The next 60 days are going to be make-or-break for Netscape Communications in its battle to keep its grip on the booming Internet market and stave off Microsoft's bid for dominance.
Jim Barksdale, president and chief executive, told journalists in Europe that he wanted to turn Netscape into a media company.
"In the next 60 days, you will see us massively expanding in the media area," he said, briefing reporters after a week spent in Europe meeting government officials and industry executives.
The first thrust in the offensive is this week's announcement that Netscape will offer free e-mail on the Netcenter Web site, among a series of enhancements aimed at making it the most popular gateway to the Internet within a year. The second is the current renegotiation of search-engine contracts with companies such as Yahoo, Excite, Lycos, and Infoseek.
"All our search-engine contracts are expiring next week," Barksdale said. "There will be an announcement in the early part of May. I cannot yet comment on how many of them we are going to continue.
"So far, we have mainly been a wholesaler and they were the retailer. What we are telling them now is that we want to become more of a retailer ourselves. We want to define a new type of partnership which I think is a good deal for both."
Barksdale mentioned Microsoft only once, to say that since Redmond made its Internet Explorer browser available free of charge, revenues on the Netscape Navigator browser had all but evaporated.
But the media offensive is timed to coincide with the pending release of the Windows 98 operating system, which will further incorporate the Internet on the desktop and could solidify Microsoft's hold on the Net.
Mountain View, California-based Netscape is at the forefront of legal action against Microsoft's market position. Barksdale said comments that Netscape would be blown out of the water by Microsoft were "nonsense."
But in a sense, Netscape has been blown out of the water it was originally set to sail. Having lost so much ground on the browser front to Microsoft, the company switched its strategy last year to focus on its server software and on penetrating the business market. Now, that apparently isn’t going well enough to keep the company happy.
Barksdale was short of details concerning media strategy.
"Everything that you see at the moment on Web sites is what we can easily do ourselves," he said. Barksdale said that for him, a media group meant a "media aggregator" -- a channel for content, but not a content provider. And he said this would take limited investments. Netscape will rely on its partners for content, he said, naming deals with big US newspapers and added-value databases.
The reason for the move was purely financial, he said.
"Look at the multiples. Yahoo, Infoseek, Excite, and Lycos have a combined market value in excess of US$30 billion for revenues of some $65 million."
