Speaking of Stupid Lawsuits

Stewart Alsop has a typically excellent column in the new Fortune lambasting AOL's Netscape division for its frivolous lawsuit against Microsoft. An excerpt:

"Why did Netscape fail? Because it was managed with...incompetence. The last major revision of Netscape Communicator, version 6.0, which was introduced in April 2000, was a disaster. It was late to market. A complete rewrite of the original product, it was buggy and slow. Anyone who wanted a reliable browser had to either continue using the old version or switch to Microsoft's Internet Explorer."

"That product was developed before AOL merged with Time Warner, of course. But now here comes the fully merged company making the case that Netscape failed because of unfair competition. Nonsense. Netscape's own management killed the company that defined the excitement--and the value--of the Internet."

You gotta love John Huey, the editorial director of the magazine division of AOL. How many people in his position would allow a column like Alsop's anywhere near a printing plant. Much less prominently feature it in one of the major books in the empire.