Netscape fires blank, MS bids for 'push' reins

As Netscape fired a blank by releasing a new beta of its Communicator Web client yesterday that skipped the Netcaster broadcast capability, Microsoft was continuing its efforts to take over the reins of push technology.

Microsoft said yesterday over 200 attendees from PC vendors, ISPs and resellers attended a summit meeting to discuss Internet Explorer (IE) 4.0 and push implementation at its Redmond, Washington base last week.

Although, firms like PointCast, BackWeb and Marimba pioneered push, Microsoft clearly spies an opportunity to gain control. The software giant has already signed up PointCast and is working with other push clients to integrate services in its Active Desktop feature of IE 4.0. Microsoft is also proposing its channel definition format as a standard for push delivery.

Among attendees at the summit were Dell, which plans to make push a means of selling PCs over the Web.