AOL To Finally Switch To Mozilla?

pitabutter writes "Sounds like AOL is joining the list of companies making the internal switch to Linux, taking their default browser choice along with them. Oddly, second article in a short time linking AOL and Red Hat. " As with all things with AOL/Mozilla, I'll actually believe it when the darn thing ships - but the internal switch to Linux is something that I've also heard from people.

Comments

Doesn't this say it all?

[wackybrit]

As far as an AOL client for Linux, one Linux-using AOL employee says, "How many Linux people do you know personally who would sign up for AOL if we had a Linux client? I don't know a single one, myself. I have an account with another ISP I use at home with my Linux box, and probably wouldn't use AOL from home even if I could."

'Linux people'? It's no surprise that Linux won't make it onto the average desktop with that sort of attitude.

Their reckoning is that.. all Linux users are nerds so they don't need to use such a crappy ISP. That might be true now but if AOL doesn't offer a Linux client then they're implying that they think Linux will continue to remain a nerd interest.

With support like that from the biggest companies in the world, who needs enemies?

Re:Doesn't this say it all?

[IamTheRealMike]

'Linux people'? It's no surprise that Linux won't make it onto the average desktop with that sort of attitude.

Actually (hides face in shame) I would have loved an AOL Linux client a while ago. My family used AOL at the time because a) it was cheap and b) it worked freecall with the UK cable network. An AOL client would have been great - unfortunately there wasn't one of course so we had to leave AOL and switch to NTL World which are pretty bad, worse even than AOL!

So while they may have a point now, the makeup of 'Linux people' is changing, and is moving further away from the geek demographic all the time. thanks -mike

Re:Doesn't this say it all?

[Surak]

With support like that from the biggest companies in the world, who needs enemies?

I'll make a prediction right now...Do I have to say it? Oh, I guess I do...

AOL/TW will buy Red Hat. They're looking to break free of Microsoft, especially since Microsoft basically screwed them over with XP. They will finally make good on a Mozilla/AOL client, they will release versions for Linux and Windows and continue with the strategy that Linux is the cheapest way to get AOL into every household in America.

People buying computers just to get on the Internet (there's still a lot of those) will buy Linux machines (without really knowing why) that have AOL installed on them. Microsoft will slowly lose their grip on the consumer desktop market...

They'll continue to own the commercial market until the same twits who insist on the use of Windows in the commercial market because it "looks just like what i've got at home" will have Linux at home, and then they'll want that because it "looks just like what I've got at home."

Boom, Microsoft's stranglehold on the desktop fails, Linux takes over and utopia finally sets in.

Whatcha think? Too far fetched? :-P

Re:Doesn't this say it all?

[An Onerous Coward]

Worse, they're implying that AOL is for non-geeks only.

I browsed Google for solutions for folk who want to use AOL. While I did find a listing for AOL Tunneling Client for UNIX on linux.org, the web page that it links to seems to have disappeared. Perhaps the WINE project offers another ray of hope.

It seems like the best solution would be for AOL to switch from its proprietary internal protocols to TCP/IP and family. With packet filtering, they should be able to maintain just as much control over the user environment as they do now, while making it easier to support "non-standard" clients.

And while they're at it, I'd like them to switch to IPv6. Plus I want world peace and a pony.

Seriously, there are a thousand good reasons to switch to TCP/IP. What advantages do they gain by sticking with what they have?

Re:Doesn't this say it all?

[liquidsin]

I'd like to take that one step further though. I'd like to see AOL/TW buy RedHat and develop it into AOL-OS (or some such named product). All the power of linux, all the ease-of-use of AOL - which is to say, damn simple. Eventually, phase out the Windows version entirely. You want AOL? Gotta use AOL-OS. But that's a good thing, since it's cheaper than Windows and, with all that AOL/TW cash behind a linux distro, way more stable. Now THAT'd be cool...I'd almost use AOL for that ;)

Less IE specific content (hopefully)

[cheekymonkey_68]

I don't care if they're just doing this to save money, the end result could benefit all web users so its "a good thing" tm and the only people this will hurt are those companies making IE only sites

This could mean that web developers might finally be allowed to write html conforming sites, rather than the current notion of supporting the current two generations of IE and thats it.

Perhaps the bean counters will start to think of making websites more accessible when a large minority of users suddenly don't use IE.

Like it or not AOL users make up a significant number of internet users (30% in the US for ex), and if AOL uses Mozilla for the client it can only increase web standards compliance... hopefully we'll start to see more sites that don't purely rely on Microsoft's interpretation of the html standards and actually try to reach the widest possible audience by making standards compliant web sites.

