This interview with Netscape founder and Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen from last year is fascinating.
As the author of the first widely-used web browser (Mosaic), a serial investor (in companies like Digg and Twitter) and a board member in key web companies (Facebook and eBay) he is in a good position to comment on how the web is changing the world in which we live.
A few interesting snippets include:
- The stupidity of Viacom suing Google
- The potential of Twitter
- How he is responsible for both Firefox (which came out of Netscape) and Internet Explorer (which came from Mosaic)
- Why The New York Times should cancel its print operations as soon as possible
- Why kids living on their laptops (figuratively speaking) is ‘fantastic’
- Why Andy Grove of Intel is one of the most important figures in the history of modern tech
- Google was the first search engine that really worked and once they unlocked ‘the advertising problem‘ it became a ‘magic business’
- At 42.45 he basically predicts the iPad
- Why the economic crisis of 2008 didn’t affect Silicon Valley in the same way as the 2001 slump did (although the ongoing recession will have a long term effect)
- A possible solution to the banking crisis
[Link via Anne Thompson]