By blunder, I don’t think it was a mistake to have discontinued support for Netscape Navigator. It was a dead product with no perspective whatsoever and one too many change in strategies. But, it was definitely a blunder when you consider that AOL bought Netscape for $4.2 billion. What have they done with the browser? Nothing.
It’s another one in the long line of AOL’s bad business decisions; they’re cashing out big money for companies only to let them die out a couple of years later. Remember SingingFish, another AOL acquisition? Dead and buried. And don’t get me started on poor Netscape portal; just like with Netscape the browser, it was painfully obvious that they have no idea what to do with it. The decision to change it to a Digg clone and then change it back (spinning off the Digg clone into Propeller.com) will likely alienate what little supporters the site has had. And My.Netscape, a poor copy of Netvibes, iGoogle, Pageflakes and other personalized start pages, won’t help matters there. While I’m at it, I might as well mention wow.com - a domain AOL has been sitting on for years, and decided to turn it into a World of Warcraft social network two years too late. Sadly, they changed their mind even on that, as the domain wow.com today redirects to wowinsider.com, a solid but hardly revolutionary WoW news portal.
By the laws of market and nature, a company that makes this many mistakes should go bankrupt.
Great point, Stan. Although I was never a fan of AOL, it’s sad to see a pioneer of the early web falling apart like this. When AOL bought Time Warner, I was beginning to think they were indestructible. I was obviously wrong.
To be honest, I haven’t even checked AOL’s earnings; perhaps they’re doing well. It’s just that there’s a pattern of them being slow and indecisive, and when they do decide on something, it’s usually a bad decision.
It is a sad thing, since at one point in time Netscape was the browser to use. But, once AOL got their hands on it, it started to suck at least for me. I really hate using IE in any version, so I was happy when I found Firefox. I pray AOL doesn’t buy them LOL