From the article:-

The only thing that might delay -- not stop, just delay -- AOL's change from Explorer to a Mozilla-based browser is allowing time for some of AOL's largest and most important "partner sites" to do away with any Explorer-specific features they have been using in place of W3C standards.

A browser shift by AOL is going to leave an awful lot of companies that assume their Web sites only need to work with Explorer scrambling to rewrite their code so that they don't lose AOL's 30 million-plus subscribers, or about 30% of all U.S. Internet users.

Re:Well they could contribute to the redhat commun

[An Onerous Coward]

Maybe not. By the sound of the article, the people at AOL don't want to have to do tech support for a Linux client. Without a Linux client, anyone using the Internet is someone who is using another ISP.

Also, the boxed Red Hat 7.2 distro contains no fewer than 7 CDs (2 install disks, 2 source disks, Star Office, some Loki demos, and a documentation CD). Even if they limited it to just the first two, it still means tripling the already vast amount of plastic being distributed, and I don't think they'll go for that.

Finally, given the expertise differential between "installing the AOL Client" and "reformatting or repartitioning the HDD and installing Red Hat Linux," it's a bad idea. I think there are too many people out there who would wreak havoc on their current system if some Red Hat CDs dropped into their laps. It wouldn't be good for thousands of people to think of Linux as "that software that ate my computer."

ThreeThings I Want To Know...

[great throwdini]

1. We all seem to know that AOL on Wintel utilizes the Microsoft rendering engine. What does AOL for MacOS use?

2. Has AOL ever used a rendering engine for either platform other than the one(s) used now?

3. If AOL has switched in the past, what was the motivation then?

(Finally, a reason to use my +1 bonus.)

Re:ThreeThings I Want To Know...

[leviramsey]

We all seem to know that AOL on Wintel utilizes the Microsoft rendering engine. What does AOL for MacOS use?

I'd presume the IE Mac rendering engine, but that's a guess.

Has AOL ever used a rendering engine for either platform other than the one(s) used now?

AOL's original browser was Mosaic-based, IIRC. It blew goats (I think it had table support, but not much else).

If AOL has switched in the past, what was the motivation then?

AOL switched to IE back when Netscape owned about 70% of the market. Microsoft got the IE rendering engine to #1, and AOL got desktop placement in Windows (remember the Online Services program group in Windows?)

Re:ThreeThings I Want To Know...

[babbage]

1. We all seem to know that AOL on Wintel utilizes the Microsoft rendering engine. What does AOL for MacOS use?

I can't give a completely technical answer to this one, but I do know that for both OS9 , your Mac's system folders end up containing a whole slew of MS specific code:

% ls /System\ Folder/Extensions/MS\ Library\ Folder/
total 2568
-rw-r--r-- 1 chris unknown 112644 Mar 25 1998 MS C++ Library (PPC)
-rw-r--r-- 1 chris unknown 189123 Mar 25 1998 MS Container Lib (PPC)
-rw-r--r-- 1 chris unknown 611367 Mar 25 1998 MS Internet Library (PPC)
-rw-r--r-- 1 chris unknown 119930 Mar 25 1998 MS Preferences Library PPC
-rw-r--r-- 1 chris unknown 33232 Mar 25 1998 MS Variant Lib (PPC)

I thought I came across similar stuff on the OSX directories, but a quick search isn't turning up anything obviously originating from MS. Presumably it's all just part of the Internet Explorer app, and not (obviously?) exported as a globally available library.

Also note that the Mac versions of IE are for the most part a completely separate codebase from the Win32 versions, with different developers and everything. There is some cross-pollination between the two branches, but not to the point where you can consider them to be identical. The Mac version has some very nice features that still haven't made their way to the Windows branch, and it has other features (auto-virus mode comes to mind :) that still haven't been exported to Macland yet.

2. Has AOL ever used a rendering engine for either platform other than the one(s) used now?

Can't address the Mac on this one, but as another commenter noted, AOL first tried to ignore the web, then it tried to implement support for it in a very broken way. The browser for AOL 3 or so was really bad -- probably (in my opinion) to get AOL users to think that the web wasn't worth all the hype, and that they should stick to AOL (that and, to be fair, it was probably just difficult to get a solid browser put together quickly, which would explain why they went on to just embed IE and then later buy out Netscape).

