IP: More on AOL purchase of Netscape

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1998 19:14:49 -0500
From: James Love <love () cptech org>
Organization: http://www.cptech.org
To: David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>


Dave,

Just a brief note to indicate that we intend to raise objections to the
AOL purchase of Netscape.  Our concerns are partly motivated by the
following:

1. the browser market is highly concentrated, 
2. AOL and Microsoft both have business plans which depend upon
advertising and referrals for electronic commerce, 
3.  both AOL and MS hope to play a role in a more commercial front end
to high speed internet access, and
4.  Netscape's navigator provides a useful tool for ISPs that only
provide plain TCP/IP connectivity, a service which competes directly
against AOL and MSN.

We are also interested in finding out how AOL will deal with Netscape's
plans for support of its browser as an open source product that can be
freely distributed, and which is supported on multiple OS platforms,
including Unix and Linux.

Jamie Love <love () cptech org>


-- 
James Love, Director, Consumer Project on Technology
P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036, v202.386.8030 f202.234.5176
http://www.cptech.org, mailto:love () cptech org

-

_____________________________________________________________________
David Farber         
The Alfred Fitler Moore Professor of Telecommunication Systems
University of Pennsylvania 
Home Page: http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~farber