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About 4 years ago (note: not 14 years ago) my boss at the time told me "AOL" when I asked him that question. Immediately I thought he was joking, then I thought
by gagege 12y ago
About 4 years ago (note: not 14 years ago) my boss at the time told me "AOL" when I asked him that question. Immediately I thought he was joking, then I thought he must be mistaken and was telling me what his homepage was by accident. But then, to my horror, he showed it to me, and I realized he was completely correct. He was using some ugly purple "modern" version of an AOL browser that I didn't even know existed.
- smacktoward 12y ago> He was using some ugly purple "modern" version of an AOL browser that I didn't even know existed. That was probably Netscape 6 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_6), or Netscape 7 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_%28version_7%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_%28version_7%29), the two versions of Netscape that AOL managed to squeeze out after acquiring them before giving up on the "Netscape" brand entirely and laying all the developers off. The thought back then was that there would be a "Mozilla" brand working on the core browser tech as open source code that was strictly for developers, while AOL would take Mozilla tech and use it to periodically release consumer-facing browsers under the brand "Netscape." This turned out not to work in practice, since the main contributions AOL would make in turning Mozilla into Netscape revolved taking a perfectly useful browser and making it less useful. (An example: Mozilla included a pop-up blocker, but AOL disabled it in their "Netscape" builds. Yes.) AOL/Netscape ought to be a business school case study in how to completely demolish the value of a brand after paying out the nose for it.
- prawn 12y agoInterestingly, AOL is not archived here: http://browsers.evolt.org/ http://browsers.evolt.org/ I do remember it, and WebTV, being two thorns in a web developer's sides back then.