RUMORS BOLSTER AOL, NETSCAPE.Byline: Steve Lohr The New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Times Shares of America Online See AOL. Inc. surged 12 percent Monday following reports that the company might form an alliance with Netscape, the leading maker of software for browsing the Internet's World Wide Web. Shares of Netscape Communications Corp. rose 11 percent. Discussions between the companies are preliminary and may not result in an agreement, one person familiar with the talks said. Still, the negotiations are the latest sign of how quickly on-line companies are overhauling their own Internet strategies and scrambling to gain access to industry-standard software. The choices for browsing programs, analysts say, have rapidly winnowed to two real options: Netscape's Navigator program The Navigator Program is a long term NASA project charged with over-seeing all missions related to the detection and characterization of Earth-like planets. It also seeks to further understand how galaxies, stars and planets form. and Microsoft Corp.'s Explorer software Explorer Software is a canadian based independent software vendor founded in 1984. Their flagship product is Contract Manager, a construction accounting software suite. The software is written in ProvideX, a language that is a later development of BASIC. . The on-line companies have moved quickly in recent months to join the two camps - supplanting sup·plant tr.v. sup·plant·ed, sup·plant·ing, sup·plants 1. To usurp the place of, especially through intrigue or underhanded tactics. 2. costly moves to buy or develop browsers of their own. In October, Prodigy Services Co., a joint venture of IBM (International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY, www.ibm.com) The world's largest computer company. IBM's product lines include the S/390 mainframes (zSeries), AS/400 midrange business systems (iSeries), RS/6000 workstations and servers (pSeries), Intel-based servers (xSeries) and Sears, Roebuck & Co., signed a licensing agreement with Netscape. In December, CompuServe, a unit of H&R Block Inc., said it would license Microsoft's Explorer. Nine months earlier, CompuServe paid $100 million to buy Spry Inc., an Internet company with a browser program. And in November 1994, America Online bought a browser company, Booklink Technologies Inc., for $30 million. Increasingly, PC users want industry-standard browsing programs, which give them access to the widest array of Web sites. Currently, Netscape's Navigator holds an estimated 75 percent of the browser market. But though a latecomer late·com·er n. 1. One that arrives late: waited for the latecomers to be seated. 2. A recent arrival, participant, or convert: , Microsoft is a formidable rival and is now accelerating its Internet strategy. "America Online is throwing itself into the winning end of the browser war," said Gary Arlen, president of Arlen Communications Inc., a consulting firm Noun 1. consulting firm - a firm of experts providing professional advice to an organization for a fee consulting company business firm, firm, house - the members of a business organization that owns or operates one or more establishments; "he worked for a in Bethesda, Md. "And America Online has to hurry. If the on-line services lose their footing this year, as more of their customers want to get onto the Internet, they could be dead." The talks between America Online and Netscape were first reported Monday in The Wall Street Journal, which said the discussions dealt mainly with licensing Netscape software and joint marketing efforts. Neither company would comment on the report. Investors welcomed news of the talks, driving up the shares of both companies. America Online, based in Vienna, Va., rose $4.25 a share, to $39.25, in Nasdaq trading; Netscape, based in Mountain View, Calif., advanced $16.375 a share, closing at $161. |
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