America Online says it is creating its own stand-alone Web-browsing software which will also play movies and music, hoping to unwrap it as a free download in early 2005.
The browser core will be Microsoft Internet Explorer; this despite AOL’s having financed the Mozilla Foundation, the makers of the new and rising Firefox browser. AOL director of product management Kerry Pearce-Parkins said using IE as the core of their own coming stand-alone means AOL not asking users to make a “leap of faith.”
Pearce-Parkins said the company’s original approach – providing dialup Internet service that required uniquely installed browsing software that often modified operating systems – no longer made sense.
Pearce-Parkins cited two reasons in particular: Corporations usually prohibit their staffers from installing software, blocking AOL subscribers from accessing AOL during their working days; and, broadband users who get connected through anyone but AOL, meaning they don’t need software packages that include access tools.
AOL plans to make the stand-alone browser include features like tabbed browsing, tools to block email phishing scams, index and search for the user’s own computer files, and a new AOL Media Player based on Winamp technology. The latter, Pearce-Parkins said, would try to integrate software to AOL online radio stations and music store.
