out of 6 found this review helpful

You learn about the web; what it is and where itmight be going. The introduction by Neil Weintraut is a primer on the facts, figures andinfrastructure of the web and, in itself, is quite worth the reading. The author is an excellent story teller and his documenting of the events in the development of the web is entertaining reading and is a recounting of real life, as well. Great reading for professionals as well as surfers of the web.