<This is a load of horse manure. Both browsers are totally free, and available easily over the Internet. Any dipwad can load and use whichever one he wants to use unless he is so totally butt-ignorant that he shouldn't be allowed near anything containing electricity in the first place.

I personally use both Netscape 4.7 and IE 5.5., usually both at the same time on the same screen. Each has virtues, and each has problems. Some sites work better on IE (like this one,) while others work better on Netscape. I prefer Netscape's bookmark organization and the mail program.

Netscape used to rule the browser market, back when Microsoft was totally blindsided by the Internet. Had they not sat on their thumbs (their browser software got no better, while Microsoft was playing catchup. Hey, I was there.) Netscape would still be occupying the offices down the street from me instead of Verisign.

AOL is pissing into the wind, hoping for something that will give it a few bucks.

BTW, AOL is blowing Microsoft's ISP service out of the water, but I'm not hearing any complaints about that:

AOL, AT&T, Microsoft Network, and several others have been the only dominant players in the fragmented US consumer ISP market to date, according to the report "The US Consumer Internet Market: Who's Got Share? Who's Got Momentum?", and their numbers are already slipping. At the end of 1997, AOL owned nearly 24.3 percent of the US consumer market, but by the first quarter of 1999, its share dropped to 21.5 percent. MSN owned 3.6 percent of the total US consumer ISP market in 1997. In the first quarter of 1999, with only 1.5 percent, MSN now retains only one half of its previous share, according to the report.

Of course, the fact that AOL and MSN both sat at the bottom of recent consumer satisfaction surveys can't be helping much either. Someone is likely to come in and eat both their lunches.