AOL acquires Netscape in $4.2B deal (1998)

And the two attached sound files are still working. Pretty crazy actually

1998 -- good going bro.

And it's a very prescient comment for a company that wasn't ultimately successful:

...we call the "AOL anywhere strategy" and although predominantly people use personal computers, over the next few years we think a variety of internet devices, some pocket devices, some television devices, will become more and more important and working with Sun and Java as well as other operating systems we want to create the best possible set, kind of a family of these internet devices for AOL and for Netscape.

Of course Java would end up on those "pocket devices" in the form of Android.

I worked with a guy that was at AOL during the sale to TimeWarner. Apparently, in a large layoff round, they gave everyone a check for 6 months of salary and everyone went to a bar. The party was legendary. Lay-off + cash + lots of alcohol = cops + fights + tears.

There's a good Netscape documentary filmed during their last year leading up to the acquisition. When they were working to get the Mozilla source code released.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q7FTjhvZ7Y