3. If AOL has switched in the past, what was the motivation then?

As noted, their inittial attempts to get a browser within the AOL client were just really, really awful. Their web client crashed all the time, couldn't render things, felt slower than the rest of the AOL service, etc. (Note that, apparently at around this time, AOL switched to HTTP as their main internal network protocol, instead of whatever propietary protocol AOL was using before that. Thus going to the web from within AOL meant having to do some kind of protocol translation to make it work, so this made the service degrade even beyond the poor quality of the browser they were offering at the time. Citation for this is in "Philip & Alex's Guide to Web Publishing", where he talks about what a surprisingly good webserver AOLServer is, noting that it has been tuned to support the millions of concurrent AOL users...)

Anyway, as noted by another commenter and in great detail in the MS antitrust Findings of Fact document, AOL entered a contract where they would use IE for five (?) years in return for a guaranteed place on the Windows desktop (and no longer having to devote resources to coming up with a viable browser of their own), and MS would get instant access to AOL's millions of users. AOL hedged their bets for the future by buying out Netscape, but they kept IE around even after the contract expired in the hope that MS would allow some sort of new agreement along the lines of the earlier one. As it has become clear that MS doesn't feel they need to co-exist with AOL anymore, AOL in turn seems to be considering playing their Netscape trump card now -- "if you don't need us then we don't need you either."

Sooner or later I assume they will -- must -- switch to Netscape: otherwise they will have wasted their investment in that company and continued to support their biggest rival in the process. The more interesting question to me is whether they really are willing to switch to some kind of [Red Hat based?] AOLinux. Part of me really wants to see this happen -- it would be nice to see some significant competition to MS on the shelves at BestBuy and Circuit City (above & beyond Apple's 5%, where you can even find that in the first place). But at the same time, I'm not comfortable with the idea that everything on their machines -- from the kernel up to the user level AOL client -- would have been bolted together as a monolithic whole by one corporation. Even if the guts are open source, I'm sure that the high level stuff would certainly be proprietary. Macintosh can claim to be internally open too, but the more interesting high level stuff is still proprietary. On a hypothetical AOLinux, you're only likely to have as much access to the Linux stuff as their high level interface allows you to have, and seeing as this is AOL we're talking about, I can't see them giving you much access there. At least MacOSX gives you the Terminal to work with (and through that, all the BSD subsystem). What will AOLinux let you use? If this goes the way I'm fearing it could, it could be at least as bad as the current Windows situation, because it would mean that of the three systems you'd be able to buy at that Circuit City -- AOLinux, Mac, and Windows -- all three would be for the most part vertically integrated, with one vendor supplying the bulk of the user and system level software on each platform. This could serve to Balkanize each sub-market, and I'm not clear who if anyone would gain by such a situation, aside from *maybe* those three vendors.

The problem may be Time Warner

[yerricde]

It seems to me like they're taking all of the benefits of Linux and open-source and giving NOTHING back whatsoever.

The real reason why AOL(tw) won't release an America Online for PC Linux: there'd be no way to stop a kid with a debugger (easier to obtain on Linux than on Windows XP) from breaking into the Time Warner content because the machine owner is root and the publishers can't do jack about it. (SSSCA aims to change that.)

Alternative to re-installing

[Walles]

There is a good reason that "Reinstall Windows" is in the 90th percentile of all support responses. It's a simple answer, and by having nobody who can actually repair a broken windows machine, it's the best answer.

Something I've been pondering (a little) is that since Linux boxes are fixable (regardless of distro), why couldn't this fixing be automated? Have a program that diagnoses the problem by trying to dial out, run traceroute, start X, and / or whatever, then when an error is encountered "check" (for some definition of checking) relevant config files or whatnot for errors, maybe asking the user some questions in the process.

Granted, this would be a task in full parity with making something like Linuxconf or XST, but if somebody did, imagine what it would do to the support costs!

Interesting Comment on the Newsforge article

[Christopher Whitt]

In the followup comments on the site, an AC wrote

That is why I am not sure I wanted to see this article just yet, even though I consider it interesting and very good news. Premature talk may scuttle these kinds of strategic decisions. Eg. You-Know-Who might step up his FUD or make AOL management an offer they cannot refuse: "If you use Mozilla, we cannot promise the AOL browser works on future Windows versions , but here's an IE licensing deal that solves such problems...".

That's a pretty interesting point. I'm not business expert, but this sounds plausible. It would be a shame if talks fell through because of fallout from the rumor-mill.

On the other hand, I'd say that this is no news to Redmond. The bad blood between them is probably deep enough that the AOL->Gecko outcome is inevitable. Not to mention the money sunk into Netscape over the last few years...

Everybody here is talking about the boon to web compatibility if this happens. I sure hope it does!

Christopher

AOL for Linux???

