Former publisher Crovitz couldn’t have been more wrong about Internet history
A Media Matters headline yesterday asked: “What will it take for the WSJ to correct Crovitz’s Internet column?”
I have no idea – no one does — but I do know there are endless reasons why the Wall Street Journal and its former publisher Gordon Crovitz should correct his ludicrous assertion that it was Xerox and not a government-backed initiative that “invented” the Internet (even the author whose work he cited says he’s wrong, as does Xerox).
And here’s one reason that I’d like to add to that list: They should acknowledge their bungled attempt at revisionist history so that WSJ reader and Crovitz fan Nellie Levchin not only understands that Crovitz was 100% wrong — that the Internet did indeed spring from the government-funded ARPANet — but also that she has benefitted from that government success story to a degree that few others can imagine. So, too, have a number of her highly successful friends and acquaintances.
Who’s Nellie Levchin? Let’s follow the tweets:
When the Journal published Crovitz’s column on July 22, he did what a lot of writers do these days: He posted a tweet saying, “Hey, come read what I wrote.”
Levchin did read it. And she was very impressed. To her Twitter followers she sent this rave review:
And then to Crovitz directly she offered:
Crovitz was pleased to receive such praise, so he replied in kind:
For those who don’t already know, Nellie Levchin is the former chief risk officer at Clarion Capital, where she worked from 2003 until 2010, according to her LinkedIn page. I’m not suggesting that she should have known Crovitz was wrong.
But she is also the wife of Max Levchin, who founded and was CTO at Paypal, which was acquired by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion. His stake was worth a reported $34 million, the kind of success that can land an entrepreneur top billing in a New York Times story about “young tycoons” who refuse to rest on their laurels or riches.
I don’t know Max Levchin, but if Nellie Levchin has asked her husband the computer scientist who’s right, Crovitz or all the people who say he’s wrong, I’ll be surprised if he sided with Crovitz.
After selling Paypal and building another company, Slide, Max Levchin did a stint as VP of engineering at Google, where he undoubtedly had occasion to run across Vint Cerf, Google’s chief Internet evangelist and a universally acknowledged “father of the Internet.” Cerf says of Crovitz’s incorrect accounting of the Internet’s birth: “I would happily fertilize my tomatoes with Crovitz’ assertion.”
Nellie Levchin could also ask Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s newly minted CEO, who built her career at Google, which built its empire on the Internet that government-funded innovation enabled. Followed on Twitter by 200,000 people, Mayer herself follows only 300, one of whom is Nellie Levchin. A direct message to Mayer is all it would take: “Hi Marissa: Who’s right, Gordon Crovitz or Vint Cerf?”
Does anyone believe Marissa Mayer buys into Crovitz’s crock?
Also followers of Levchin, and thus available to her via a Twitter direct message, are Marc Benioff of Salesforce.com and Randi Zuckerberg of Facebook, two other tremendous success stories that have the Internet, and thus the Internet’s actual government-backed pioneers, to thank for the foundation upon which the their businesses were built.
So Nellie Levchin is surrounded by family, friends and acquaintances who could set her straight – if they haven’t already – regarding the nonsense that Crovitz wrote and the Journal published.
Not all readers are so fortunate, however, which is reason enough for the Wall Street Journal to do the setting straight for them.
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