Marc Andreessen, an American
inventor. While studying at the University of Illinois-Champagne, Andreessen
became interested in the newly created Internet and started a graphic based
browser to search the web. The company he created, Netscape, went public but
immediately began the "browser wars" with Microsoft.
Inventor, Businessman Marc
Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape and inventor of the graphical Web browser,
got bored with computers before he even made it through high school. Although
he taught himself BASIC programming from a library book at age nine, by high
school he'd run out of things to do with the his TRS-80, one of the primitive
personal computers. At the University of Illinois in
Champaign, Andreessen only majored in computer science because he wasn't doing
well in electrical engineering. Even with his new major, he frequently skipped
class or dozed off, he later claimed.While working in a physics lab at college,
Andreessen felt his old interest in computers rekindled when he noticed
scientists sharing their work with other universities via the Internet. Tim
Berners-Lee, are searcher at the CERN particle physics lab in Geneva, had
recently developed the World Wide Web. Andreessen recruited a team of
programmers to create a better way to explore the Web. After two months of
80-hour weeks in the computer lab, living on chocolate chip cookies and milk,
Andreessen and his team churned out a graphical browser called Mosaic, which
used pictures and mouse clicks to navigate through information. The team gave
the Mosaic browser away free, and before long, some two million people were
using it, enough to catch the attention of recently retired James Clark,
founder of Silicon Graphics Inc., who was seeking new challenges.
Clark sent an email to Andreessen
soon after he graduated from college, inviting the young man to discuss
business possibilities. Although Clark had been interested in pursuing
opportunities in the interactive television arena, Andreessen convinced him
over a bottle of wine that the Internet was the key to the future. Together,
the two launched a company devoted to the World Wide Web called Mosaic, but
changed the name to Netscape when the University of Illinois strenuously
objected. To avoid copyright infringement issues, Andreessen recruited his old
pals from college, where some were still working for $6.85 an hour, and they
created a new version of the browser from scratch. The browser, given away free
with a plea to users to pay for it, caught on in a flash; more importantly,
corporations began purchasing Web server software and other tools to publish
their own Web sites.
When Netscape went public, the
24-year-old programmer found himself worth $56 million on paper. But it wasn't
smooth sailing: Microsoft had announced its commitment to the Internet and had
started giving its own browser away for free, Netscape's market share in a
short period of time. The two companies launched the "browser wars",
constantly introducing new versions to woo consumers.When America Online (AOL)
purchased Netscape, Andreessen, who had often criticized AOL for being
technically backward, accepted a job as chief technology officer. He moved
across country to the Washington, D.C. area, where he bought a 7,000-square-foot
home to share with his three bulldogs. However, after only a few months,
Andreessen resigned his position and became a part-time strategic adviser to
the company, spending the balance of his time working with other start-up
companies. Andreessen announced the formation of Loudcloud Inc., a company that
provides high-performance computing and software services to Internet and
e-commerce companies. In addition to his post as chairman of Loudcloud,
Andreessen has recently joined the board of directors of the Internet start-up
ventures CollabNet, MobShop, CacheFlow, and Octopus.com.
