AOL winds down Netscape - mass layoffs

Well the day has come when AOL has decided to dismantle one of the pioneers of the internet. Netscape will be no more. They have even removed the logos from their buildings.

The news is not all bad though, from the ashes will rise Mozilla. The Mozilla Foundation has been created to promote and raise funds for the development. Many of the people from the Mozilla project will continue to devote time and energy to it. Open Source technology cannot be stopped by actions such as this. The code belongs to all of us, not them.

More information on this can be found at Mozillazine.org.

Doesn't surprise me. Guess this copy of NS 7.2 will have to due me on those pages that Sarfari won't load and to check my Netscape.net mail account. (use it for all my spammed emails and a few passwords)

Why not use Mozilla?

But here's comes Mozilla Foundation in its armor and white hourse shining as a superhero of open source. Hiring some of netscape programmers is noble. Then Kind Peasants such as Sun and AOL start pouring money into that - aol's commit of 2 millions over 2 years is worth noting. Chairman's donation from personal funds of $300,000 is a bit eyebrow-raising-outraging.

Money laundry anyone?

They only let go 10% of the work force... while I hate hearing about layoffs, AOL's 'official' position is that they're still supporting the browser & the web portal.

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-1026078.html

AOL is making a *huge* mistake by not using the Gecko engine as the core of their browser/ISP product. Right now they're using Gecko as the core in their Compuserve and Mac AOL product, but still using IE in the Windows product. Seems like they could streamline their internal coding operations by standardizing on one code base, which would ultimately save them more money than letting developers go.

Also, by using the Gecko engine in the product, they could in theory start offering AOL on Linux-based PC's; while that might sound like an unprofitable venture at first, I can't imagine all of those people purchasing Lindows-based PC's at Walmart not wanting AOL as their ISP ... and Walmart sure is selling a whole lotta Lindows PC these days.

Maybe buying lindows PC's is an indication of a general increase in tech savvy in the population, which would not bode well for AOHell.

Or not.

Look, if you want your Internet experience limited to the latest sports news, e-mail (mostly spam), and (at least part of) the web, there's nothing wrong with going with AOL. Odds are you're a 90 year old grandmother wasting everyone's bandwidth by sending 350Kb photos of your grandkid's potty training to 30 different people (using 30 different emails since you haven't realized you can use "CC" and put more than 1 address in the To: field) anyway.

Of course, odds are also good in that case that you bought the PC 4 years ago with Windows 98 on it, not Lindows, and haven't updated a thing since the day the neighbor-kid hooked it up for you... but whatever.

AOL itself isn't a technically bad product, it's just that its guiding force - the consumers who use it - is made up of mostly computer-illiterates, kids, and old people.

As far as Netscape.. I, for one, certainly won't miss it. It's a technically inferior browser and has been mismanaged to death by PHBs and Marketroids with the technical knowledge of a salamander since v4. I used to be one of those people who put "Netscape Now!" graphics on my website and recommended that people NOT use IE to view it, but, frankly, since v4 it's just been as big a hulking peice of junk as IE.

Whatever. I lost interest in Netscape when they started forcing AOL (RealNetworks too, right?), and whatnot on me. I hate all those programs, and I don't want them on my computer. Version 6 had about as stable as...well...it wasn't at all. I permanently lost interest in it, especially when I found out about Mozilla.

Because Mozilla doesn't have the properitary IMAP client for Netscape mail.

Netscape made Yahoo!:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm..._pcworld/111604


While this story isn't anything we haven't already read on /., the Register, C|Net, ZDNet et al, there is a significant feature : the article provides a description of and a link to the Mozilla site.

Having had a site referenced on Yahoo! in the past, I can attest to the *huge* level of traffic that Mozilla.org will receive as a result of this article... perhaps this is a 'seed' event that will germinate additional downloads & users of Mozilla (one would hope so, anyway!).

w00t!

Excuse my skepticism... but, "Don't hold your breath". I've gotten a few people to switch to Moz (including the recent conversion of a Mac user), but a lot of people are like "but it's not Internet Explorer!"

And just try explaining to them why some sites don't work in Mozilla. Yea, we know it's because the idiot that built the site can't code right, but all they care about is that it works in IE, not Moz....

Heh... end users are the bane of and reason for our eXistenZ... what an odd relationship...

Bummer, I use My Netscape for my home page. I hope it doesn't go away, much better content than the others.

Well, I guy can dream, can't he?

I have yet to run into a site that didn't work w/ Mozilla, aside from the occassional section on the Microsoft.com site. But, you're right - getting people to switch browsers is sorta like getting smokers to quit smoking.