From: Rich Kulawiec <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>But more seriously, I'd rather join a company that has AOL in its
>crosshairs. It'd be much more fun, and I think it'd have a much
>better chance of success.
Rich and me might end up on the same side. AOL is a far bigger threat to the
web than Microsoft. Move over, Rich, and hand me some ammo.
Think about it. AOL now controls 70% of the web. Forget Microsoft's browser.
For 70% of web users, their experience will be through AOL, either as
subscribers (what? 12 million subscribers?) or as users of the Netscape
portal (second most popular portal on the web.)
Remember pay-by-the-minute AOL? Remember proprietary-content AOL? AOL will
take over the web and turn the whole thing into an AOL experience. It's
marketing people who run AOL. Get rid of those unshaven wierdo cyber nerds
with their anarchistic web pages that might offend Auntie Em. No more Bad
Words in AOL chat rooms. They'll add filters to everything: email, browsers,
search engines, whatever.
Forget innovation. Forget plugins. Forget the community around Netscape. AOL
doesn't need that and it just messes things up anyway. AOL wants a simple,
consistent interface that Auntie Em can use. Javilk's DUI (Dog User
Interface) has real potential.
You use Netscape? In the next few weeks, you're going to get a wonderful
offer to become an AOL subscriber. AOL now owns Netscape's mailing lists.
You're also going to get junkmail offers for every damned thing on the
planet.
AOL always does things their way, and their way is a secretive and stupid.
They don't care about HTML or the web. They want to do things their way. On
one of our sites, we get problems with AOL users because their idiotic
browser can't deal with forms.
The Netscape browser is Open Source. AOL can't take it back. The Netscape
portal is big because the Netscape browser defaults to it and lusers think
that it's supposed to go to Netscape. But Mozilla can point the browser
elsewhere. And that leaves AOL with a dying portal.
And who the devil wants to work for AOL? They are a consumer company, akin
to Disney or Pepsi. Imagine AOL on your resume. You worked for AOL? Here's a
lollipop, kid. Go away.
Either the Netscape browser will really take off now as an Open Source
project, or everyone will move over to Microsoft. At work, we're discussing
whether to continue developing our plugins for Netscape or drop it. Dozens
of companies will decide in the next few weeks whether to go with AOL or
not. And AOL simply has no background in dealing with third-party companies.
It looks pretty dim.
It was often assumed this summer that Netscape would be sold, but it was
assumed that it'd be IBM or SUN or such that would buy it. No one imagined
AOL. The takeover of Netscape by AOL is a huge event that will change the
nature of the web. The web is now a consumer-driven event, controlled by
AOL.
Maybe the browser should be renamed Mozilla. The OSS folks could strip out
all of the nonsense that the Netscape marketing people put into it. Make it
HTML4-compliant. Rebuild the browser as a lean platform for third-party
plugins without licensing fees, thus killing IE. This would turn Mozilla
into the browser of choice: neither Microsoft nor AOL, and controlled only
by the web's own users.
andreas
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