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AOL Lays Off 50 Netscape Coders
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.
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.
What the hell are all those guys doing there?
All the best,
--Bob
As long as Steve Case was there, AOL was never going to cozy up to MS. Now that he's gone, you'll probably see a lot more of this now that AOL has to run themselves as a profit making concern.
$2 mn. for 10 coders for the Mozilla project isn't much, after you consider other expenses. I think AOL is acting as I'd predicted some time back - quick death for Netscape, slow poison to Mozilla, and surrender to the IE devil...
But then, to expect better from a company that settled a lawsuit with MS (for the latter's guilty conduct, mind you) is a bit too far.
-
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
The Register have an interesting take on this too here
Looks like AOL is trying to untie itself from Netscape and Mozilla as much as possible. By establishing and funding the Foundation, they continue to make the browser possible without tying themselves to it. The seeming hypocrisy of AOL using the IE browser (so they can stay on the Windows desktop) while developing Mozilla is now resolved.
Saddening, but understandable from a business perspective. Hopefully every one of those coders will be rehired by the Foundation so they can continue to do what they do best, with or without AOL's direct support.
I bet Microsoft's happy to see another competitor dying, though.
And this really isn't meant to be a troll, I just wanna know...
Does anyone here actually use Netscape as their default browser?
If you do, why? Is it solely for political/moral/whatever reasons, or does it offer some technical feature that you have not found in another browser?
How many people here have Netscape as a browser on their computer NOT as a primary browser, and why did you install it? WHy is it not the primary browser?
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
So are AOL's long-term lease on IE, and its buy-high-sell-low Netscape strategy precursors of further mergers (think MSN/AOL)?
Not only could it provide many more chances for opportunistic middle managers to use layoffs to make it look like they're Doing Something, but the thought of putting Time Warner's clout behind its longstanding efforts at being a multimedia content provider must make MS salivate. (MSNBC? Zzzz.)
We have to complete our assimilation of the Alpha quadrant.
Wrong. MS does not support alpha chips anymore. Hey, even Compaq/HP does not support them anymore!
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
I'm guessing there are some legal strings attached, but I wonder whether a fully AOL-capable version of Mozilla, distrbuted almost like the original AOL virus itself (in this case, I would, for example, bring over an install CD to help my AOL-using parents to move beyond IE... even better if they could get around AOL 7.0 or whatever they're using). Yes, they can use whatever browser they want, but how about an email client that works?
Is there a legal barrier in place to prevent this, especially from former (and whoafully under appreciated) employees ? Since AOL never followed through while they were there, I think the only real justice at this point would be to let loose better, cross-platform software for the AOL userbase out there. Who knows, maybe some linux users will make the switch to AOL...
As an aside, a few troll comments here and there have suggested that now IE can be the one true client to create web content for... I give such commentary little credence, but is the SCO action on IBM (et al.) and the AOL action on Mozilla just bad timing, or is the fact that Microsoft money flows to both make any more interesting their coincidence?
Just a thought. Posted using Moz 1.4, by the way.
Regardless, this is sad news. Sad, but not unexpected. Here's hoping some far-sighted investors will pick up Netscape/Mozilla -- it would probably be the bargain of the week, especially if MSIE really is dead in the water until Longhorn is finished.
Maybe this is Larry Ellison's chance to show us once again how badly he hates Bill Gates.
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
Given the layoff of the 50 programmers at AOL, I think that the newly-formed Mozilla Foundation (the "MF"...heh) should hold a bake sale and use the proceeds to hire 50 programmers from New Dehli to replace them. the MF will need to raise at least $50 or $60 bucks to get started...
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
$2e6/50 = $20,000/yr
And, if that 50 was only 10% of the Netscape workforce, and we split that $2 mil over 500 users, that's a Christmas bonus, not a salary.
So, $1 mil/yr for the Moz Foundation is chump change. An earlier statement that "5 coders is plenty for Mozilla" seems kind of silly to me. I wonder how big the IE team is.
Thanks for the good time, honey, I'll call you. Here, buy yourself something nice.
Now we get to see how Moz survives as a *real* open-source project (i.e., w/out funding). At least it's got a good code base (right?).
John.
So AOL promised MS to use IE in their next versions (is this only for AOL windows?). How does the future plan of IE not being stand-alone affect this AOL using IE issue? Will MS release a special "IE for AOL" version? Will AOL not include a browser and just use IE APIs straight from Windows? What about non Windows users? Macs?
[alk]
too bad, but not unexpected. Remember, AOL's purpose in life is to make money, not promote alternatives to Microsoft.
