It appears that we are just about a week away from the changing of the guard on the old Browser Wars. If you look on the netscape.aol.com site, you'll see that the old Netscape Browser support will officially end on March 1, 2008. Even the Netscape Blog advises a switch.

Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) has been making many changes at AOL and its properties over the last two years. In fact, Netscape, AOL, Advertising.com, AIM, and just about everything else has changed. Unfortunately, some change also means the death of certain parts, and that part appears to be Netscape.

If you will remember back to the 1990's, this was its own public company with the "NSCP" ticker that had roughly a 90% market share. People even paid for AOL-acquired Netscape when its market share was steadily declining, and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) ended up paying out roughly $750 million in an antitrust settlement over search and bundling. Netscape is still loaded up on many PC's both on its own and via one of those old AOL access dial-up bundle offerings that used to be included with PC's. Now almost no one uses it. I used to use it exclusively, but those days are long gone. What a difference a decade makes.

Even Linux seller Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) paid money at one point for some of Netscape's security software.

Frankly, Mozilla's Firefox has taken the place of Netscape in today's world and it is now almost an equally-yoked rival to Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) Internet Explorer that has been downloaded onto millions of computers. The business of owning a Web Browser is really nothing more than a project. Sure, there are others like Opera, but most web sites only want to support Explorer and Firefox now. Such is life in a world where free is becoming more and more of an expectation.

Even if it is merely for old times sake, "Farewell, old forgotten friend."

Although AOL has chosen to withdraw continuing development of the Netscape Navigator browser, you'll be able to continue using it indefinitely. Honestly though, who would want to?

Netscape doesn't have much in the way of loyalists in the realm of content suppliers, and web users seem not to care much what browser they use as long as the utility is fast, accurate and simple. I myself switched from Netscape to Firefox during the last year because Navigator was giving me image handling problems and Mozilla Firefox proved to be easier, faster and less burdensome.

Since 1994, Netscape has been a leading-edge web utility. However in recent years, competition from Mozilla Firefox has relentlessly scooped away market share from Netscape and a strong and victorious competitive battle has been waged in the interest of Internet Explorer by Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT). Although Netscape proved to be a strong web utility, in the last few years it lacked any significant improvements in user friendliness. I think that situation is in part due to Microsoft's reluctance to make the Windows operating system play nice with Netscape Navigator. We may take pause to wonder if Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) ever properly applied pressure on Microsoft over the situation ... probably not.

In the big picture, no one is going to miss Netscape Navigator. Yes, some few loyalists might whine for a while and some people with fully loaded hard drives might find their machines maxed out by the downloading of a new browser and the system changes associated with that, but in the end it's all good if it makes the browsing experience faster and easier for the end user. Besides, it might force the sale of some new computers, yes?

Perhaps AOL should just spin off Netscape, take a bit of cash for it and write the rest off. That might be easiest in the long run. When given the fact that AOL will apparently be relegating Netscape to second-tier status, do you really think it'll ever get better?

Stick a fork in it gang, it's done.

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) is trying to convince [subscription required] the Justice Department that it should seek to extend its anti-trust oversight of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). A U.S. District Court agreed in 2002 to keep track of Microsoft's anti-competitive behavior.

Of course that was back in the day when Microsoft was using its Windows operating system to crush companies with competing browsers, like Netscape, and competing media platforms, like RealNetworks (NASDAQ: RNWK).

Google claims that because Microsoft's Vista OS has been found to make it difficult for PCs to run the Google desktop search function, that the government should continue to keep an eye on Redmond. The government's current watchdog role ends in November.

Google is telling the government that it cannot take care of itself. If Microsoft is the originator of future bad behavior, it cannot come back to the courts with a new case. Microsoft is too big and too bad to be controlled.

It is an argument that is too clever by half. Google is not Netscape and it is not RealNetworks. It competes with Microsoft on an even footing. It does not need the help of the federal government to make sure that Vista does it no harm. If its problems persist beyond November, it can always come back with a new complaint. But Microsoft probably gets the message.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) has complained to the Justice Department that Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) new Vista operating system made it difficult for companies to run desktop search functions on the system from the world's largest software company.

