Quickbrowse was a Web-based subscription service that enables users to browse multiple Web pages more quickly by combining them vertically into a single Web page. It was one of the early
metabrowsing Metabrowsing refers to approaches to browsing Web-based information that emerged in the late 1990s as alternatives to the standard Web browser. According to LexisNexis the term "metabrowsing" began appearing in mainstream media in March 2000. Since ...
services.
History
Quickbrowse received wide media coverage during the height of the
Dot-com bubble
The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet.
Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Comp ...
. It was quickly followed by other metabrowsers such as Octopus.com (backed by
Netscape
Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was on ...
founder
Marc Andreessen
Marc Lowell Andreessen ( ; born July 9, 1971) is an American entrepreneur, investor, and software engineer. He is the co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser; co-founder of Netscape; and co-founder and general partner of Silicon ...
), Onepage.com (backed by
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...
co-founder
Paul Allen
Paul Gardner Allen (January 21, 1953 – October 15, 2018) was an American business magnate, computer programmer, researcher, investor, and philanthropist. He co-founded Microsoft Corporation with childhood friend Bill Gates in 1975, which h ...
), iHarvest.com, Katiesoft.com and Calltheshots.com - all of which have ceased to operate as metabrowsers. Octopus received more than $11.4 million in venture capital funding from
Redpoint Ventures
Redpoint Ventures is an American venture capital firm focused on investments in seed, early and growth-stage companies.
History
The firm was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Menlo Park, California, with offices in San Francisco, Los Angel ...
. Onepage received $25 million in venture capital funding.
[VentureWire.co]
Venturewire.com (archived at archive.org)
Retrieved on 2007-01-23. Quickbrowse received half a million dollars in angel funding. Quickbrowse backers included its lead investor,
Geocities.com founder
David Bohnett
David C. Bohnett (born April 2, 1956) is an American philanthropist and technology entrepreneur. He is the founder and chairman of the David Bohnett Foundation, a non-profit, grant-making organization devoted to improving society through social ...
, the financial writer
Andrew Tobias
Andrew Tobias (born April 20, 1947) is an American writer. He has written extensively about investment, as well as politics, insurance, and other topics. He is also known for writing ''The Best Little Boy in the World'', a 1973 memoir – origin ...
and CBS hurricane expert
Bryan Norcross
Bryan S. Norcross (born November 24, 1950) is a television meteorologist, hurricane specialist, and contributor in the United States. He works for Fox Weather in New York City, the free ad-supported streaming television weather service, and ser ...
. From 2001-2004, the Miami Herald licensed Quickbrowse and operated myHerald.com, a service that was based on the Quickbrowse approach of customizable Web content. Quickbrowse ceased operation in 2005.
Quickbrowse was created by
Marc Fest
Marc Fest (born 1966, in Münster, Germany) is a German-American communications professional, programmer and entrepreneur. He is notable as the creator of multiple web-based information management tools and a pioneer in this technology. He is a f ...
, a former journalist and self-taught programmer who initially created it as a tool to facilitate his daily journalist research.
References
{{reflist
External links
Marc Fest personal Web site
Software companies established in 1998