Wednesday, August 18, 2004

AOL releases Netscape 7.2

AOL releases Netscape 7.2 ""Corporate execs are more comfortable with a known brand name. Even though Mozilla (and FF, Camino, K-Meleon, etc.) are based on the same code, they are not "Netscape". When execs are made aware of the faults and deficiencies of IE, they may think "I wish it was still like the old days, when we could at least choose between IE and Netscape." Lo and behold, here's Netscape 7.2. If you mention Opera or Firefox to them, you'd get blank stares. "Mozilla" sounds like something only a geek could love. "Netscape" sounds like a polished product, like the marketing team actually spent more than 5 seconds to think of it. That's important to execs. Also, some of these execs want an all-in-one solution, not a perceived patchwork of Firefox+Thunderbird+whatever to meet basic internet needs". - Comment on Slashdot.org
"No company has ever done a deal with Microsoft that lasted, they're naive if they think they can". Jonathan Schwartz to Business 2.0, 2002"

Article goes on to recap some of the history etc. and concludes:

"I congratulate the small team at the Netscape remnants for delivering such a quality product, and the management for realizing that they could still keep up the fight with the Vole and take advantage of the never ending flood of MSIE security bugs, to lure users to a safer alternative that still has wide brand recognition and is based on an open source core."

BTW I have a spare (circa 1983) Kaypro CP/M box that I'd be willing to part with for the right price, if you're feeling generally nostalgic about dead brands.

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