Marc Andreessen is throwing down the browser gauntlet once again. Fifteen years after he launched what was then the dominant Web browser, the venture capitalist is investing in what could be the next browser to make a buzz on the World Wide Web.
The inventor of the Netscape Internet browser is investing in a startup called RockMelt. The company is building a new Internet browser to join a market where Microsoft Internet Explorer reigns supreme, Firefox is gaining ground, and new players like Google Chrome are looking for an opportunity.
“Does the world really need another browser?” asked Michael Gartenberg, a vice president at Interpret. “It’s starting to feel like 1999 all over again with browser wars and new versions of browsers.”
RockMelt’s Hot Browser Moves
According to a report in The New York Times, Andreessen thinks RockMelt could come up with a new browser that is different from what’s available today. “There are all kinds of things that you would do differently if you are building a browser from scratch,” Andreessen told the Times. Nothing more is known. RockMelt’s Web site merely invites people to sign up for updates.
“Mark Andreessen is a person with a pretty deep history of browsing experience,” Gartenberg said. “If RockMelt has piqued his interest, perhaps there’s some sort of story to be told here that hasn’t been told before. But at this point the idea of yet another browser coming into the market is going to be challenging.”
Challenging because the browser industry has already made the shift from focusing on features to focusing on speed. Gartenberg isn’t sure what twist RockMelt might introduce that would shift browsers forward, since consumers seem satisfied with the speed of today’s browsers.
“With all the new browsers we’ve seen, the browser is not the bottleneck. If you have to start measuring…