Monday, 10 September 2007

Netscape Gives Up New Designs, Retuns As A News Site

Netscape’s experiment at being a dig like site has come to an end with the AOL property returning as a news site it was almost a year ago....

Netscape’s experiment at being a dig like site has come to an end with the AOL property returning as a news site it was almost a year ago.

Last summer, Netscape revamped itself as a portal where users could submit, vote for and comment upon news articles and stories. Though Netscape was fine in this new format getting the required eyeballs, AOL, its original owners thought it did not bring in required revenues.

“We received some feedback that people really do associate the Netscape brand with providing mainstream news that is editorially controlled. In fact, we specifically heard that our users do have a desire for a social news experience, but simply didn’t expect to find it on Netscape.com,” Netscape officials said.

However when one goes to the new Netscape site, the resemblance to Yahoo.com is clearly visible, including the light blue colour of the portal.

AOL, which has started its first site outside US and Europe in India hoping to cash in on the growing online population, attempted to create a brand name for Netscape by revamping the site, however it failed. AOL too has failed in its former business as a dialup Internet service provider.

Netscape, as a university project, became the world’s first browser, however in the browser fight between Microsoft and Netscape, Microsoft ultimately triumphed.