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AOL Builds New IE-Based Browser
jfruhlinger writes "According to News.com.com.com, America Online is preparing to release a free AOL-branded browser that is 'based on Microsoft's Internet Explorer technology.' The browser will be available to users who don't have AOL as their ISP. I admit that I find this development baffling -- not only does AOL already own a browser, but why on earth would a non-AOL user want to use an AOL-branded version of IE?"
Affirmative! Here's a link from May of 2003. Typical AOL - it took them a year and a half to do something with the technology, and meanwhile the whole browser arena has been turned on it's ear (shameless plug for Firefox)!
Sig? - yeah, whatever.
Until that day arrives, Micro$oft continues to dominate the browser market and owns 90% of it. Hence, AOL, like any other commercial company, will back the de facto standard. Since 90% of the market is Internet Explorer, most web page designers will build their pages to be compatible with Internet Explorer (IE). AOL has an economic motivation to use IE technology as the basis of the new AOL browser.
Similar reasoning applies for office applications. Most programmers prefer to write office applications for Windows instead of MacOS because Windows dominates the market.
Apple missed the boat ... er ... luxury superliner on that "one".
You should read There must be a pony in here somewhere (reviewed by me on Slashdot) to find out AOL's real strategy. Netscape was not bought out for its software technologies.
Netscape was bought out so that the marketing department called up Microsoft and told Microsoft they wanted an AOL icon on each and every desktop with newly-shipped Windows. For like 2 or 3 years Microsoft did exactly that, which brought AOL who knows how many customers that paid for the service. Distributing Netscape-based browser to the AOL subscribers would have no financial benefits for AOL whatsoever.
First I want to say that I hate AOL... Im just trying to figure this out.
But I would think they are *trying* for the best of both worlds...
AOL has better content controll from years of being "family friendly", however they have built their browser into a portal platform. Besides the sheer quantity of suck that AOL brings, one of their worst problems is that its not that easy to just type in a address and go, thats where IE comes in.
I think their stand alone browser might appeal to end users looking for content control without having to install the AOL software on their computer and getting AOL's portal services.
The browser will probably be available to AOL users to provide them more ease of use, while allowing them to still moderate what their children see through the browser.
Again.. I hate AOL, its the devil, but this is the spin I see AOL trying to put on it.
Fire in the hands of the village idiot is no tool, but a weapon of mass destruction
While AOL may own Netscape, they probably found that a lot of sites out there were still IE specific and they couldn't afford the support costs for angry users who couldn't visit them. I'd probably do the same thing if I were running that project.
(Score:-1, Wrong)
A friend's mother recently bought a computer (which it was up to me to get working), and the thing came infested with AOL. Not only was there AOL links everywhere, and AIM running at startup, but the system manufacturer had set every instance of I.E. to an AOL branded Netscape browser. Going to program files -> Internet Explorer revealed, you guessed it, a app to sign up for AOL. The regular address bar in windows had been replaced by an AOL bar, which also fed everything through the AOLified Netscape (the normal address bar had been turned off by default and, once on, was shoved almost entirely off the side of the window).
It was a mess, quite frankly. Welcome to the future.
The ______ Agenda
They do make it as hard as possible to cancel. Not only do they make you dial a special cancellations number, which is not published, and barely staffed, they also put the poor saps that work that particular line in a very tough spot - they are supposed to talk you out of cancelling, and if they cancel too many accounts in a day they will be fired. They get bonuses for NOT cancelling - even though they're answering a line that is for cancellations only, and one where the simple fact that the customer has the number to dial indicates they've already waded through a lot of shit to get there, so they're pretty determined.
I doubt that giving you porn numbers is official policy, but having seen the incredibly disrespectful ways that AOL reps are required to treat customers that want to quit, I wouldn't really be surprised.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
While I don't dispute your analysis, I would offer a "devil's advocate" reason why AOL would put out this IE-based browser. They've been using IE for years and surely they have put a lot of time and, perhaps more importantly, money into adapting it to their purposes.
Some bean counters in their marketing department are going to say, we've invested all this money in this IE-based thing so let's get something out of it, put out an AOL-branded browser just to keep up the name brand recognition. Who knows, perhaps MS paid them to do it.
I believe that they didn't buy Netscape for the browser so much as for the portal and name recognition. Even today, Netscape is a household name and that's worth gold in the strange, illogical world of marketing. Remember also that Netscape open-sourced its browser before it got acquired by AOL (as I recall). AOL didn't need to buy them just to get its hands on the browser source.
We techies may think they have made a dumb mistake but it's worth watching and waiting to see how the market responds. AOL may have fallen greatly since the market boom days, but they're still a marketing force to reckon with. We techies wish they'd adopt the "good guys" like Gecko and Firefox but they have to be convinced they'll make money off it first.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.