Internet riders.(AOL, Netscape and Sun Microsystems get together to create world's most powerful Internet company)(Brief Article)

Economist (US), The, November, 1998

AOL, Netscape and Sun are getting together to create the world's most powerful Internet company. It is a good idea, but it may be tough to implement

GIVEN that Netscape was responsible for popularising the Internet, its chief executive, Jim Barksdale, is remarkably unsentimental about its demise as an independent company. He sees this week's deal by AOL to buy it for $4.2 billion as almost ordained by the evolution of the Internet: all industries, he believes, consolidate as they mature. After all, over a third of his employees are themselves from smaller companies that Netscape had snapped up.

Maybe a philosophical nature is helping him through his grief. Or maybe he draws comfort from the potential he sees in the merger with AOL, the biggest...

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