The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 14 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
University of Illinois threatened Netscape's prospective sales clients with lawsuits
“And so instead of suing us, what they did instead was they called Spyglass, any situation we were in where we were competing with Spyglass for a sale they, the University of Illinois administrators would call the customer and tell them that they were going to …”
Evans: The internet is moving beyond Google's PageRank and web pages
“As a consequence, we've also moved on from the single unified paradigm of Google, because Google is fundamentally about analyzing links and sending you to web pages, but if the internet is no longer just about web pages, then that PageRank model breaks down, j…”
University of Illinois's Netscape stock refusal cost them over $1 billion
“Yeah, that decision on their part yeah, cost them at least a billion dollars in direct stock, plus all the downstream philanthropy from me plus, plus all the downstream philanthropy from Jim Clark, plus all the other founding engineers.”
Dixon: Crypto users in 2018 already exceed Netscape's peak user base
“I think Netscape at their peak was, like, fifty million users or something. I mean, the numbers, like, crypto's probably above that right now.”
Andreessen: Netscape Almost Acquired Yahoo for $3M–$5M
“Netscape, we almost bought Yahoo. There was like a bid ass spread between like 3,000,005 million dollars.”
Andreessen: Netscape leaned heavily into US defense and intelligence contracts
“My company Netscape was always very active with defense and intelligence. We always leaned hard into it.”
Wilcox: Traditional point-to-point encryption cannot be applied to blockchains
“You can't apply this encryption to blockchain, because all this encryption from Julius Caesar to Alan Turing to Netscape is point to point.”
Andreessen: NSF rejecting support funding for Mosaic catalyzed Netscape's founding
“So we applied for NSF funding to basically build a customer support team. And they informed us very kindly that that wasn't part of what NSF funds. So that was a good catalyst to go start a company which was very helpful.”
Andreessen: Cross-site scripting was unknown when Netscape invented JavaScript in 1995
“When we invented JavaScript at Netscape in 1995, the concept of cross-site scripting was a complete unknown.”
Andreessen: NSF rejecting customer support funding catalyzed the founding of Netscape
“We applied for NSF funding to basically build a customer support team. And they informed us very kindly that that wasn't part of what NSF funds. So that was a good catalyst to go start a company”
Horowitz: Netscape had 90% market share of 55M internet users in 1996
“96, I think we had 90% browser share mark and we had fifty million users. So there was like fifty five million people on the internet.”
Hastings: Pure Software doubled annually and IPO'd one week before Netscape
“Because then I was able to start a company, it doubled every year, went public, one week before Netscape, actually, and so for one week, we were the big topic.”
Levy: Netscape and Pixar were the two hottest IPOs of 1995
“Netscape and Pixar were the two hottest IPOs of that year in 1995, but Netscape went first.”
Andreessen: Netscape held 90% market share when the internet had 50M users
“We had at one point over 90%, you know, market share for all people on the internet using our browser, and it turned out there were fifty million people on the internet. Like, fifty million people around the world were on the internet. By the way, twenty-five …”