A world that merges Netscape, AOL doesn't make for sweet dreams
Packet Rat R. Fink While visions of sugarplums dance in the heads of GCN readers, the Rat has been having a recurring nightmare. It starts off with the grating buzz of an alarm clock. The windows are covered by blackout curtains, but a glance at the clock reveals that it's 6 p.m. For some reason, it's time to go to work.
Packet Rat While visions of sugarplums dance in the heads of GCN readers, the Rat has been having It starts off with the grating buzz of an alarm clock. The windows are covered by The Rat stumbles to the bathroom, turns on the light and looks in the mirror to This in itself is not the nightmare. The cyberrodent-turned-Nordic golden boy then dresses in a Netscape Mozilla T-shirt and The Rat wonders what awaits him now that AOLs Steve Case is his boss. As he pulls At this point, the Rat wakes up screaming. The whiskered one has had this nightmare every night since he heard about the Megamergers like this usually dont bother the Rat too much. After all, Netscape If the furry one listened to the likes of Ed Zander of Sun Microsystems Inc., he That would be great, except the Rat happens to have had some experience with the Then theres the synergy word, which has been bouncing around since the merger was Most of all, the cyberrodent is worried about what AOL will do to the Netscape browser. Will Messenger announce Youve got mail! in a cheery baritone? Will With all the forebodings that have invaded the wire-biters tiny brain, its Or, of course, it might be because of the fruitcake he ate at the department holiday The Packet Rat once managed networks but now spends his time ferreting out bad
R. Fink
a recurring nightmare.
blackout curtains, but a glance at the clock reveals that its 6 p.m. For some
reason, its time to go to work.
discover that hes turned into Marc Andreessen of Netscape Communications Corp.
jeans, grabs a granola bar and a Jolt cola, and heads for his car. He finds himself
driving rapidly, opposite the rush hour, toward the America Online campus in Vienna, Va.
into the employee parking lot, he has a dark suspicion about his fate at AOL: chat-room
chaperone for 14-year-olds who want to trade Beanie Babies. And Ty Inc. has just released
the hottest Beanie Baby since Gates the GoatPacky the Rat.
AOL-Netscape merger, through which Andreessen is supposed to take on portentously
unspecified duties at AOL.
veep John Paul will still be minding the store, so not much will change right away. But
the Rat just set up a pilot workgroup using Netscape Communicator 4.5 for Linux, and
sudden changes make him a little nervous.
wouldnt be especially worried. Zander portrays Sun as the savior of Netscapes
enterprise business, backing up Netscape software with Suns channel, support and
service.
aforementioned software, channel, support and service.
announced. The cyberrodent assumes the merger mongers mean the synergy created by all
those eyeballs floating across the AOL and Netscape portals to the Internet. Floating
eyeballs also make the Rat nervous, if not a little woozy.
If it does decide to integrate Netscape with AOLs softwarewhich wont
happen if AOL wants to hold onto the Microsoft Windows desktop real estate it got in
exchange for signing up with Microsoft Internet Explorerwill the Rats
Communicator client start talking to him?
the Rat get bombarded with pages from Patty Sue in the Beanie Babies chat room while
hes Web surfing?
no wonder hes having Marc Andreessen nightmares.
party. Candied prunes always do strange things to the Rats head.
packets in cyberspace. E-mail him at rat@gcn.com.