Joel on software has a great writeup on IE, Mozilla, MozillaFirebird and the AOL/Microsoft deal. Much food for thought.
Considering that AOL spent $4.2 billion to buy Netscape, you'd think somebody would have noticed that they already have a browser component. Aha, but they don't. The Internet Explorer component is so much easier to embed in applications than Gecko that it probably comes down to the programmers on the AOL client team who just don't want to undergo the pain to embed Gecko. Now, if you're a programmer at AOL working on Mozilla, and you like your job, you might want to think about what it's going to take to make your happy little division actually useful to AOL so you aren't jettisonned. My highest priority would be to implement Mozilla as a COM control that supports the same embedding interfaces as IE, so that the AOL programmers can switch to Gecko. Oh, look! There is one Netscape employee, Adam Lock, working on this! And he says, �be advised that these ActiveX related projects are my own personal efforts and have absolutely nothing to do with my employer. I work on them when and if I have the time.� Yo, Netscape employees! This poor sod Adam Lock is working in his spare time to save all your jobs. Wake up.Go read the full article over here.