Tieing yourself to a browser more than 9 of 10 people don't want to use seems like a good way to cut sales, not increase them.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Perfected art of staring at monitor and 'zoning out' while pretending to work.
Meh, just like Microsoft Office, this can be placed on anyone one of our resumes.
sin(6cos(r)+5A)
50 developers is 10% of the Netscape work force... however, AOL's 'official' position is that they're still supporting the browser & the web portal.
... and Walmart sure is selling a whole lotta Lindows PC these days.
aol official position
AOL is making a *huge* mistake by not using the Gecko engine as the core of their browser/ISP product. Right now they're using Gecko as the core in their Compuserve and Mac AOL product, but still using IE in the Windows product. Seems like they could streamline their internal coding operations by standardizing on one code base, which would ultimately save them more money than letting developers go.
Also, by using the Gecko engine in the product, they could in theory start offering AOL on Linux-based PC's; while that might sound like an unprofitable venture at first, I can't imagine all of those people purchasing Lindows-based PC's at Walmart not wanting AOL as their ISP
Honestly tho, who fucking cares!? I mean, I'm sorry to those that lost their jobs, definitely - this is not directed at them. But as far as the AOL shitbag goes, you had to see this stuff coming from a mile away. They are not even remotely the same AOL that Case or jwz worked for. They are one of the largest media companies in the world!
All these biz guys understand the M$ biz guys. They're all about numbers and not innovation, so the bloodletting is beginning; nothing anyone can do about it.
Now, that said, Mozilla is the key here. I don't think it will die in the forseeable future. Combined with Linux gaining more and more ground, there must exist a free, open browser. Sure, Konqueror will hang around, but Mozilla will still have a larger user base. And companies that depend on that, like Redhat, IBM, Sun (once they ditch Netscape 4), and others, they will put development efforts into it. And if the Moz Foundation gets really strapped for cash, then just move it to SourceForge or Savannah.
Point is is that there is no use thinking or worrying about AOL or Netscape anymore. They've been goners for some time. Mozilla is the focus and given the 'freeness' of the code, it will continue to live on regardless of cut funding and developers. Granted, it might slow, but no worse than IE.
I for one am sorry my fellow coders are out of a job, but I have all the faith in the world for Moz cuz I think it's a great browser. I mean, c'mon, if the C=64 (long live the C=64!) can still live after all these years, why not Moz?
The reason that AOL uses IE is to that MS will have AOL pre-packaged on the computers with a nifty shortcut link to install the software. This way a user doesn't have to download the software online, or worry about how they are going to get online. Most users are still using a modem, and have no way to get online unless they first contact an ISP. This way, AOL is already on the computer, and they don't have to call anyone. It's just there. That is why they use IE. And MS wants them to use it, well, because they are the largest ISP and they all use IE.
AOL will stop using IE when Windows starts to lose it's market share (by a LOT)
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
With Netscape circling the drain for so long, it was just a matter of time. Netscape was too far gone to be salvageable anyway. Mozilla has been a much better browser, almost from go, than Netscape ever was, which is a little surprising since they were based on the same code base.
On a related topic, I have fiddled with Mozilla and Opera and compared them, and I think it's safe to say that Opera's claim of being the fastest browser out there is incorrect.
Now that AOL has made a deal with the devil, Netscape's demise went from anticipated to guaranteed. I hate to see Netscape go, as it was a viable alternative at one time and some people out there still prefer it.
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
Hey! Without my job at Netscape, I would never have the free time to post this comment!
/syle
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."
I perused the article and I'm not sure if it's Mozilla or Netscape developers... they are not the same thing, and I'm sure AOL has developers who take Mozilla and massage it into Netscape. If those are the people getting laid off then I don't feel so bad.
Well, I feel bad for them, but I've always hated the changes AOL made to Mozilla before releasing it as Netscape - like when they removed the pop-up feature, and all the crap they include.
I too, though, find it painful explaining Mozilla to people over and over again.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
AOL kept them around long enough to extract that $750M from Microsoft without having to waste time and money pursuing the antitrust complaint.
Microsoft paid what is pocket change to them to deliver the final blow to the stake in the heart of what was once their biggest competitor in the browser arena. AOL/TW got badly needed cash, Microsoft got another seven years of IE dominance amongst the mouth-breathing internet user set. Web pages will continue to be designed so they'll look good for AOL retards instead of being designed to comply with established standards so they look good in all standards-compliant browsers.
As usual, Microsoft wins, the other party to the agreement thinks they won but will later realize they didn't, and the internet-using public loses.
