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Kim Polese talks Java

JavaSoft's former `one-person marketing department' describes why Sun `gave away the crown jewels' of Java, identifies ripe markets for today's Java developers, and discusses Java's future.

By Michael O'connell, JavaWorld.com, 04/01/96

Page 3 of 7

Endorsement from `the god of the Internet'

So anyway, the things that I drew up were business decisions, the licensing, the pricing, the distribution, the fact that we did this on a desktop and the Internet versus interactive TV, and then the whole branding/positioning set of things. And of course business development. Getting early partners like Netscape signed up was really critical, because we were trying to do something huge here. This was not a small play. This was -- we gamble, and either we win big or we totally lose. There's no middle ground if you try to establish a standard, which is what we were trying to do.

JavaWorld: What was the evolution of the arrangement with Netscape? How did that get initiated, and how did that eventually get worked out?

Polese: I felt very strongly that they should have an early peek at what we were doing, because it was certainly very relevant to their business. And being as they were a highly visible company on the Internet, leading the way, having their endorsement was also very important. So I gave Marc Andresseen a pointer to the release two weeks before we let it out for the world. He got an early peek at it, and he loved it. And what happened next was a very nice turn of events. I also spoke to a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, and he wrote an article. He was so impressed with Java that he wrote an article that was published on the front page of the main section -- the headline of the front page of the main section on March 23, 1995, a day I will never forget.

JavaWorld: That's probably something you never dreamed would happen.

Polese: No. We have posters made of that headline. It's one thing to be the headline in the business section. It's another to be a headline on the main section of the newspaper itself.

So the phones started ringing off the hook after that. And the thing that was really helpful there was that Netscape was very favorably inclined to it, and Marc Andresseen was quoted saying something very complimentary about it. So having his endorsement was like having the endorsement from the god of the Internet. That went a long way with people.

Don't just tell; show!

But beyond that, the other thing that we did that was very important was to not only describe the capabilities of the language: "Imagine, if you will, that this language environment could do dynamic shopping experiences." Rather, we created an application, in the form of HotJava Web browser, with a bunch of examples -- Duke somersaulting and tic-tac-toe and live financial portfolio management application -- that showed, again, in a very visual, compelling way, what the capabilities of the language were. And that was something that I again learned from my previous experiences in trying to communicate the capabilities of a technology and not being able to, because your imagination can go [only] so far. You really have to see what the thing can do. So that's what we did -- create the killer app and put it out there along with the technology itself. Show people the end result, not just the capabilities.

 

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