Netscape Blue Plate IPO Specials
There is a cornuccopia of predictable “tenth anniversary of Netscape’s IPO” features floating around, from Fortune’s solid & interesting editorial package a few weeks ago, to a strange “Ask Bill Gurley” piece in today’s Financial Times, to a generally anodyne editorial from Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard in today’s Wall Street Journal, on outward to the general media going nutty this week with their own take.
I understand the temptation to do the ritual kowtowing at the IPO anniversary, but I wish more people would stop and ask themselves whether they’re really saying anything new or useful.
Case in point, Rich K.’s editorial in the Journal today, in which he does a cross between civic booster, sleepless technology bull, and George Gilder acolyte. All of that would be acceptable, possibly, if he actually said anything new or entertaining, but instead we get this ex post bizarro stuff about how Alan Greenspan killed the telecom boom (huh?), and an over-cooked Grateful Dead metaphor having to do with the Netscape IPO and Jerry Garcia’s dying words.
Yo Rich, where is the real change since Netscape’s IPO? Where is some mention of, you know, user-contributed content (i.e., blogs and the rest), the collapse of enterprise IT, the rise of open source, the Netscape-induced eventual implosion of the IPO market, and so on? They’re all MIA.
[oBDisclosure: I wrote a few pieces for Forbes many moons ago, so I have passing acquaintance with Karlgaard.]