Friday, May 30, 2003

The Bill and Dick Show. Doesn't it give you just a warm, fuzzy feeling that Microsoft and AOL Time Warner are going into business together? This Washington Post analysis by David Vise is particularly good on how Microsoft may emerge as the principal engine by which AOL Time Warner distributes its massive quantities of content.

The Wall Street Journal goes hard on the angle that this may be the end of Netscape, the software company that AOL acquired a few years ago for $10 billion to compete with Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Netscape Navigator was essentially the original Web browser -- an immediate descendent of Mosaic -- but has long since fallen behind Explorer, helped along by that massive distribution network known as Windows.

Of course, it was Microsoft's attempts to crush Netscape that made it the subject of an endless, celebrated antitrust case. But the buzz has long since departed Netscape. Indeed, the code was given away a long time ago. These days, the principal innovations to Navigator are made by the open-source techies at Mozilla -- which is definitely worth checking out.

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