On the eve of Netscape's official demise, its co-founder Marc Andreessen, who sold the company to AOL in 1998 for $4.2 billion, points to another failing business: The New York Times. He notes on his blog: "I hereby inaugurate my New York Times Deathwatch, which will continue until the last Sulzberger has left the building." Andreessen passionately believes The New York Times and other newspapers are only delaying the inevitable. "When you have an obsolete, inconvenient physical product that nobody wants in an era of universal online access, the appropriate strategy is clearly to raise the …

Facebook saw month-to-month traffic declines in December and January, according to separate reports from ComScore Media Metrix and Nielson Online. TechCrunch (link: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/22/facebook-fatigue-visitors-level-off-in-the-us/) suggests that the Web's No. 2 social network may be plateauing in the U.S. ComScore data shows the site's traffic leveling over the past few months, dipping by about 800,000 visitors in January. In December, the site drew 34.7 million unique visitors in the U.S. compared to 33.9 million in January. MySpace also saw declines, but less so, drawing 68.9 million U.S. uniques in December compared to 68.6 million in January. Meanwhile, data …

Industry luminaries are in accord: The future of gaming is online. They predict that content will be delivered from a central server to a network of users, and that Internet service providers will provide access to that network by tacking on an added charge for gaming service, just like cable providers charge $10 extra per month for HBO. "A huge game changer for our industry is for there not to be a requirement for there to be a machine in the home," said Neil Young, general manager of EA Los Angeles. Electronic Arts is the largest third-party developer …

Microsoft, "having exhausted its best ideas on how to deal with Google," is looking downright desperate in its bid to acquire Web giant Yahoo. The newspaper recommends Microsoft should forget about competing with Google and look to strengthen its lucrative enterprise software business. What Microsoft does best is sell software to corporations--approximately half its revenue comes from business customers. Attempts to sell advertising lose money. If Microsoft wants to go out and make a huge acquisition, it should look for a company that also sells software to businesses. The suggestion: SAP, the No. 1 provider of enterprise …

Microsoft is "taking brilliant steps to remake itself." Fortune says the decisions both to buy Yahoo and to open its software up to greater interoperability represent a "critical moment in [Microsoft's] history." The bigger step, of course, is the $40 billion-plus Yahoo bid, which would be the company's largest-ever acquisition and could pose significant regulatory and restructuring complications. Shareholders are very much against the deal, and have shaved 15 percent off Microsoft's stock price since the company announced its intentions. These are huge changes for a company that built its fortune on proprietary software. Microsoft is more or less …

The Recording Industry Association of America and its international cousins are cheering this morning after the British government unveiled a proposal that would Internet service providers to take explicit steps towards curbing illegal downloading or they face legal sanctions. The BBC says government officials would begin consulting the matter in the spring, and legislation could be implemented as early as April 2009. "ISPs are in a unique position to make a difference and in doing so to reverse a culture of creation-without-reward that has proved so damaging to the whole music community over the last few years," …