Wait... AOL Was Still Making A Netscape Browser?
from the those-7-users-must-be-upset dept
While AOL's purchase of Time Warner is often considered one of the biggest M&A blunders of all time (and I'd still argue that the problem was in the execution, not the concept), it's at least worth pointing out that prior to that acquisition, AOL made another huge blunder in purchasing Netscape for over $4 billion dollars in 1998, just as Microsoft's Internet Explorer was finally taking over Netscape's marketshare (AOL apparently believes in the buy high, sell low philosophy). This seemed odd, even at the time, as AOL had long been using a modified version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer as its browser of choice (even back when IE was awful compared to Netscape). Even after the acquisition, AOL continued to use IE as its browser choice, and about the only thing that Netscape was good for was allowing AOL to sue Microsoft for antitrust violations. Microsoft eventually paid $750 million to AOL to settle the charges, leading many to assume that AOL was then going to kill off Netscape. While Mozilla (which was effectively spun out of Netscape) continued to gain traction, it made little sense for AOL to keep offering a "Netscape" browser, even if built on Mozilla code. Yet, in 2004 we were surprised to hear that AOL was still releasing a new Netscape browser. Since then, we'd pretty much forgotten that AOL actually offered Netscape as a browser and had assumed that it had been killed off. While that may have been effectively true, the reality was that the company was still working on a Netscape browser... until now. AOL has officially announced that it will be ending support for the Netscape browser for the six or seven people who still use it. While it won't impact very many people, it certainly is an "end of an era" type moment. While there may be some post mortems to suggest that Microsoft "killed" Netscape, the reality is that bad strategic decisions at Netscape (wanting to charge for the browser, getting distracted with other projects, bloat, bloat, bloat) were more to blame for its real demise a decade ago.
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Still, you'd think 4 billion dollars could have built a site people would visit without it being hardwired into their browser.
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"AOL has officially announced that it will be ending support for the Netscape browser for the six or seven people who still use it."
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Netscape
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Re: Netscape
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$29.95
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One down, six to go.
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Re:
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it was interesting from the inside
At this time Netscape was the dominant browser, and Microsoft was just starting to really get into the game. AOL was taking flack for its browser software since they didn't have the knowledge/resource to be an effective player in that arena. What they did have is an amazing number of people that used their product. I know people tend to forget how big AOL was back in the day, it was THE way for the majority of people to get online.
So AOL started looking for a replacement to their browser and struck up a deal with Microsoft. Microsoft would be the default internal browser and in exchange Microsoft would put AOL's logo and software on the desktop of computers being sold. Also remember that at time the individual retailers had no control over the software that came bundled with Windows, what Microsoft wanted Microsoft got.
This had two consequences. First, this helped drive AOL membership to the detriment of Microsoft's own attempt at an online service. Secondly, this single handedly pushed IE into the dominant browser position, to illustrate I remember one of the AOL honchos telling me that at any one time 80-90 percent of people on the internet were accessing it through AOL( I would say this was about 98-99 timeframe.)
About this same time period there were a couple of lawsuits that were brought up including one that was aimed at forcing Microsoft to allow the retailers to modify the desktop as they saw fit. AOL immediately struck deals with those retailers to have AOL, once again, on the desktop. Microsoft wasn’t to happy about this particular deal, they had also started to bundle the browser with their software so their wasn’t the need to use AOL and as the vector. But it wasn’t clear as to who would win the particular lawsuit and AOL was adamant on keeping their brand in peoples mind.
The solution? By purchasing Netscape when they did they had a lever against Microsoft. If they had switched out their browser to Netscape, Microsoft would have lost a considerable amount of the browser market, possibly sending it back to being a minority player.
That’s my recollection of things as an ex-AOL employee of 9 years. I wasn’t in a position of leadership nor involved in any of these decisions so some of my facts may be a bit off.
