Mosaic is back. But you wouldn't recognize it.
Spyglass, which bought up the Web's first graphical browser in August 1994, has redesigned and licensed out the software's core technologies as a development platform and "HTML engine" for the emerging consumer Internet device market.
In a deal announced Tuesday with Finnish cellphone maker Nokia, Device Mosaic, the new version of Mosaic code, will bring interactive services to Nokia's forthcoming European digital set-top boxes. Nokia expects to sell "hundreds of thousands" of the units to countries such as Great Britain, Spain, Italy, and Germany - where digital TV providers Bertelsmann and Kirch already have plans to order 1.5 million Nokia boxes.
"The package they could offer us was clearly the most usable for our needs," said Pasi Pohjala, product group manager for Nokia's set-top offerings. "It gives us more freedom to operate these DVB specific functions."
DVB is Europe's digital video broadcasting standard, setting open standards for cable, satellite and terrestrial TV networks. The US standard has yet to emerge, but is not likely to be DVB-compatible, thus shutting European boxes like Nokia's out of the domestic market.
Spyglass plans to use its cheap, low-footprint HTML engine as a foundation for interactive television applications such as Web browsing, e-mail, home banking, and pay-per-view services. The open HTML standard ensures compatibility with cable services, Spyglass said, in contrast to proprietary development environments.
Though the Nokia licensing agreement, which Pohjala characterized as more cooperation than a specific licensing deal, doesn't preclude that company from working with other software vendors, the agreement is something of a head start for the Spyglass technology, which beat out Microsoft's Windows CE to become Nokia's application environment.
"This licensing deal doesn't exclude possible cooperation with Microsoft, but we needed something now," Pohjala said. And right now, apparently, is not the time for Windows CE in cable boxes. "Windows CE is not a good solution for us right now - it's not mature," Pohjala said.
Beating out Windows CE for the Nokia product might seem a sweet victory for Spyglass.
The company had originally expected Mosaic to remain a competitive browser through its strategy of licensing the product to original equipment manufacturers - who would then make commercial versions of the product. But that opportunity shriveled when Microsoft licensed the code in January of 1995 and used it as the basis of Internet Explorer, which it then gave away for free.
Spyglass's new approach to leveraging its technology revolves in part around becoming a consultant to consumer device manufacturers who want to build browsing capabilities into their products. In December, the company established a technology and consulting group to develop advanced Web-related applications, and offer technical and market support to the cable and satellite television industries.
Spyglass hopes to be setting itself up for a market that will bear tens of millions of digital and advanced analog set-top boxes over the next one to two years. All of those boxes will need HTML, the thinking goes, and Spyglass will not only have the lean-and-mean browsing technology to license them, but the experience to develop - or help them develop applications within their unique set-top environments.
Spyglass said its application development services will be widely in demand - whether its, or Microsoft's, or anyone else's browsing technology is at the heart of a set-top box.
A key issue undermining the cable prospects of Windows CE, Nokia's Pohjala said, is that it's not clear whether box manufactures will be able to license browser technology separate from the entire operating system. A box manufacturer might not want the entire package - just the provided browser/HTML technology.
"If Microsoft released [a version of Internet Explorer] that requires Windows CE, then I don't know," Pohjala said, speculating where Microsoft technology might fit into Nokia's future set-top plans.
Paul Chapple, Spyglass product marketing manager said his company hopes the Nokia deal will give Device Mosaic a leg up in a fledgling market.
"Windows CE is certainly going to be a formidable player in this industry, absolutely," Chapple said. "But showing the value [of an OS like Windows CE] in this market is a little difficult."
"The first implementation of HTML [in European set-top boxes] is ours," Chapple said. "We're hoping to become the de facto standard. That's certainly not a given, but being first helps," he said.
The Spyglass HTML engine will not necessarily appear in all of Nokia's boxes, but will depend on the specifications of the boxes ordered by Europe's various digital TV service providers. But the company expects it to provide a small-footprint, viable platform for digital TV services in the emerging "advanced" interactive boxes.
The engine serves as the top software layer for application developers, positioned above a set-top box's operating system, low-level hardware drivers, and middle-layer application programming interfaces.
Furthermore, by adding memory, box customers without the Spyglass HTML engine will be able to add HTML-based services by downloading the engine and browser interface into their units.
