CNN/Netscape Synergies

by Steven Garrity in

I’ve long found CNN.com to be at least as funny as The Onion. The robots that control their homepage “top stories” have a knack for ironic juxtaposition, amusing corrections, and being just plain wacky.

All along, though, there was been an odd little blob of pixels floating in the top right-hand corner of the CNN.com homepage that has remained throughout their various design changes. The Netscape logo/wordmark lives up there, taking up what expect would be some of the most valuable “real-estate” on the web.

CNN.com composite image

Netscape lives on as a “brand” at AOL, but seems to have been diluted from having been one of the most powerful company/product names in the history of technology to being a second-rate dial-up provider and 1999-style web-portal. Today, for example, the Netscape.com homepage includes such scintillating stories as “10 Things Credit Card Companies Don’t Tell You”, “The World’s Top Topless Beaches”, and my favourite, “Sexy Pix: 10 Best Rear Views”. Of course, the “news” on Netscape.com is supplied by CNN. It’s synergastic.

What misguided cross-pollinating-eyeball-stickyfication-content deal led to this prominent positioning of the Netscape logo on CNN.com? I can only imagine that some starry-eyed marketing folk signed a 28-year agreement back in 2001 and thought it was the deal of the century.

 

13 thoughts on “CNN/Netscape Synergies”

  1. I mostly remember Netscape for their 4.0 browser (hello?! that was awesome! 😉 and their calendar.netscape.com application (a calendar, of all things).

    Maybe they get enough hits daily from people who use netscape.com as their homepage to keep it going. Oh… how sad…

  2. I was in the public library here in Charlottetown on Tuesday: they’re still using some antediluvian version of Netscape on their public terminals to allow for use of the web interface to their catalogue. I was shocked at how antique it felt to use.

    I remember when a new version of Netscape came out every month or so — often just before or after a new version of IE — and how eagerly I downloaded them all (at 28.8) in anticipation of their shiny newness.

  4. Wouldn’t it make an interesting paperback?

    NetScape – From browser to doormat. (That’s lame, perhaps someone will suggest a catchy title that’d make ’em fly off the shelves.)

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