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Re: it was interesting from the inside
>> So prior to AOL using the modified version of IE it used its own mostly owned browser. I wish I could remember the name of the company that it purchased the code from, but it's been a few years.
You may be thinking of the NaviSoft browser (NaviPress). I think AOL bought
Navisoft primarily for NaviServer (which became AOLServer, which
handles Tcl procs in the server and and embedded Tcl in web pages.
To this day I am trying to forget Tcl!
See http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0REL/is_n9_v95/ai_17510598
for more on NaviSoft ...
Another side to this story was the decision to have AOL.Com use
AOLServer, as opposed to the Netscape server or Apache. The
Netscape server would have been a good choice in '96-'97.
Apache would have been much better. Sticking with an oddball
server that only had a handful of people working on it internally,
as opposed to drawing upon what the internet community was
doing at the time (Apache) hampered AOL in many ways. It
made it hard to find people to work on the service, for one thing.
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Hard to compete
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(Full disclosure - I am a former Sun employee)
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What's the context for this story?
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Re: What's the context for this story?
Because, no, AOL did not stop supporting Netscape years ago. They just announced today that they are stopping support of it as of February 2008.
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Re: Re: What's the context for this story?
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Re: What's the context for this story?
I remember the arguments my friends and I would have in High School, Netscape versus IE. I was a major IE supported and despised all that Netscape was. Than AOL bought them and I rubbed it in all my buddies faces.
Now I argue with anyone who is still using IE and not Firefox or even Opera.
Oh how the times change.
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Thanks for the good times netscape!
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Not as good as Firefox though.
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It's spelled...
"It's spelled N-E-T-S-C-A-P-E but it's pronounced Mozilla!!"
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What Happened??
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Firefox = winrar
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Re: Firefox = winrar
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Now...we have an essentially non-profit entity called the Mozilla Corporation(owned by Mozilla Foundation) competing with the corporate world.
For AOL? I am not sure what kind of benefits they get but they did a nice thing for a public by creating the organization that would eventually gave us Firefox.
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Netscape
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THAT'S an interesting rewrite of recent history...
Sounds to me like someone has had their air supply cut off for awhile...
--pointman
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Product Cycle
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Netscape
I must be one of those 6 left over. And if it ever get shutdown will just have to switch like everything else in life. Have a good day.
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about:Mozilla
But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird.
The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire
and thunder upon them. For the beast had been
reborn with its strength renewed, and the
followers of Mammon cowered in horror.
from The Book of Mozilla, 7:15
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Netscape is still awesome...
Even though they ended support for Netscape 2 years ago, I still use it. Recently upgraded from 8.14 to 9.0.6. It has support for FF 2 extensions which is pretty good.
So for those of us who have a computer which can't handle FF, I think Netscape 9 is the next best option.
And I loved Netscape 8's bloat. The extra features give it more value
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firefox is built on the same rendering engine as Netscape. FF is really the next evolution of nn in a very real way. Just look up the gecko rendering engine.
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this one
I Still have most of my computers, and a collection of vintage software. the original CHICAGO ON-LINE SOFTWARE (The name on America On Line's Birth Certificate} was an U N I X interface that conected you to a Bulitin board on just one computer. the next step was to conect to A.R.P.A. ( the innernetzz to ya all. I could go into the whole online service verses I.S.P thing but enough messing with you all.
...............That was A.O.L....... Now for the Browsers....................
Just as Every Car has some type of frame attached to the wheels. One piece {uni_body} or two {body on Frame} it is still steel. Moz. is the steel that they all start with,
EVERY Browser is Based on the Original Mozilla code. yes even the first I.E. browser {uni-body} was MOZ. as was Netscape. (Body on Frame} and they Still Are. even if most folks don't know how it started, don't mean it aint true.... if ya learn a little programing you can make any browser work as you wish. and port any feature you like from one to another.
best of luck to you all.
P. S.
I hope this makes you THINK, instead of making you mad.
wiki's by B.S. artists for B.S. artists...
seeee ya.
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