The man who didn't let AOL kill Firefox

Tomorrow, Netscape is officially dead: AOL is ending support for the venerable browser. But its offspring, Firefox, is thriving. Both Netscape and Firefox had several brushes with death. In 1998, "Microsoft was driving their monster truck after us and they were about to pin us to the wall," former Netscape software engineer Brendan Eich recently told the San Francisco Chronicle. Before that could happen, however, Netscape execs James Barksdale, Eric Hahn, Mike Homer and cofounder Marc Andreessen decided to open the browser's source code to the community. Behold, Mozilla. But the organization wasn't independent of Netscape owner AOL yet. And here's a shocker, AOL executives nearly killed Mozilla through neglect. So who saved the baby? More »

Ted Leonsis just keeps smiling

Ted Leonsis, the semi-retired AOL executive, is drawing fresh attention for a blog post he wrote last week insisting that all was fine at the Internet giant, citing a raft of lofty numbers. As rumors of new layoffs have bubbled up, commenters on his blog are tearing Leonsis apart for his sunny claims of AOL's health. Leonsis's shiny, happy mantra: AOL has huge traffic. His detractors' retort: Yes, but it's stagnant or declining. Leonsis has yet to respond. Perhaps he's too busy puzzling over buddy Steve Case's perplexing new credit-card startup.

Ted's dead. Who will run AOL?

AOL Vice Chairman Ted Leonsis announced today that on January 1, he'll "retire from active management" while keeping his job title. More »

Loose wires: Ted Leonsis is happier than you

• AOL's Netscape team explains its process of preventing users from gaming the site. Meanwhile, AOL's Weblogs, Inc. team games Netscape competitor Digg. (One Weblogs, Inc. writer tells me that Weblogs, Inc.'s internal mailing list is clogged with requests for Digg/Netscape/Reddit/Del.icio.us votes.) All's fair in love and war, right? [Netscape and Diggforlife]
• Palo Alto, the movie: in which four friends remember the hardships of growing up in the hundredth-highest per-capita-income city in America. [Pictured; Official site via Adam Hahn]
• Best summary of a tech-based musical ever: "I think that Google: The Musical wasn't really about Google. It was more about the zombies that attacked the main characters." [Google Blogoscoped]
• The country of Cameroon finds its true economic calling: making millions off exploiting the ".cm" domain name. [CNET]
• For those who are keeping track, Ted Leonsis creeps ever closer to achieving his entire list of life goals (presumably updated since he posted it in January). Noticably absent is "not sound kind of like a prick by posting already-achieved life goals." [Ted's Take]

AOL overdrawn and quartered: Company will can 5,000 employees

AOL, the sickly siamese twin of Time Warner, announced it will fire 5,000 people by the year's end. Those cuts probably focus on the Access department, which announced yesterday that it will give AOL broadband access for free. (Veteran AOL exec Ted Leonsis doesn't mention the layoffs in his chipper forecast for the company.) More »

Internet Millionaires to African AIDS Babies: Drop dead!

Marketer and pro-blogger advocate Curt Hopkins is a good and reasonable man. Good because he's running the Blogswana project, in which students will help those affected by AIDS in Africa tell the world about their plight. Reasonable because when he asked the following Valley people — people known as good souls with a passion for world-changing technology — for financial support, he expected a few yeses and a few nos. More »

Guest story: Netscape fallout laid out

Today's guest may be in the know, or they may do a great job of faking it. Your call. Here's the e-mail (edited for typos) from a pseudonymous tipster, "The Wall's Ear": More »

Netscape team decimated

An urgent missive from a source near AOL confirms: AOL laid off a good chunk of the Netscape team. But, says the tipster, it's not all about rising exec Jason Calacanis: More »

The Ted Leonsis AIM Fight challenge

While his blog was still an internal corporate one, AOL vice-chairman Ted Leonsis, challenges anyone to beat him in an AIM Fight. For the remedial class: AIM Fight measures how many online AIM users have you on their buddy lists right now (and their buddies, out to three degrees). An AIM Fight score shifts as people log on and off, but Ted Leonsis says he can beat almost anyone, especially during business hours. He whispered his screenname in my ear and I ran him up against a few other highly connected AIMsters. Here are their scores: More »

Remainders: Ted Leonsis exposes his blog

AOL vice chairman Ted Leonsis opens his blog to the public; linking to Jason Calacanis somehow fails to get above Blogebrity's C-list. [Ted's Take via Blogebrity] More »