AOL Gobbles Netscape, Readies New Version of Communicator

If America Online's recent acquisition of Netscape proves anything, it's that the browser wars are over. The battle now is all about eyeballs.

AOL didn't buy the Web pioneer for its flagship browser. The real prize is Netscape's Netcenter Web site. With the acquisition, AOL now has two competing sites, AOL.com and Netcenter, that both enjoy extremely high traffic. According to Chris Charron, an analyst with Forrester Research, you can expect the two sites to be consolidated.

AOL is also expected to tweak future versions of Navigator so the browser steers users to that consolidated portal as well as to other AOL content, including ICQ (the popular chat service), Digital Cities (the network of locally focused Web sites), and its e-commerce sites. Charron predicts that Navigator will become a "traveling portal," a software tool that makes it easy to access AOL-owned content.

Then there's the little matter of a certain deal between AOL and Microsoft. Under that agreement, Internet Explorer is the default browser for AOL customers; in return, Microsoft ships AOL software with every copy of Windows. Until now, America Online customers had to jump through hoops if they wanted to use Navigator instead of IE. With the Netscape acquisition, AOL may make it easier for users to choose a browser.

Meanwhile, Netscape representatives say work on Communicator 5 continues without delay. Last December, the company released a developers-only preview version of Netscape's new rendering engine (the software shared by the browser and other Communicator modules that translates HTML code into what you see on screen). Code-named Gecko, this lean (it fits on a single floppy disk) and visibly faster engine has been rewritten from the ground up, eliminating the bloat. A public beta version of Communicator/Navigator 5--Gecko plus the user interface--is expected to be available by the second quarter.