AOL Rethinking Netscape.com

Word in the Valley has it that some execs at AOL are thinking of killing the social news system established some time ago at Netscape.com to rip off compete with Digg. Apparently, it hasn’t reached the level of success they believed it would many months back, and think it’d be better simply to direct Netscape.com visitors to the traditional portal originally established at the domain, rather than having to seek out Netscape.AOL.com.

Here’s to hoping the rumors are true. Better yet, how about they just scrap the Netscape division as a whole, eh?

I mean, what’s it done for the parent co. lately anyway? Sure, it’s probably generating some revenue from ads and whatnot, and it’s technically adding to AOL’s visitorship, but what’s keeping AOL from focusing on AOL entirely? You know, start improving the company’s main entity rather than simply (and half-heartedly) trudging along in its current multifaceted, somewhat disjointed form.

I understand that some maintain a soft spot for Netscape and like to think it defied the odds and all that great stuff. Years ago I counted myself among the flock that shunned the empirical force of IE for Navigator.

But what has the AOL subset done for its parent and/or the public lately? By lately, I mean the last several years. Not much, from what I gather. Yes, it’s kinda, sorta maintained its browser, now built on a good chunk of that quality Mozilla code. And the portal is still a default start page/home page for some. But it seems more than ever to be a hodgepodge of dated kitsch that, the more one thinks of it, doesn’t have a much of a purposeful place on the Web today. Its developers can pretty it up all they like, festoon its pages with 3D-like glitz or whathaveyou, but they still won’t have anything inherently new.

Of course, if that changes, if they so happen to release something genuinely different and worthwhile, my impression of Netscape will change. At present, however, it’s wasteful. And what does one do with waste? Toss it away.