Speeding the Net: The Inside Story of Netscape and How It Challenged Microsoft

Author: Joshua Quittner, Michelle Slatalla
List Price: $25.00
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 0871137097
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press (June, 1998)
Sales Rank: 36,398
Average Customer Rating: 3.89 out of 5

Customer Reviews

Rating: 5 out of 5
A must-have if you're sick of canned media coverage
My only complaint with this book is it wasn't long enough. I read it in two sittings, taking one break to eat. It was very readable and incredibly interesting.

The most important point of the book, in my opinion, is what I scream at the TV set every time our know-nothing government officials fight about whether MicroSloth can put an IE icon on the Win 95 desktop -- that point being that it is entirely impossible to compete with a company who writes both the operating system and the products that run on it, and the anti-trust lawsuits are completely missing the point.

This point seems to be lost on the general public and our government. The book offers numerous concrete examples of how Gates & Co. use their inside knowledge of the Windows OS to write programs that outperformed Netscape, while at the same time withholding that information from Netscape for months on end.

This book should be required reading by all the Department of Justice folks.

Rating: 3 out of 5
An entertaining, easy read - low on insight
This is an entertaining book that is very well titled. It is in fact a story, a story of how Netscape was created, followed by a collection of stories that are loosely related. The book avoids telling us much about the Microsoft team and their tactics. It also seems to avoid ever interviewing individuals from the IE team. When IE 4 was being developed there were numerous stories of how they were rewarded and how they would be judged (nearly always relative to Navigator) but the authors never addressed them. Instead they told a tale of how drunken IE programmers vandalized the Netscape headquarters.

The "early" history of Netscape (if there is such a thing) is very well presented, however the book drags at the end as it doesn't know where to go. Maybe it is simply too early to publish the history of the battle between Netscape and Redmond's evil empire...or maybe the fact that I bought it shows that it isn't. ($$$) Despite missing some key elements, Speeding the Net is an easy, entertaining read which filled in gaps in my knowledge of the relations between these two companies. It also makes following the current events with the Department of Justice that much more interesting.

Rating: 4 out of 5
An Exiciting Ride
Given the first two thirds of this book, it could be called "The Inside Story of Netscape." The last part of the book gives a good overview of the war between Netscape and Microsoft. There is a lot of good information about how the whole Internet craze began. It's an exciting ride.

The book gives great insight to Netscape's side of the story. It takes a bit to get into it because each new player has to be introduced, where he or she began, and brought up to the present. There are quite a few players. So you might lose your place in the story if you put the book down too long. But hang in there. The story is exciting and moves along. You will find yourself rooting for those young programmers and hoping they make it.

I can't wait to read the sequel.



Book Index