Rather than put up a fight over the antitrust implications, Microsoft has made changes to Vista to avoid a battle with both federal and state governments. The Justice Department and seventeen states have agreed to Microsoft's solution to the problem.

Perhaps Microsoft is getting wise in its old age. Or, perhaps it is getting timid. The company has been hit with antitrust actions in Europe and the U.S. over matters that range from using its operating system to give its internet browser advantages over Netscape to harming RealNetworks (NASDAQ: RNWK) by pushing the Window Media Player with its operating system. Microsoft ended up paying billions of dollars in fines and settlements.

The news certainly represents a change for heart. Microsoft has gotten out in front of the problem rather than waiting to fight an accusation brought by a government agency.

For better or worse, this is a new Microsoft.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

The gamble that Time Warner (NYSE:TWX) made with AOL was fairly simple, but risky. Exit the internet service provider business and give up most of that revenue. Offer services like e-mail and access to AOL content for free. Hope that the number of visitors and pageviews grows and that the advertising from these will grow beyond the subscription revenue.

Early numbers from comScore are promising. AOL's unique visitors grew 9% in February to 88.9 million. Visitors to MapQuest grew 12% to 45.1 million. AIM.com visitors were up 7%. Of the major AOL properties, only Netscape was down, by 14%. Netscape moved from being a portal to a user-created content site late last year.

Management at Time Warner has to breathe a sigh of relief. Without a growing audience base, moving advertising revenue up would be nearly impossible. If the future months keep up the trend, the change in model may well pay off.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

With its new strategy of selling advertising to produce revenue, Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX) needed to see some audience increases as AOL users moved to a "free" platform. It appears that the process has begun and most initial results are good.

For the month of November, ComScore figures showed that all TWX sites throughout the Time Warner Network had an increase of unique visitors from 114.2 million unique visitors to 119.7 million. More importantly, the audience for AOL rose 7% to 90.5 million.

This is well above the increase in the audience of all Internet visitors, which was up only 2% year-over-year. Another of AOL's largest properties, MapQuest, had an audience increase of 12% to 45.2 million. AOL Money & Finance moved into first place in the finance category, jumping over Yahoo! Finance this November compared to last. It also moved ahead of MSN Money as the AOL finance property had an audience increase of 10%.

There were some laggards in the Time Warner stable. Netscape, the formal portal and the company's blog site, had an audience drop of 33% compared to November last year, down to 8 million unique visitors. Audience for ICQ, the online community site, dropped 26% to a little over 1 million unique visitors.

The AOL audience-building strategy may well work if the audience numbers keep rising the way they did in November.

Douglas A. McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St. BloggingStocks is produced by AOL Money & Finance in collaboration with AOL subsidiary, Weblogs, Inc.

ComScore is out with its September numbers for Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) and AOL's largest sites. These numbers, along with data from Nielsen/NetRatings and Alexa are used to follow the audience activity at major web properties.

September was not a particularly good month for Time Warner's web properties. The total US audience of unique web users rose 2% from the same month a year ago to 173.4 million. Only one major Time Warner site grew faster than that. Unique visitors to MapQuest were up 10% to 48.6 million.

Unique visitors to the Time Warner network of sites rose 1% to 120.3 million. AOL was down 1% to 88 million. Visitors to the AIM.com and AIM Application site fell 1% to 29.6 million unique visitors.

CNN.com's unique visitors fell 7% to 24.4 million compared to September 2005.

Netscape, in the midst of its transition to a blog site, fell 23% to 9.9 million. Unique visits to the ICQ community site fell 48% to 911,000.

The ComScore data supports the figures from the other two measurement services. If AOL is planning to replace subscription revenue with online advertising dollars, the audience of its web properties is going to have to start growing.

Douglas McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

Nielsen/NetRatings has come out with its September figures for unique visitors to major websites.

The audience for Time Warner Inc's (NYSE: TWX) AOL has not started to show any significant increase since the company began migrating the big web operation from being subscription-based to being advertising supported.

