Microsoft hurt Netscape, but it was AOL that killed it. At the height of the dotcom bubble, Wall street handed AOL more money than they knew what to do with so AOL bought Netscape. Of course they didn’t have any idea what to do with it (they still kept putting IE on the discs they mailed out to people even when they owned Netscape) and it eventually withered away and died.
The people that ran Netscape correctly predicted it would go this way, but it was a ridiculous amount of money AOL was offering. Luckily they made releasing the code as open source as part of the deal.
No, your revisionist history is wrong. By the time AOL acquired it, Microsoft’s damage had already been done. Its stock price had fallen 50% from its peak value.
The reason AOL didn’t know what to do with Netscape is that it was no longer a viable business due to the interference from Microsoft. Up until Microsoft started giving away Internet Explorer for free as part of the OS, the plan for Netscape was to charge for the browser. That was perfectly normal. People charged for every piece of software up until then. But, when they had to compete with Microsoft’s price of free, they had no real business model anymore.
That’s the whole reason that Microsoft was charged with violating antitrust law. They leveraged their operating system monopoly to enter a new business and destroy their main competitor. Even with their falsifying evidence and Bill Gates lying on the stand, it was an open and shut case.
Microsoft hurt Netscape, but it was AOL that killed it. At the height of the dotcom bubble, Wall street handed AOL more money than they knew what to do with so AOL bought Netscape. Of course they didn’t have any idea what to do with it (they still kept putting IE on the discs they mailed out to people even when they owned Netscape) and it eventually withered away and died.
The people that ran Netscape correctly predicted it would go this way, but it was a ridiculous amount of money AOL was offering. Luckily they made releasing the code as open source as part of the deal.
No, your revisionist history is wrong. By the time AOL acquired it, Microsoft’s damage had already been done. Its stock price had fallen 50% from its peak value.
The reason AOL didn’t know what to do with Netscape is that it was no longer a viable business due to the interference from Microsoft. Up until Microsoft started giving away Internet Explorer for free as part of the OS, the plan for Netscape was to charge for the browser. That was perfectly normal. People charged for every piece of software up until then. But, when they had to compete with Microsoft’s price of free, they had no real business model anymore.
That’s the whole reason that Microsoft was charged with violating antitrust law. They leveraged their operating system monopoly to enter a new business and destroy their main competitor. Even with their falsifying evidence and Bill Gates lying on the stand, it was an open and shut case.