John Batelle of Federated Media interviewed Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape, Loudcloud and Ning.

John: At what point did you know when Netscape was going to be big?

Marc: It ramped really fast. Released it to 100 people and then it went viral. However, it wasn’t until they founded Netscape that he felt it would be big. At the time, the cable companies were advocating interactive TV and it wasn’t clear how it would play out.

John: Are you concerned about how the big players/cable companies are approaching the web now?

Marc: It depends on who you are speaking about. Most media companies are still not prepared for the shift. Newspapers are in a free fall and still don’t know how to respond. There The telecom players are huge enablers, but they are uneasy about being positioned as commoditized future so they are looking a pricing structures to protect themselves.

John

Marc: At the time, nobody was making money online. John Doerr believed in them. They launched three businesses – not-for profit, enterprise and advertiser supported browser. All three worked.

John: MS built what you built, what do you think about that?

Marc: MS even used the original Mosaic code to launch their browser. We didn’t know what the future business of the company would be. The enterprise software business was doing very well. The advertiser business grew quite large as well. We just knew we needed to adapt.

John: How might it have turned out differently?

Marc: the big surprise – how many things done early have lasted and done well. JavaScript is an example. At the time, it was needed. Then it went into a hiatus and had a resurgence. Cookies are another example. They came up with the idea over a weekend when they needed to figure out how to develop a persistent shopping cart. Another example is a back and forward button. At the time, they couldn’t think of anything better, now it has gone all over the place in the operating systems and into applications.

John: Talk about the cloud. What do you think about the idea of a web operating system?

Marc: I saw the browser as a half way step. The surprising thing has been the persistence of many of these things, including the browser. The browser is the access point for the audience, which creates a self-reinforcing trend to build the applications in the browser.

John: put on your industry observer hat. Talk about some of the big names. Start with Microsoft.

Marc: Wonderful company (laughing). I think they have a very important role to play. The mesh work that Ray and company are doing is great stuff. Today, there are more counterweights to MS. It seems to have splintered and fragmented.

John: What about MS buying Yahoo?

Marc: I think it will be successful if they do the deal and they could be successful separately. Other companies will still be successful. The underbrush will continue to be successful.

John: Ning raised a bunch of money – What do you mean by the coming nuclear winter?

Marc: I have no idea about what’s really going to happen. The credit markets are bursting. After the stock bubble, the money went into real estate and then into credit. While tech doesn’t have a lot to do with these industries, everything is linked together. If consumers spend less, companies cut back and tech gets hit.

John: Talk about Ning. Why is Ning not Facebook?

Marc: Ning allows people to build their own Facebook like applications. Over 250,000 networks. 1,500 networks per day….

John: How do you feel about the idea of data portability?

Marc: we are very pro data portability. They have lots of ways to get data in and out of the system. There is not a lot of demand for this yet, from either consumers or developers.

John: What about OpenSocial?

Marc: Facebook did an amazing thing opening up it’s platform for developers. It was a powerful idea. However, it was closed to Facebook. That created a need for an open standard, which led to OpenSocial.

Audience: Do you view yourselves as a platform or will you get into networks yourself?

Marc: we are a platform business. We have no intention of getting into networks ourselves.

John: How are CPMs. Are you getting your 17 cents?

Marc: Much higher than that. The networks being focused lend themselves to better advertising opportunities.

Audience: What can you say about Bill Gates?

Marc: He’s made a tremendous impact on the industry. It’s hard to see what things would be like if MS had not been able to standardize the operating system. Interesting, the mobile world is more like the PC industry before a standardized operating system. It’s holding things on mobile back.

Audience: What can we do about browser security leaks?

Marc: I can’t do anything about it. It’s just a continuous cat and mouse game that will be a continuing story to come.

Audience: what role can academia play in a conference like this and in the future?

Marc: Most of what happens in tech, is brewing in the university systems. They need to do a better job of teaching business skills to go along with the technology skills.

Here’s the video:

[tags]Marc Andreessen, Ning, Netscape, Web20Expo[/tags]