DISQUS

John · 3 years ago

You should have added some info about the new search engine Xista.com, they just launched.

Nilofer Merchant · 3 years ago

The wall street article today also talked about VCs 'showering new companies with cash'. Seriously, didn't we learn anything from the late 90's. Abundance of capital does not lead to the best ideas or sustainable models. It leads to people overpaying for talent, setting unrealistic expectations of market demand, and overengineering products because they can.

This will not end well.

Scott Milener · 3 years ago

Matt,
thanks for the recognition of Browster. Cooliris is the closest attempt to copy Browster that we have seen. Although it's drawbacks include Firefox only (I know, we all love FX, but IE is still 85+%), very rough interface(and buggy), limited site compatibility and I cannot get it to prefetch. Interestingly MSN launched a site preview add-in to the MSN toolbar, although it's just thumbnails, albeit big ones - the game's afoot on browsing and search navigation improvement.

On that note, I think alot of folks miss that Browster is much more than previewing. It's about better navigation. Websites have evolved rapidly to link- and data-overload, but the client tool has gone baby steps. Where is next-gen nav going to come from? not from Redmond, they've got too much legacy and inertia to lead here, same with Mozilla. It's going to be fast, focused firms like Browster, or heaven forbid, one of our newly arising competitors. Browsing has a long way to go and we're just seeing the beginning. We want search, eBay, MySpace, Bloglines, shopping, etc. to be an experience, not just a list of links. Alot of that type of innovation has to come from the client as it's too technically complex to deliver from the server.