4 ms·

After reading this, I feel the founders of Elph and myself have radically different ideas about what "Netscape" means.

by tigeba 8y ago

shreybear 8y ago
what do you think netscape means?
- tigeba 8y ago
  I realize over time Netscape did quite a few things, but to me it is a company that made a web browser. They weren't a portal or an app store. Maybe if you accept that ethereum is somehow equivalent to the web...
  - meritt 8y ago
    Netscape launched a doomed portal in 1997 and relaunched in 1998 after they started losing significant browser share to IE. There were already plenty of better portals at the time (Yahoo, Excite, Lycos, Infoseek, Compuserve, Prodigy, AOL, etc) and Netcenter's only real traffic came via Netscape Navigator users because it was the default home page. I don't understand the comparison to Netscape either. When Netscape was in it's prime, Elph's founder was 5 years old.
    - marcofatica 8y ago
      Agreed, makes no sense to me either. So they want to be a first mover with the right idea, but poor execution and eventually lose out to all other competition? Sounds like a great business philosophy.
nostrademons 8y ago
I see Coinbase as "the Netscape of crypto". They're the company that is making it easy for ordinary people to get involved with trading or holding crypto assets, basically the on-ramp to the cryptocurrency world. Ironically, Coinbase sees themselves as "the Google of crypto". Having worked at Google, this seems nonsensical to me. Google was built at a much later time in the dot-com boom, when the Internet had expanded so much that you couldn't have a single on-ramp to it, you needed a satellite overview (in this particular case, literally) to make sense of it all. IMHO the Google of crypto hasn't been invented, because the market for it doesn't exist yet. (Conventional wisdom is that currency is a winner-take-all market, in which case the market for "the Google of crypto" will never exist, because the industry will never get complex enough that you'd need one. I'm not entirely sure that conventional wisdom is correct in this case, though.) Elph sounds much more like "The Macintosh of crypto" - both because of the app store they're building, and because their focus is on making things that are currently complicated point-and-click.
- tigeba 8y ago
  It is interesting to me when these X for Y comparisons land for various folks. I have to conclude it worked for Elph or at least didn't substantially hinder them since they picked up investors. I find it very surprising that Coinbase would see themselves as the "Google of crypto" and not the "Paypal of crypto". Considering they are so highly curated, they could stretch it to the "Yahoo of crypto" but that sounds worse :) My view of Netscape was that it was a fantastic browser, and it was quite a bit better than NCSA Mosaic that it replaced. That said at the time, I think the majority of internet users problems were much more fundamental, like "How do I get this stupid modem thing to send me the internet". I think it could be argued that the "getting connected to the internet" piece is an analog to 'getting connected to ethereum / blockchain", but its unclear to me how the winners translate over. EDIT: I reserve the right to be completely missing the point. Feel free to call me out in 5-10 years.
- chocolatebunny 8y ago
  I'm pretty sure cryptokitties are teh Google of cryto. They kind of have a product that makes sense in the cryptocurrency universe.
- Fnoord 8y ago
  > I see Coinbase as "the Netscape of crypto". That's just... I don't have words to describe this. You realize Netscape invented SSL? This "crypto" term you and a bunch of other people already existed and has a conflicting meaning since it is one the core functionalities of what your term uses. You and your gang need to figure out a different term. I suggest the term cryptocurrency or digitulips.
zellyn 8y ago
After reading this, I feel the founders of Elph and myself have radically different ideas about what "Crypto" means. :-) Isn't OpenSSL the Netscape of Crypto?
- tapoxi 8y ago
  Netscape is the Netscape of crypto, since they developed SSL and NSS.
  - 456hdsaq234g 8y ago
    Yeah, NSS is the crypto(graphy library) of Netscape/Firefox and lots of other things :-)

After reading this, I feel the founders of Elph and myself have radically different ideas about what "Netscape" means.

by tigeba 8y ago

After reading this, I feel the founders of Elph and myself have radically different ideas about what "Netscape" means.

shreybear 8y ago

what do you think netscape means?

tigeba 8y ago
I realize over time Netscape did quite a few things, but to me it is a company that made a web browser. They weren't a portal or an app store. Maybe if you accept that ethereum is somehow equivalent to the web...
- meritt 8y ago
  Netscape launched a doomed portal in 1997 and relaunched in 1998 after they started losing significant browser share to IE. There were already plenty of better portals at the time (Yahoo, Excite, Lycos, Infoseek, Compuserve, Prodigy, AOL, etc) and Netcenter's only real traffic came via Netscape Navigator users because it was the default home page. I don't understand the comparison to Netscape either. When Netscape was in it's prime, Elph's founder was 5 years old.
  - marcofatica 8y ago
    Agreed, makes no sense to me either. So they want to be a first mover with the right idea, but poor execution and eventually lose out to all other competition? Sounds like a great business philosophy.

nostrademons 8y ago

I see Coinbase as "the Netscape of crypto". They're the company that is making it easy for ordinary people to get involved with trading or holding crypto assets, basically the on-ramp to the cryptocurrency world. Ironically, Coinbase sees themselves as "the Google of crypto". Having worked at Google, this seems nonsensical to me. Google was built at a much later time in the dot-com boom, when the Internet had expanded so much that you couldn't have a single on-ramp to it, you needed a satellite overview (in this particular case, literally) to make sense of it all. IMHO the Google of crypto hasn't been invented, because the market for it doesn't exist yet. (Conventional wisdom is that currency is a winner-take-all market, in which case the market for "the Google of crypto" will never exist, because the industry will never get complex enough that you'd need one. I'm not entirely sure that conventional wisdom is correct in this case, though.) Elph sounds much more like "The Macintosh of crypto" - both because of the app store they're building, and because their focus is on making things that are currently complicated point-and-click.

tigeba 8y ago
It is interesting to me when these X for Y comparisons land for various folks. I have to conclude it worked for Elph or at least didn't substantially hinder them since they picked up investors. I find it very surprising that Coinbase would see themselves as the "Google of crypto" and not the "Paypal of crypto". Considering they are so highly curated, they could stretch it to the "Yahoo of crypto" but that sounds worse :) My view of Netscape was that it was a fantastic browser, and it was quite a bit better than NCSA Mosaic that it replaced. That said at the time, I think the majority of internet users problems were much more fundamental, like "How do I get this stupid modem thing to send me the internet". I think it could be argued that the "getting connected to the internet" piece is an analog to 'getting connected to ethereum / blockchain", but its unclear to me how the winners translate over. EDIT: I reserve the right to be completely missing the point. Feel free to call me out in 5-10 years.
chocolatebunny 8y ago
I'm pretty sure cryptokitties are teh Google of cryto. They kind of have a product that makes sense in the cryptocurrency universe.
Fnoord 8y ago
> I see Coinbase as "the Netscape of crypto". That's just... I don't have words to describe this. You realize Netscape invented SSL? This "crypto" term you and a bunch of other people already existed and has a conflicting meaning since it is one the core functionalities of what your term uses. You and your gang need to figure out a different term. I suggest the term cryptocurrency or digitulips.

zellyn 8y ago

After reading this, I feel the founders of Elph and myself have radically different ideas about what "Crypto" means. :-) Isn't OpenSSL the Netscape of Crypto?

tapoxi 8y ago
Netscape is the Netscape of crypto, since they developed SSL and NSS.
- 456hdsaq234g 8y ago
  Yeah, NSS is the crypto(graphy library) of Netscape/Firefox and lots of other things :-)