Microsoft eventually paid $750 million to AOL to settle the charges, leading many to assume that AOL was then going to kill off Netscape. Even after the acquisition, AOL continued to use IE as its browser choice, and about the only thing that Netscape was good for was allowing AOL to sue Microsoft for antitrust violations. This seemed odd, even at the time, as AOL had long been using a modified version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer as its browser of choice (even back when IE was awful compared to Netscape). While AOL’s purchase of Time Warner is often considered one of the biggest M&A blunders of all time (and I’d still argue that the problem was in the execution, not the concept), it’s at least worth pointing out that prior to that acquisition, AOL made another huge blunder in purchasing Netscape for over $4 billion dollars in 1998, just as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer was finally taking over Netscape’s marketshare (AOL apparently believes in the buy high, sell low philosophy).
Fri, Dec 28th 2007 12:17pm - Mike Masnick
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