How the Web Was Won

Vanity Fair’s July issue contains an excellent piece titled “How the Web Was Won”. It provides an enlightening perspective on the history of the internet and how the web as we know it came to be. What makes the piece particularly unique is its format, a collection of personal accounts by many of the key people who were involved every stage of the internet’s development. While the post does not give any attention to the perhaps more interesting question – where the web is heading today?, I still think it is a must read. In the words of Winston Churchill “the further backward you look, the further forward you can see!”

There are too many good excerpts to post all the highlights, but here are a few teasers if you’re not already convinced to give it a read:

Jeff Bezos: audio commentary

Steve Case: We always believed that people talking to each other was the killer app. And so whether it was instant messaging or chat rooms, which we launched in 1985, or message boards, it was always the community that was front and center. Everything else—commerce and entertainment and financial services—was secondary. We thought community trumped content.

Howard Dean: The Internet is the most important democratizing invention since the printing press, 500 years ago. The Internet is remaking American politics, and the Republicans are in big trouble because of this. American politics is no longer a top-down command-and-control business, which people in Washington can’t get over. But it’s true. If young people want to get something done, they go on the Net. They find out some information. They find an affinity group—or if they don’t have one, they start an affinity group.

Vinod Khosla: Communication always changes society, and society was always organized around communication channels. Two hundred years ago it was mostly rivers. It was sea-lanes and mountain passes. The Internet is another form of communication and commerce. And society organizes around the channels.

Huge Boost for WiMAX – $3.2B into Sprint / Clearwire

WSJ reports that as early as tomorrow Sprint will announce that it has agreed to merge its wireless broadband unit with Clearwire. The new company has raised a $3.2B investment from technology giants, Intel, Comcast, Time Warner, and Google. These investments value the JV at $12B. While this is very much a diving catch save for WiMAX in the US, it does combine an interesting group of supporters. The key questions (as Om Malik astutely points out) are: 1) how this collection of investors, with divergent self interests in seeing WiMAX succeed, will be able to work together, and 2) if they are able to successfully roll out the service, how open will the network be? In the past these ventures with large tech companies banding together to deliver network services have not ended well (i.e. AT&T, Intel & IBM’s nationwide WiFi push in 2002).

With respect to the self interests of the parties involved, this is how I see them…

• Clearwire – WiMax has been losing the battle for the 4G technology standard to a competing technology called LTE. Although it is still in early development, many of the world’s largest operators like Vodafone, Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile have come out in favor of it. Not surprising, as LTE builds on their GSM standard. So they are in dire need to cash to get WiMAX back in the US game.
• Sprint Nextel – the co is in the middle of a turnaround and after the continued failings of their WiMAX initiative and partnership with Clearwire last year, it can’t tell the Street that it is still planning to build a WiMAX network on its own. On the other hand, it would also be tough to scrap and write-down the effort altogether in the wake of the massive Nextel write-down.
• Cable operators – they want a way into wireless without having to make the risky bet all on their own. With more of their content being delivered over broadband that will be going wireless in the not too distant future, they need a way build a strong position in this emerging market.
• Google – no surprise that Google wants influence over a wireless network, so that it call easily offer its applications to consumers. More specifically, its search application accompanied by highly targeted, geo-relevant ads.
• Final comment – it’s been noted that Google has been buying up dark fiber around the U.S. over the past 6+ months (?). I wonder if that ties into the JV at all? It certainly could be of use…

In the end, I am happy to see WiMAX back in the running. Competition always benefits consumers, and I personally can’t wait to get my mobile broadband on!