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AOL, an industry behemoth with 14 million subscribers, will acquire Netscape's Navigator and Communicator software, its e-commerce software, and its Netce
by Scuds 8y ago
AOL, an industry behemoth with 14 million subscribers, will
acquire Netscape's Navigator and Communicator software, its
e-commerce software, and its Netcenter Internet "portal"
site, one of the 10 most-visited sites on the Internet.
The portal was supposed to be the real cash cow, here. Buying eyeballs in the early era of internet ads.
Q: What's a portal?
A: Yes, exactly.
- coralreef 8y agoThey did have an advertising cash cow, just not as a web page. Searching via a form directly embedded in the browser UI would end up being hugely valuable. Google pays Apple ~$9 billion this year to remain the default search engine on Apple products.
- asadotzler 8y agoAOL didn't know it. Browser search deals didn't exist until after AOL shut down Netscape in 2003. The first browser search deals arrived in 2004.
- coralreef 8y agoThat's right, Google was gaining popularity fast but few knew about the profit monster that targetted search advertising was. They IPO'd in 2004.
- carlivar 8y agoAOL was Goto's biggest customer. Later renamed Overture Services. That was well before 2004. Goto/Overture owned the patent on search advertising, which Google eventually settled legal proceedings regarding. And this is how Yahoo, when they bought Overture, got a bunch of Google stock if memory serves. Anyway here is the AOL search advertising deal, or one of them. 2000 and they certainly knew of it before that: https://www.ectnews.com/story/4194.html https://www.ectnews.com/story/4194.html
- tyingq 8y ago>Q: What's a portal? Alexa, Ok Google, App Stores, AMP and it's relationship with carousel widgets, etc.
- JeremyBanks 8y agoThis
- code_duck 8y agoI thought the answer was ‘Facebook without any activity from friends’ or ‘twitter’
- zanny 8y agoTo be fair my grandmothers home page is still mail.aol.com. And its only that because I changed it from aol.com years ago. Its still big money to claim the homepage of most people over 60. Most to my knowledge still don't use smartphones - at least for email, which they do use - which they have a home PC for of some kind to open a browser and go to aol, msn (redirected to outlook), or yahoo.com.
- nvr219 8y agoAs of 2011 the netscape forums were still active. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3396670 https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=33...
- kalleboo 8y agoGoogle feels like a portal now with the number of services they have. They just have a search interface instead of a "a million links on the front page" interface
- kakarot 8y agoIt is, and it's called Facebook.