By Neora Shem Shaul

At the beginning of 1997, push technology burst on the scene. Users, journalists, analysts, and investment companies gave it an enthusiastic welcome, seeing it as heralding the solution to all the web's problems. People spun their dreams, and made massive investments in a few companies that simultaneously developed competing technologies enabling graphics and text to be "pushed" on the user’s screen.

Today, however, many of these people are having second thoughts about the technology. The latest attitude to push technology can be illustrated by the fate of Pointcast, one of the pioneers in the area.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation considered buying Pointcast for $450 million, but, after much discussion, the deal did not go ahead. It is said that Pointcast wanted more money than Murdoch would agree to pay. Now that doubts have arisen about the technology, and company boards are re-appraising the usefulness of the technology, one may presume that Pointcast regrets its stance, especially as the grandiose issue it has been preparing for the last six months is now in doubt.

This disappointment has not yet affected all analysts and investors. In fact, last week two start up companies that develop push technology products raised serious amounts of money to continue operations. Marimba of Palo Alto, only eighteen months old and already adopted by Netscape, raised $14.5 million from notable investors like Compaq, Lehman Brothers, National Semiconductors, and others. At the same time, it signed cooperation agreements for its Castaneta product with Tivoli.

Another Californian company, called Wayfarer, raised $5 million, and, in partnership with Oracle, it stresses technological nuances which make it possible to download information from various company databases and push them to particular users according to pre-defined criteria.

Line open - and wasted

Push technology makes it possible to exploit a well known phenomenon: for a large proportion of the time spent surfing the Internet, no data passes between the surfer’s computer and the communications provider. These are intervals during which the surfer reads information, selects a site, or goes to the toilet. The telephone is open - and being wasted.

To avoid the waste, the technology offers customers software linked to the content channel provider’s server software. The provider automatically transmits information to the customer’s computer, thus saving him the need to surf to the site that interests him. Since transmission happens during dead time, it does not slow down the pace of surfing, and gives the feeling that information is being received more rapidly.

The main players in this field are Pointcast, which first came out with the technology, Netscape, which teamed up with Marimba, and Microsoft, which adopted Israeli company BackWeb’s technology.

In April 1997, the first version of the BackWeb program was announced, and was immediately purchased by the "Wall Street Journal", out of concern for customers too lazy to access its site and look for the financial news that interests them.

Within a short time, BackWeb had earned prizes and superlatives in all the leading newspapers, merged with small start ups engaged on similar developments, and supplied its technology to major companies like Lanacom, HP, 3Com, and to MacAfee, which supplies data security software, and is interested in push technology to provide additional services to its customers.

Employees haven’t adapted

It seems, however, that all the excitement about the new technology made us forget one other well known fact - the method of seeking information on the Internet, or surfing as it is called, is quite different from the way we have obtained information up to now, whether from television, radio, or newspapers.

For that very reason, many people found what they were looking for in the Internet, which facilitates active searching for information, and not passive absorption of it. It is true that there is still a big difference between the old information push technologies (radio and television), and those invented for the web. The web user is far more independent when it comes to selecting the content he wants to receive. But many surfers reached the conclusion that they don’t like the idea. The Internet isn’t radio.

Anyone who, like me, installed one of the programs that supply push services, must have been alarmed by the slow response speed, and by the PCs difficulty in coping with the distribution of this information, even if equipped with a powerful Pentium processor.

Further criticism levelled against the technology came from the business organisations. Many say that their employees became less efficient after they started using push software. Work on their own documents or on investigating information on the Internet is disrupted by distracting boxes of colour and verbiage. Research company Hurwitz Group believes most Internet users have no need of push technology, and only a small percentage can benefit from or exploit the information at the critical time, which is possible thanks to the technology.

"E-mail or telephone are sufficient for most users," says Ezra Gottheil, Director of Hurwitz Group's Internet Business Strategies Service. He says that most people do not need additional interruptions, and their jobs do not require much time-critical information. In his view, rather than for information transfer, push technology will be most useful for reducing the cost of transferring, upgrading, and managing software within an organisation.

BackWeb: Too Early for Epitaphs

One of the leading companies in the field of Internet push technology is BackWeb, an Israeli company employing 140 workers, mostly in San Jose, and some in Jerusalem. BackWeb is mainly owned by BRM, the original major investors of PointCast as well. BackWeb is run by Eli Barkat, and Yuval Rakavy heads development. The company was set up two and a half years ago in an effort to try to find a solution for network games groups, and developed "push" technology. The company then asked itself, "Why only games?" and decided to extend the technology to other spheres."

Rakavy: "The principle of push technology is pushing large things to a lot of people in fixed time. This is accomplished by information warehouses which exist on the various servers and allow the use of the nearest possible information."

"Globes": What is your opinion of push technology criticism?

Rakavy: "It is a young technology, in which the initial applications are not of the highest standard. There is a serious problem of decline in performance when there are many users. Therefore, regarding the technology’s readiness and adaptability to today’s networks - the criticism is just. The question is what should be done and how, so that users will be able to enjoy "push", but at a reasonable time frame. It’s rather like the invention of the engine. There was a time gap between the invention and becoming commercial."

"Globes": The criticism also mentions efficiency and the unwillingness of surfers to be passive information consumers.

Rakavy: "This technology does not take us back to the TV era. It is a technology that complements traditional methods of searching the net. If we were to compare information to water, access to the web is like walking to a well with a bucket - you fill the bucket, use the water and go again to the well to refill the bucket. In this context, "push" is like a pipe that brings the water directly from the well into the house. With television, control is only at the channel level. "Push" technology can enable tailor-made use. We have found that users spend only a few minutes a day surfing, instead of many hours."