As AOL offloaded a billion dollar’s worth of patents to Microsoft, something strange happened: the latter became the owner of Netscape. Remember Netscape? The browser. From 1994. A steal!
AllThingsD’s Peter Kafka was clued in to the acquisition, which is particularly fun given that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer absolutely slaughtered Netscape long ago, but then began to bleed market share to Firefox, Netscape’s distant progeny. Anyway! Funny how things turn out.
So what will MS do with a bunch of crusty patents from 20 years ago? Beats us. Internet Explorer is finally a damn decent browser on its own, so it’s hard to imagine how it could improve with Netscape’s dried out mummy bones. Maybe some sort of mid-1990s filter, to make your favourite sites aged and ugly for nostalgia purposes? [AllThingsD]