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Netscape was doomed when AOL bought it, but MS used their old tricks to damage Netscape. They welded IE to the interface, and had programs that called browsers call IE whether Netscape was the default browser or not. They also were key in establishing the W3C standards, but once they got majority market share, they made IE noncompliant, knowing that most web developers never look at the W3C standards, but simply did trouble shooting by launching IE. This allowed the noncompliant IE to become the standard, and made Netscape noncompliant, even though it was actually the more compliant.

Once they killed Netscape, MS quit innovating on IE, and browsers lounged until Firefox and Safari came out. I think Firefox had tabbed browsing for a couple of years before IE finally released an update.

AOL did pretty well when the net was the wild west, but they thought that they could keep users in an AOL sandbox. I think their losses darned near sunk Time-Warner. Acquiring them was probably the biggest mistake Time-Warner ever made. Anybody remember for a couple of years, the official company name was AOL Time-Warner?

They welded IE to the interface, and had programs that called browsers call IE whether Netscape was the default browser or not. They also were key in establishing the W3C standards, but once they got majority market share, they made IE noncompliant, knowing that most web developers never look at the W3C standards, but simply did trouble shooting by launching IE. This allowed the noncompliant IE to become the standard, and made Netscape noncompliant, even though it was actually the more compliant.

That's much less of a problem than it used to be, and I'm optimistic about open, platform-agnostic standards winning out. I still run across sites that only work properly on IE, and a few that only work on IE/Windows, mostly due to ActiveX; I have a few choice and non-FR-appropriate words for Web designers too lazy to learn the standards and test on multiple browsers and platforms.

They were aided by a public that was mis- and under-informed about how the Internet worked. Millions of people thought Explorer *was* the Internet. So you get folks who know you're "good with computers" asking for help, saying that "my e-mail works, but not my Internet." It was the plethora of IE security holes that finally forced a lot of folks to look at alternative browsers, and the DOJ that made it easier to stop using IE.

AOL did pretty well when the net was the wild west, but they thought that they could keep users in an AOL sandbox.

AOL was born when the Internet was an exotic playground for the few; they were an online service, not an ISP, alongside the likes of Compuserve and Prodigy (I had all three at one point, and beta tested Prodigy for Mac). They did all right at the beginning of the Internet boom, when they had the easiest way to connect and one of the first nationwide banks of local dial-in numbers. But by the end of the '90s, other ISPs and both WIndows and Mac OS had made connecting to the 'Net easy, and much of the country had much faster options available.

I think their losses darned near sunk Time-Warner. Acquiring them was probably the biggest mistake Time-Warner ever made. Anybody remember for a couple of years, the official company name was AOL Time-Warner?

I worked for TW at the time. When the merger went through, I got stock options ... at 45. That's how I know that I was really a dot-com pioneer; worthless stock options are a badge of honor in that club.

AOL pulled a fast one with that merger (and BTW, though it was billed as a "merger," AOL in fact acquired TW). They were selling ads for 10 years out and booking the revenue in the current quarter, tricks like that. They just had to keep up the facade until the TW merger went through. AOL got the gold mine, and TW the shaft.

Yes, AOL shares tanked, but they would have gone to zero had the company not used its bubble money to acquire something with real value. Like them or not, CNN, HBO, Time, and the movie and music properties have a real business model, and AOL didn't. TW had been flailing around for an "Internet strategy" for years (remember Pathfinder?), and they thought the AOL whiz kids had one. They were mistaken.

" Netscape was doomed when AOL bought it, but MS used their old tricks to damage Netscape."

Netscape was a pawn in a much bigger game than most folks here seem to recall.

Early on, Netscape's largest shareholder (a matter of public record, easily verified) was an investment firm called Amerindo. Think: Amer. Indo.

"The name Amerindo came from the fund's first investors, a group of Indonesian Chinese who wanted [the founder, Cuban expatriate Alberto] Vilar to call the firm American Indonesian Singaporean Investment Co. but settled for an abbreviation." --Fortune, October 25, 1999

Amerindo ran a smallish tech-oriented public mutual fund. Most of what you'll find about them on the web will regard that defunct fund, or Vilar's later jailing, and those are not what's interesting. Their main action has always been their private investment fund, that group of Indonesian/Chinese billionaires.

So: yet another initiative of the Clinton Administration just happened to benefit Indonesian/Chinese billionaires, the same species of shadowy moneybags familiar from Chinagate, the Buddhist Temple donations, etc etc. One can easily imagine one of these gentlemen pulling Clinton aside at a White House coffee gathering and whispering that Something Must Be Done about this Microsoft monopoly that was killing their investment in Netscape...

A neat circle, IMHO. As with all else regarding the Clintons, follow the money.