Failed in the sense that it never dug Netscape, as a browser and company, out of the hole. But I'm sure glad to see that Mozilla rose out of all that effort.
As to what they were doing, you should check out ex-mozilla, a list of all the ex-employees that have accumulated over the past --- decade? --- and a little description each wrote up of what they did and what they're now doing. Bittersweet.
www.firastudios.com
As one of the laid off employees I can assure you that Mozilla is going to be a shambles for at least six months. I have a ton of bugs and while I'll help where I can I'm certainly not going to have the chance to fix these things, what with looking for a job and earning a wage somewhere else. Therefore they'll sit in a heap with a zillion other bugs that no one wants to touch because they are not sexy enough to fix. Mozilla will survive and as open source it can't die, but suggesting AOL axing paid developers is not all bad is like saying the same of a mugging victim who spends half a year in hospital recovering from a beating.
With that said, Mozilla 1.4 is an awesome browser. It destroys IE in almost everyway and hopefully its stability will be enough to win new converts while the transition and recovery happens.
Bob Slydell: The Netscape developers.
Bill Lumbergh: Who're they?
Bob Porter: You know, squirrely looking guys, mumble a lot.
Bill Lumbergh: Oh, yeah.
Bob Slydell: Yeah, we can't actually find a record of them being current employees here.
Bob Porter: I looked into it more deeply and I found that apparently what happened is that they were laid off five years ago and no one ever told them, but through some kind of glitch in the payroll department, they still get paychecks.
Bob Slydell: So we just went a ahead and fixed the glitch.
Bill Lumbergh: Great.
Dom Portwood: So um, the Netscape developers have been let go?
Bob Slydell: Well just a second there, professor. We uh, we fixed the *glitch*. So they won't be receiving paychecks anymore, so it will just work itself out naturally.
Bob Porter: We always like to avoid confrontation, whenever possible. Problem solved from your end.
--- What
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.
Does anyone here actually use Netscape as their default browser?
Mozilla; yes of course.
What's not to like?
The parent post should be modded down.
If we can't retain a degree of levity at times like this, then the terrorists have already won.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The problem with Joe Average User trying to use any browser other than IE is that there are too many websites out there that ONLY work on IE. They don't use web standars, they use IE-specific code. Try to view those pages on Mozilla (or nearly any other browser that is standards-based,) and they simply don't work. It's a chicken-egg problem: those sites won't change, because 90% of users use IE. Users won't change, becuase many sites won't work outside IE. I had always hoped that if AOL switched to Mozilla, it would FORCE those websites to change, because of the number of users AOL has. Unfortunetly, it doesn't look like it will happen.
Then again, I don't really have an understanding of the mozilla/netscape relationship, just what I heard--mozilla started when netscape opened its code, aol gives mozilla money, aol gets all the cool stuff from mozilla and reinserts it into netscape. If it's more complicated than that and I'm missing something, please feel free to explain it to me.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Well it looks like the day of Netscape's execution is nigh, but I wonder, with the formation of the Mozilla Foundation, why doesn't AOL donate the Netscape trademarks to the foundation.
Though Netscape has been increasingly marginalized, I think from a sheer brand name recognition point of view, if Mozilla, or Mozilla Firebird become Netscape, they will have a much easier time entering the collective conscious of many more people out there.
I tried Mozilla Firebird 0.6 for the first time yesterday and have to say I was very impressed! It was Netscape and Mozilla minus all the bloat, as advertised. If a Netscape 8 label is thrown on this and the usual barrage of AOL advertisements doesn't install with it, it could have a great chance of siezing some market share from the stagnating Explorer 6.
Of course, AOL will likely keep the Netscape trademark and simply let it get full of dust bunnies (as a portal web site no one will go to) to the point where no one remembers it anymore.... but if they'd only donate it to the Mozilla Foundation... it at least seems like a reach around for the current and future rounds of Netscape employees being fired.
-Joe
If we're all god's children, what's so special about Jesus? - Jimmy Carr
Evidently you're not a very advanced browser user. I don't mean this as an insult, if Safari does everything you need, great. For me, and many others, despite the bloat, Mozilla has necessary features that other browsers lack.
Let's start with cookie handling. There are a handful of websites that I want to accept cookies from. With Mozilla I can have it prompt me every time a site wants to set a cookie and if the cookies really are necessary I'll accept, otherwise I'll reject. With Safari you don't have that degree of fine-grained control.
