My former employer AOL isn't doing enough (or anything, really) to improve Netscape.com, it seems. The page has had its flat, boring, uptight corporate look for over two years now (and no; the massively failed, defunct, totally CVS-removed, Flash-based horrific Netscape Comet 2.0/Netcenter didn't count!)
What _is_ AOL doing with its Netscape brand? Internally, they always strived to us employees how important a monetizing brand it was, so I have to wonder why they facelifted AOL.com nicely while Netscape.com languishes.
Here's how AOL operated in some of their divisions:
1) Mock up some really extravagent, one-size-fits-all idea
2) Present said idea to some top executive who has no idea about implementation and time-to-market
3) When said executive receives feasibility objections from top engineers, ignore said engineers and push the timeline
I'm betting that this happened with Netscape.com, too. I don't believe it was Jeremy Liew's fault. From what I saw and my talks with the folks over at CompuServe (who held the Netscape.com "keys",) Jeremy was deeply involved with the Netscape brand, and was truly attempting to inject excitement and vision into a flagging portal.
Posted by stephend at May 27, 2006 11:58 PM