[thelist] AOL/netscape was:Netscape 6 loads page twice

Daniel J. Cody djc at five2one.org
Sun Dec 10 16:07:16 CST 2000


Aylard JA (James) wrote:

> 	Sorry, Dan, I just don't buy it. First, AOL has no right to put its
> icon on the Windows desktop; it has to pay for the privilege with some form

It did pay MS a fair amount(i'm sure, because no one ever releases 
numbers for this kind of thing) of money to let OEM's continute to 
include the AOL icon on the desktop. It wasn't AOL that was putting it 
there directly, it was typcially OEMs that AOL had payed money to, or MS 
that they also payed money to, that allowed for the inclusion of the 
icon on the default windows 95/98 desktop.

> of exchange, whether it be in money or in a browser agreement. Secondly, AOL
> is utterly impossible to avoid. In the old days, they cluster-bombed
> diskettes all over the place, and today it's CDs. They were never in a

You can't justify MS's actions here just because AOL's marketing dept. 
was out of control.

> position to shrivel up and die because their icon wasn't on the Windows
> desktop -- and even if they had been, so what? That's business.
> Alternatively, MSN has never done terribly well as an online service,
> despite (IIRC) a monopoly position on the original Windows 95 desktop.

Again, trying to justify MS's actions because their own software package 
had problems is wrong.

I don't think any of us are going to change eachothers minds here, and 
its not what I'm out to do either, so I think contiueing this on list is 
a waste of most peoples time :)

.djc.





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