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AOL Lays Off 50 Netscape Coders

Posted by timothy on from the but-mozilla-is-resilient dept.

xcable points out a CNET story which begins "America Online on Tuesday said it has laid off 50 employees involved in Web browser development at its Netscape subsidiary amid a reorganization of its Mozilla open-source browser team," and offers a reminder that "AOL recently made a deal with Microsoft to use IE in future AOL releases." This adds a bit more detail to yesterday's (updated) story about the establishment of the Mozilla foundation.

5 of 713 comments (clear)

  1. If... by Soukyan · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If Mozilla surpasses IE in the next couple years, do you think AOL will try to bail on Microsoft? This could get interesting. The litigation is over for now so the browser wars must begin again... as if they ever ended.

    1. Re:If... by keith73 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It could happen. As Peter-Paul Koch theorized in this article (slashdot thread).
      MS may lose ground in the browser market because they have frozen IE at version 6 SP1. The next version, 7 will only be available on the next Windows OS. With that a few years away, then the adoption of the new OS and browser taking another few years, the other browsers out there, Mozilla and Opera mainly, will make gains in the market because of standards, constant updates and new features being added, support for new technologies that may emerge in the next few years, etc.
      In other words, IE will become the rabbit, taking a siesta under a tree while a bunch of turtles slowly creep by.

      You can't simply dismiss the possibility with a wave of the hand.

      - keith

      --
      -- Does anybody know where the 'any' key is on the keyboard?
  2. Whaaa???? by Bob+Abooey · · Score: 5, Interesting
    They laid off 50 workers and the article claims that to be less than 10% of the Netscape workforce?????

    What the hell are all those guys doing there?

    --

    All the best,
    --Bob

  3. Sigh by 4of12 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So Microsoft has more than enough cash on hand to buy out AOL/TW.

    If the marketplace were completely free and unfettered, you'd think that Microsoft would, rather than pour money down the hole that has been MSN, simply buy out AOL with its 30 million subscribers.

    But Microsoft won't do this because they know they can't; that the DoJ would immediately ask questions about unfair market consolidation were such a buyout offer made.

    So instead MSFT pours money into MSN and leverages its dominant products of Windows, Office and Explorer to subsidize MSN.

    As AOL dies slowly over a few years, this will be viewed as "OK", the marketplace in action, and no inconvenient questions will be raised except by AOL management and stockholders.

    Since MS can rely upon a steady revenue stream from Windows and Office to subsidize its efforts into taking over new markets they enjoy an advantage that AOL and other competitors simply don't have.

    People buy Windows and Office like they're a standard, a necessity, that's no more avoidable than paying gasoline taxes.

    Yes, Microsoft has the enviable position of just collecting taxes - like a government. And competing against the government is a no-win situation.

    It is a foregone conclusion that AOL will lose. They will wither to nothing, or simply to a marginally-sized pet, like Apple, who would have died long ago if Microsoft had decided to not release Office for Mac.

    --
    "Provided by the management for your protection."
  4. Does this mean that AOL will abandon pre-XP users? by Dcnjoe60 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    AOL has announced that it will use IE for the browser for seven years. Microsoft has announced that there will no longer be a standalone version of IE. So, if AOL is to still work on existing Windows boxes, then it must remain at IE6. But, it's hard to beleive that they won't want to move to the latest and greatest (tongue in cheek) IE when it ships, but that would force AOL to either maintain separate code bases or drop support for current versions of Windows. If they choose the separate code bases, then using the least common denominator approach, AOL won't be able to include future web features, because they don't exist in IE6. Dropping support for older versions of Windows, is a very calculated risk. There are two possible outcomes. Facing a forced upgrade, either AOL's would switch to a different ISP or shell out the bucks for a new version of Windows (and possibly new hardware). My bet would be to switch ISPs, but I'm sure AOL and MS are counting on people buying a new version of Windows, instead. If they are right, that's not a bad investment for MS $750M to get AOL users to all buy a copy of the next version of Windows. At 35 million AOL subscribers and a $100 upgrade cost, MS stands to gross $3.5 billion dollars. Not a bad return on investment.