If you took the first steps in a radical new technology only to be superseded by someone on the lines of mere reach and power, you’d want to win back that power. Way back when we were playing Pacman in our school labs Marc Andreesen saw a similar story written for him. He made his first browser ever – Mosaic, before heading to build the then famous Netscape Navigator only to see it get piped by Microsoft’s IE.
However, tech streams are now abuzz with reports of Andreesen, now an investor and startup adviser among many other things getting his hands behind a new browser. Andreessen is backing a startup called RockMelt, staffed with some of his close associates, that is building a new Internet browser. There are plenty of options availabe really if you want to go beyond the big four among browsers actually, but when the father of web browsing renews his interest in the field that he essentially created, you’d be interested very much.
The premise of this new adventure is the fact that browsers these days are essentially better versions of an existing skin, means they have not kept up with the changing web. And therefore, if one is creating a browser from scratch,t here would be a lot many things that would be done differently from what is conventional. In many ways Andreesen thinks Rockmelt is doing these different things.
According to Andreesen browsers don’t quite match up to the need of changing web habits influenced by sites like Twitter, Facebook, et al. He should know, he is after all ont he board of Facebook. Which brings us to the other aspect of the Rockmelt.
Readwriteweb claims it is the Facebook browser and offers a number of tidbits on that front. Though there has been no official word on it, it can very well be true and put the limelight squarely on Facebook. And that’s a huge move for a web publisher.
The implications on both counts are really high, on one hand there is a brilliant team developing what can perhaps change the way browsing happens and on the other Facebook can perhaps have towering presence among those fighting for extending their ubiquity on the web and beyond. A lot of questions then begin to find ground, and hopefully they will get answered when Rockmelt comes out of its stealth state.
Posted by
Niks
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