Microsoft-AOL: How long will it last?
C|Net | at | by Mike
What were we fighting about?
The failure to find an answer to that question likely brought the long and complex feud between Microsoft and AOL Time Warner to an end. Although the software giant and the publishing conglomerate have fought in court and in the marketplace for years, the shifting industry landscape has made the two rivals unlikely allies again.
In many ways, the Microsoft-AOL rivalry is about two companies that tried to take on each other and failed. The duel was set, but someone always got lost on the way to the fight.
When AOL bought Netscape Communications in November 1998, for example, the online service provider was worried about being marginalized on the desktop by Microsoft. At the same time, the combined AOL and Netscape, in conjunction with Sun Microsystems, also planned to create a parallel software universe that would develop servers and software for consumer-electronics devices to challenge Microsoft.