a Firefox developer on the imminent death of Netscape
Here’s a perfect example of how we knew Netscape just wasn’t going to be able to make a great browser. Back when Mozilla was getting ready to ship Mozilla 1.0, the basis for Netscape 7, the Netscape browser team was required to remove the pop-up blocking feature that those same Netscape engineers had developed in Mozilla. The reason? Obviously because AOL and Netscape web properties generated lots of advertising revenue from pop-up advertising and they couldn’t very well ship a product that closed off that revenue stream.
Well, as you can imagine, Mozilla 1.0 shipped with a pop-up blocker and Netscape 7.0 shipped without a pop-up blocker and the tech press destroyed Netscape because it was so transparent what had happened.
In a desperate attempt to counter the negative press, Netscape whipped up a super-fast follow-up version, Netscape 7.0.1. This new version included Mozilla’s pop-up blocker — but here’s the funny (sad) part, they disabled it for AOL/TimeWarner/Netscape web sites.
But here’s the real kicker. You’re gonna love this one. Netscape goes on a bit PR push, “Get the new Netscape 7, Now With Pop-up Blocking!!” Users download and install the all new Netscape7, Now With Pop-up Blocking!! and on first launch it loads up the Netscape.com homepage, which, get ready for it, yep, you guessed correctly, launched pop-ups.
[here]
