Speeding the Net

Combining the hacker savvy of Tracey Kidder's "Soul of a New Machine" with the riveting drama of the first great corporate conflict waged on the turf of cyberspace, "Speeding the Net" tells the story of how a crew of talented computer jocks at the University of Illinois turned the computer world upside-down by creating the essential tool for navigating the World Wide Web--the web browser.

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Combining the hacker savvy of Tracey Kidder's Soul of a New Machine with the riveting drama of the first great corporate conflict waged on the turf of cyberspace, Speeding the Net is the story of how a crew of talented computer jocks at the University of Illinois turned the computer world upside down by creating the essential tool for navigating the World Wide Web -- the web browser.They created it for fun, but after Silicon Valley visionary and entrepreneur Jim Clark showed up in the middle of a snowstorm and hired them on the spot, they were soon part of one of the most dramatic initial public offerings (IPOs) in the history of Wall Street, had built their company into a dollar 2.2 billion business, and were forcing Bill Gates's Microsoft to reevaluate its entire business strategy. Speeding the Net gives an inside account of the ensuing cat and mouse game between Netscape, which held an early lead in the so-called browser wars, and Microsoft, which has always been notorious for zeroing in on its opposition -- and crushing it. Win, lose, or draw, however, Netscape's corporate culture of speed -- developing new programs and bringing them to market in under six months, then giving them away for free -- has already transformed the way Silicon Valley does business and the way the world communicates.