1990 to 1999: Expansion of the World Wide Web and the Rise of Dot-Coms - The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering - page 246

Priceline
Priceline was founded in 1997 in Norwalk, Connecticut, by the software entre-
preneur J. S. Walker. The Priceline business model is interesting and unusual.
Priceline is a conduit for various products and services such as airline tickets, hotel
rooms, and vacation packages. Users specify a price range, and Priceline then re-
ports back on what companies can match the user's stated price. The actual names
of the hotels or airlines are concealed from customers until they make a no-refund
purchase agreement. Priceline receives its cut from the vendors of services that
were sold. Priceline has now added a more traditional business model where the
names of the vendors are shown prior to purchase.
Priceline became famous due to its commercials featuring a former Star Trek
actor, William Shatner. Later ads also featured his costar Leonard Nimoy, who
played Mr. Spock. Shatner was given equity in Priceline in exchange for his pres-
ence in the ads.
Priceline is a good example of a company and a business model that is entirely
driven by computers, software, the internet, and the World Wide Web. All of these
are needed to match the requests from millions of consumers to thousands of
products and services. The Priceline company could not have been created prior to
the 1990s because all of its enabling technologies are part of the internet era.
Red Hat Software
Red Hat Software is interesting because its business model centers on open-source
software, which is an important phenomenon of the software engineering world.
The company was founded in 1995 in Raleigh, North Carolina, by Bob Young
and Mark Ewing, who merged two Linux and Unix companies to create Red
Hat. The name “Red Hat” derives from a Cornell University lacrosse hat given
to Bob Young by his grandfather, although he himself attended Carnegie Mellon
University.
Red Hat is the largest contributor to the Linux kernel, and it licenses other soft-
ware under the GNU open-source licensing agreement. Red Hat Enterprise Linux
is one of the most widely used Linux versions. Like many open-source companies,
Red Hat offers software itself for free, but it charges for consulting, training, and
support. The company also receives voluntary donations from satisfied users.
Although the phrase “open source” brings up an image of nerdy hackers work-
ing alone, in fact quite a bit of open-source development is done by professional