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Testing by AOL may signal plans to drop Explorer | |
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| Time: 18:13 EST/23:13 GMT | News Source: Seattle PI | Posted By: Byron Hinson | ||
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AOL Time Warner Inc. is testing a version of the Netscape Internet browser in its CompuServe service, a sign that America Online may drop Microsoft Corp.'s competing Internet Explorer as the primary way 33 million AOL users view Web pages. New York City-based AOL, which acquired the browser technology from Netscape Communications Corp. in 1999, began the test last fall, spokesman Jim Whitney said yesterday. AOL surprised some analysts when it continued to use Explorer after the $9.8 billion purchase, helping the rival browser gain market share. AOL has sparred with Microsoft to control instant messaging standards and markets for Internet access and electronic commerce. It testified at Microsoft's antitrust trial that the Redmond company used its monopoly to bully other companies. A decision by AOL, the world's largest Internet company, to drop Explorer would be a setback for Microsoft, analysts said. | ||
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| #1 By 1896 (208.61.158.169) at 3/12/2002 6:38:28 PM |
| #1 I don' agree. it shows that Explorer is the dominant browser because is a better and more compatible program that Nescape and there is not "MS conspiracy" to kill competitors. |
| #2 By 135 (208.50.201.48) at 3/12/2002 7:18:49 PM |
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If AOL was truly concerned with browser standards, they would not be designing their service to function with a specific browser. If they were truly concerned with offering users a choice, they wouldn't be talking about forcing the installation of Netscape on a system.
This seems to simply be evidence of old-style thinking on the part of AOL, which is not indicative of a successful innovative company. On the other hand, I'd say it's about time that AOL decided to try to do something with their multi-billion dollar sinkhole they purchased. What's it been, 3 years? Yet all reports over this past year was that they were still pushing Netscape 4.x. |
| #3 By 1913 (68.14.48.57) at 3/12/2002 8:40:23 PM |
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Actually, AOL should have done this a long time ago when they bought Netscape during the early stages of the Microsoft Antitrust case. AOL knew at that time if they would had adopted Netscape technology right away, the tide of the antitrust case would favored Microsoft because that would have given Netscape another chance in the Browser Wars -thus showing the volatile state of the computer industry, which is one of the main point of Microsoft in the case.
I guess at this point since the focus of the antitrust is no longer with the browsers, AOL can now move on and use Netscape. |
| #4 By 2062 (209.180.113.84) at 3/13/2002 4:17:41 AM |
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this article is almost 1 year late. Search betanews.com or other sites and you'll see this was all laid out 1 year ago. It seems the media has a short term memory ;)
And one thing you wont find in that article or any place else. The reason AOL hasnt ditched IE is because IE was deeply integrated with aol. For instance when you go to a form (keyword), such as Love, the form (keyword) is 90% graphics and web based content. Removing IE from aol is not a simple process, all the content on forms (keywords) would be broken since they are rendered by IE. In order to make an AOL client with another browser, all the internal rendering would have to be totally rebuilt. 1 year ago this was not possible, but now im sure aol has the technology to totally ditch IE if they want to. I guess it's kinda ironic that AOL is proving microsofts point that if you remove IE you break a lot of system components ;) Maybe these news articles were leaked by AOL to see the publics reaction...and if the public is positive they'll die ie, just a thought :) If you want my opinion, aol WILL ditch ie, it's not a question of if but when. -gosh |
| #5 By 135 (209.180.28.6) at 3/13/2002 1:47:38 PM |
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Lot's of misconceptions here...
In the past when people said they designed their website to only work with IE, it meant they used W3C standards. To make a site work with Netscape you had to implement a great many work arounds. Now with Version 6, Netscape finally has a browser that supports W3C standards. So as long as the web author targets the standards, they should have no difficulty making things work with either IE or Netscape 6. While Netscape 6 has been buggy and plagued by crashes, slowness and other nonsense, it is considerably better than version 4.x... that is a good thing. AOL users aren't stupid. This is similar to the stupid argument that people don't switch from IE because they are stupid and only accept defaults. Such arguments are worthless. AOL moving to Mozilla is a boon to Microsoft, because it invalidates the many court cases that are out there as well as the bulk of the arguments in the anti-trust trial. It's certainly not going to hurt Microsoft in any way. The only reason why IE has such dominant marketshare is because Netscape wasn't able to produce a quality product. If they now can, good for them. I don't think any less of MS Money just because Quicken is also offered as a product and has 50% of the market. |
| #6 By 135 (208.50.201.48) at 3/14/2002 12:02:39 AM |
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A good portion of our website traffic comes in via AOL users as well. I don't know that it's 40%, but it's at least 20%.
But again, I do not see this as signifigant other than we will probably need to ensure our web apps do work with Netscape 6.x, which up until now we have not done because less than 2% of our web traffic has come from any version of Netscape. |
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