[fruey]

Perhaps one of the world's many stalwart Linux entrepreneurs will eventually convince AOL management that an AOL-branded, consumer-priced Linux box is a good idea. Otherwise, AOL will probably stick to the current corporate operating system pattern: Linux in the server room, Windows or Mac on user desktops -- except that AOL-ized desktops will run the AOL browser and its Mozilla rendering engine instead of Microsoft Explorer.

Who wants AOL for Linux? What is going on? A proprietary dial-up, authentication and content delivery system? Pulllease.

If AOL offered a dial up account using PAP or CHAP and just TCP/IP access with a browser that went to their homepage and allowed you to see their premium content, this may be a good thing for any AOL content junkies

But I can already use AOL Instant Messenger, and MSN, and Yahoo! through Linux, why would I need anything else?

AOL are right not to create AOL for Linux. Linux users should be following Internet standards and not some proprietary bullshit.

Windows users can have AOL for all I care. Give me a proper ISP any day of the week.

AOL Should Buy Hardware Vendor

[billtom]

While lots of people talk about AOL shipping a Linux install on their ubiquitous CDs I don't really see that happening (because of the support nightmare of grandma calling up because she can't view the powerpoint presentations she had from her grandkids).

But what I do think that makes sense is AOL buying a hardware vendor and bundling Linux, Mozilla, an AOL client, and staroffice into a microsoft free solution.

Gateway would make a good choice becuase they're not doing so well (primarily because they're not Dell), but they've got good brand recognition. Then we'd start to see the "AOL Computer by Gateway" (with Linux probably not mentioned at all).

AOL would make it clear that this wasn't a Windows computer and that Windows software wouldn't run on it, but AOL has enough money to keep at it until they've sold enough units for software vendors to start supporting it. The target audience would be new computer users and heavy AOL users who are buying a new computer.

In my view the only way that Linux can succeed on the desktop is if the computer comes pre-installed with Linux. Installing a second OS is something that the average user is just never going to do. And AOL/TW has deep enough pockets to make a go of it.

AOLinux with ads!

[jawtheshark]

Okay, you don't like ads...I don't like ads, but guess what: I learned something recently. Joe User does not care!
See, I have this network at home which I administer like a tyrant: only programs that I approve will be installed. Nothing else is allowed unless I think it's usefull and I checked it's integrity (spyware and the like).

Now, why do I tell you this. Simple: my sister is a real music fan and wants to access file sharing software like Morpheus, Kaazaa and the like. So I did my homework and downloaded Gnucleus (which works insanely well). I told her: look, here is a client without ads that does everything you need. Spread the word to your friends about it. Her reply was simple: my friends do not care about the ads, they are not interested in alternatives. Same thing when she subscribed for an hotmail account: I told her, you'll be spammed to hell and I subscribed her to a better account. She did drop her hotmail account but under protest, because that was what she knew. Another instance is ICQ, 2000 and 2001 clients come with ads. I kept the 99b version until it stopped working correctly. I didn't want the 2000 and 2001 versions because of the ads...she again did not care.
Most people don't care about ads, not about spyware....even if they underestimate spyware.

So *if* AOL would bring out AOLinux with a default windowmanager that looks like Windows 98/W2K/XP and that has an ad in the corner: I'm all for it because the normal user will take it, use it and accept the damned litte ad.

In hindsight (BeOS?)

[ghost.]

It's all hindsight now, but comments like:

AOL/TW will buy Red Hat. They're looking to break free of Microsoft...

Why Red Hat? Corel would probably be a lot cheaper...

make me wonder if AOL perhaps missed an opportunity by not buying Be. Seems to me BeOS would have fit the bill for all this talk of an AOL web/email only consumer box, and could have been purchased for a song. Am I overlooking something here?

Cheers.

Re:publicity?

[GreyPoopon]

Because AOL users represent the biggest piece of the internet consumers pie (at least, in the USA), all those websites will need to adapt and become "AOL (mozilla) compliant" ( = W3C compliant?? ) or (economically) die.

This is interesting. I just hit the "Submit" button on an opinion that takes it from the other point of view. I indicated that AOL may face a risk of departing customers if too many web pages don't work. This all brings up an interesting question: Is AOL's large install base enough to whip the noncompliant web sites into shape? Do you think they'd start working on this problem in advance of a Mozilla-based delivery? What's the right approach to make sure the web sites change rather than the AOL customer base?

Maybe We'll See AOL_Linux CD's?

[reallocate]

AOL is justified in being wary of offering a Linux client that sucks them into providing support for a myriad variety of Linux distributions. But... you can fit a lot of stuff on a CD. How about giving folks an option by rolling out an AOL version of Linux with the AOL client? If you want a Linux AOL client plus AOL support, you get to run AOL Linux. Sounds reasonable to me.