PaidContent: AOL Readying Stand-Alone Browser

PaidContent points to reports (and a screenshot) that AOL is testing its own browser, one that has many of the new features that the dead-in-the-water-for-two-years Internet Explorer does not. Since Microsoft won the browser war several years ago, garnering an anti-trust conviction of illegal tying in the process, it has not dedicated serious resources to updating its browser, aside from many necessary security patches.

AOL, owner of Netscape, was the main loser of the browser wars, and even collected an enormous civil settlement from Microsoft for its illegal practices. AOL's new strategy of trying to integrate itself into the web may prove more compatible with pushing a web browser product than its previous "walled garden" strategy, where subscribers to its own network required special software to use the outside web.