Browser battlehas high stakesBY EVANS RamstaoNEW York fury of alliances Netscape Communications Corp. andMicrosoft Corp. have recently made involving their programs that browseInternet data is the most visible sign of a deeper battle that could shapethe software industry for years to comeTheir fight may be the fastest moving ever seen in the computerindustryIt has so shaken Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates that he toldreporters in San Francisco last week that he wakes up every morningthinking about browser market share.His unease, which provoked a major strategic overhaul at Microsoftsince last summer, is rooted in a big change in the way people think abouttheir computersThe location of data has become less important as computer networks,particularly public ones like the Internet, have become simpler to accessand use. In addition individuals, companies and governments have helpedthe attractiveness of networks by making more information availablethrough them.As a result, software used to interact with data on line has become veryimportant. To some people, it's even more important than the programthat runs a machine's basic functionsMicrosoft holds about a 90 percent share of the market in operatingsystems that run basic functions of PCs. Netscape has about an 85 percentshare of the market for browsers that find and manipulate data on theInternet.They are fighting for influence among software programmers at othercompanies and institutions Those programmers must to de cider how bestto create their future products. Should those new programs be mostclosely associated with the operating system or the browser?The winner gets the chance tomake more money by selling development tools and programminglanguages that programmers use to create their innovations. And there isalso the glory of carrying the psychic banner of industry pacesetter.The browser would seem to have the advantage because such programsoperate at a level above operating systems, making it possible for aWindows-based PC to work with on -line information as easily asMacintosh.Marketing victoriesSince last summer, Microsoft has scrambled quickly into the browserbusiness. It licensed basic technology from Spyglass Inc. and used its sizeto pull off a series of marketing victories, capped last week with thedecision by America Online, the largest on -line company to featureMicrosoft's browser with its subscribers.But Microsoft also plans to take many of the capabilities of the browserand put them into the operating system.Gates went even farther, declaring, "The browser is part of theoperating system. It's how you browse the information."Netscape argues it will keep adding new capabilities to its browser,which it now more often calls a "client" program because extra things likee-mail are already there.Public relations war"Simple Web browsing doesn't accommodate most of the advancednew content on the Internet," said Mike Homer, vice president ofmarketing for Netscape.Netscape began fighting back in he public relations war. It took theunusual step of announcing the placement of its products with GeffenRecords.Meanwhile, Microsoft flew America Online's chief executive SteveCase, to San Francisco to appear with Gates at a conference of developersthe software company; trying to convince of its Internet prowess.Tim Krauskopf, vice president of research and development at Spyglass,said many permutations or accessing information will involve incomputers."Look at cars. GM will put the same engine in a Chevy, Pontiac, ,portscar, a family sedan," he ,aid. "It is how cool they make the engines of thecar that determine our buying patterns."World Wide Web inventor Tim Lerners-Lee is probably the person mostresponsible for the fight. Tow director of a consortium that takes ontechnical standards forApplier'the Web, he suggested the ulti result is complete erosion of: barrierbetween information in a computer, represented by"desktop," and out incubers]"It is more logical to think 0 local information (on a comp' as just onepart of the world offormation," Berners-Lee "That way, the browser anddesktop become one. Whether think of that as the browser ing the desktopobsolete or desktop making the browser solete, that might depend onwhichwe] you happen to currently have a large large share.