According to The New York Times' Thursday report, citing unnamed people 'in the know,' Netscape founder - now developer-turned-financier - Marc Andreessen is backing a new browser startup, RockMelt!

Andreessen was the brain behind the Netscape browser - a browser that helped millions of users access the Internet in the 1990s; but later lost the browser and Web server market to Microsoft's Internet Explorer packaged with the Windows operating system! And now, Andreessen is backing a new browser probably because it might chip away part of Internet Explorer's market share!

Moreover, going by the newspaper report, Andreessen has an earlier association with the co-founders of RockMelt - Eric Vishria and Tim Howes- both of whom are former Opsware executives. Incidentally, it was Andreessen who co-founded Opsware, and later sold it to Hewlett-Packard. Howes has also worked with Andreessen at Netscape.

Though the site of RockMelt, which will be a browser to be built 'from a scratch,' does not disclose much detail about its technology, it does allow people to tender their e-mail to keep pace with the browser's future updates.

Andreessen had, some time back, told the Times that with Web fast becoming a network of complex Web sites, a new browser is needed to effectively deliver services to end users. In addition, with Andreessen being a Facebook board member, the RockMelt browser reportedly would be a singular 'social networking browser'!