Keyword bookmarks. Sure, Safari has the "Google" bar at the top. In mozilla I get the same feature by typing "g Search Terms" in the address bar, and mozilla knows to expand "g" to the full google search URL, placing the search terms in the appropriate place. But I also have keyword searches for IMDB, dictionary.cambridge.edu, google groups, google images, amazon, a w3 validator... In Safari there doesn't appear to be a way to do that.
More complete proxy control: I can say I don't want a proxy for 10.0.0.1/8 and have my entire internal network unproxied. There simply doesn't seem to be a way to do that in Safari.
Anyhow, I could go on and on about the features that Mozilla has that Safari doesn't, but I think I've made my point.
Welp, I admit it. Looks like I was wrong. An AOL-supported Mozilla is dead.
What does this mean for the OS X AOL client? That's the one thing (Gecko-based OS X client is already out there) that made me think AOL'd keep going. Looks like IE 7 (or whatever) is going to have some really neat stuff. Enough that the MS licensing agreement with AOL makes it a good idea for AOL to kill Gecko as a back-up engine for its software.
Maybe the Safari embeddable engine is easy enough to use that AOL is going that way. Or maybe AOL OS X's engine will just fold up into proprietary software. The MPL allows that.
I don't feel *that* badly. AOL, whether it meant to or not, pulled the plug, strangely enough, immediately after Moz became the best browser on the market. That's good timing from where I'm sitting -- which is in front of a monitor, posting with Mozilla/Firebird.
It's all 0s and 1s. Or it's not.
Two things, though.
First, IE and Windows help to provide a mutual lock-in, while bundling Mozilla with Windows would permit easier migration away from Windows because users would no longer have to confront Something Different as a browser.
Second, security holes have afflicted Microsoft for long enough that they simply shrug them off, claim that they'll be fixed in the next update, that premature open notification of vulnerabilities is Bad, and that Hackers are responsible for Evil.
The cumulative problem of security holes will be used as evidence for the need to have TCPA instituted as a standard, which will also cut down on Terrorism and Pedophiles as well as Bad Hackers.
No need for MS to adopt Mozilla and compromise a perfectly useful leveraging tool in IE, that now has over 90% of the market.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
You clearly do not know anything about the architecture of Windows, IE or AOL's "browser". AOL is NOT using "IE" it is using the Windows HTML rendering engine which IE also uses...
Windows ships with an HTML rendering engine as a COM object. Internet Explorer (IE6) uses this rendering engine to render pages. So does the Windows shell, so does the Windows help system and so do many 3rd party apps, including AOL. This is the main reason that AOL used "IE" It was a componetized "browser" long before anyone at Netscape even understood the concept.
Windows will ALWAYS contain an HTML rendering engine that will ALWAYS be available to third party vendors. Even if there is no wrapper in the form of a stand alone browser ("IE") from MS itself. The interface to the engine is multi- layerd as well, always supporting the older protocols, so new version of the engine will still work with older versions of software written for it. (It is currently on it's 2nd API)
BTW if you want to see what is available to third parties, check out the "MyIE2" browser. A tabbed, mouse gestured, popup blocking alternative to IE built using the windows HTML rendering engine. It's still mssing a couple of more advanced features which I hope get added soon, but it just shows that the lack of a MS branded "IE" is no loss to anyone, in fact it's an incentive for 3rd party developers like AOL!
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Guess what, hotshot? The answer to that question is: Whichever one will not take 4+ years to ship in a working form while the world's largest and most predatory corporation is working overtime to dig your grave.
Please notice that despite the nonstop handwaving from the Mozilla team about how maintaining seperate native interfaces for the assorted Gecko frontends was supposed to be some sort of impossible herculean task that no reasonable person could be expected to tackle, in the time that it took to produce ONE semi-functional version of Mozilla, Opera Software, a company with not even a tenth of AOLNSCP's resources, produced multiple versions of a fully functional web browser, for all of Mozilla's major target platforms. Not only did they produce, maintain and upgrade native Windows, MacOS and Linux versions of Opera, but they increased their market share, and made money doing it.
"We had no choice but to implement XUL/XPFE" is the Big Lie of the entire Netscape saga. The fact that mozilla team members are still stating it with cultish earnestness suggests not that you all came to a reasoned engineering decision, but that your project management was not merely incompetant, but downright pathological. If 1% market share and the firing of your entire development team isn't enough to convince you that somewhere, somehow, you made the wrong decision, you are simply delusional.
Hopefully, some of the core Mozilla developers and managers will use some of their newly acquired free time to read Fred Brooks' "The Mythical Man-Month." When Brooks talks about the Second-System Effect, he's talking about you.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.