For September, AOL's unique visitors numbered 74.8 million up 3.1% from September 2005. Two properties that help make up the AOL count are AOL Instant Messenger and Moviefone. Traffic to the AIM site dropped 10.3% to 46.2 million unique visitors. Moviefone rose .4% to 8.8 million. In August, Moviefone unique visitors numbered 10.1 million.

Netscape traffic took a large tumble year-over-year as AOL navigates the change of its content from standard web portal fare to "social news" where users vote on stories. Unique visitors to Netscape fell 31.9% to 9.1 million. This figure was up from 8.2 million in August.

CNN unique visitors were down 5.1% to 24.7 million. Visitors to community site ICQ dropped 26.1% to 1.3 million.

If AOL is going to turn a corner, the numbers are going to have to improve a great deal over the balance of the year. But that is not news.

Douglas McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

Several companies evaluate traffic to websites. Alexa, a unit of Amazon.com, has daily updates. Two large audience measurement firms, comScore and NielsenNetratings, produce monthly reports. As would be expected, since the figures from all three are based on samples, the numbers often differ from one another.

ComScore's August report on Time Warner sites breaks traffic down for both the family of sites in total, but also reports traffic at individual sites.

During August, the Time Warner Network, as it is called by comScore, has total unique visitors of 121.6 million. That was up 2% from the previous year. The total Internet audience for the US rose 3% to 173.4 million.

Traffic to AOL rose 1% to 88.9 million. Mapquest traffic rose 12% to 53.2 million, which would appear to make it an unusually successful property for AOL. Traffic to AIM.com, the instant messaging home site fell 2% to 31 million. Traffic to the ICQ chat site fell 27% to 1.3 million

In August, Netscape traffic fell 22% to 10 million as the site makes the transition from being a portal to being a social news site.

At CNN.com, traffic was off 5% to 21.8 million.

What is becoming increasingly clear from this data and information from other audience sources is that Time Warner and AOL have no "hot" web properties like YouTube or MySpace. It does, almost without question, make distribution of old media content via these websites a less attractive proposition. It also draws into question whether AOL can drive audience growth by migrating away from a subscription-based model.

The data over the next few months should tell the tale.

Douglas McIntyre is a partner at 24/7 Wall St.

The year has been tough for tech IPOs, that is, until recently. Some of the blow-out offerings include DivX and Riverbed.

Today there was another tech deal: Shutterfly. True, the stock increased only 3.7%. But, then again, the stock was priced at the top of its $13-$15 range.

Shutterfly was founded in April 1999 and even has a dot-com legend as its Chairman, Jim Clark. He founded Netscape, Healtheon/Web MD Corp, and Silicon Graphics.

As for Shutterfly, it is a Web-based consumer property that allows users to share, print and preserve their pictures. It is also possible to turn these pictures into physical photos and even books.

But unlike many dot-coms, this one has morphed into a real business. Over the past year, sales have been roughly $108 million. In fact, revenues are growing at 30%+.

There are certainly risks. After all, the company has lost money this year. Also, the current valuation is hefty – at 3X revenues.

Yet, with the Christmas season coming, there is probably some momentum left in this stock. But definitely do not expect a smooth ride.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and operates InvestorOffering.com.

Time Warner's largest web properties were primarily flat year-over-previous-year based on new data from Nielsen Netratings.

The AOL brand, which includes all of AOL's channels including AIM and Moviefone, had a total unique audience of 74,530,000. The number was flat with July 2006, and down slightly from last years August figure of 75,721.000.

The AOL Instant Messenger channel continued to fall. Total unique visitors for August 2006 were 45,669,000. This was down from 47,035,000 in July and 53,504,000 last August.

The AOL Moviefone channel also fell slightly from 11,830,000 in August 2005 to 10,070,000 unique visitors this August. The figure for July was 11,904,000.

The audience for the critical CNN brand was steady. August 2006 had 23,559,000 unique visitors. A year ago, the figure was 23,567,000.

At online community site ICQ, the audience continues to drop rapidly. August has 1,243,000 million "uniques." A year ago, the figure was 1,912,000. The July 2006 figure was 1,408,000.

Netscape continued its year-over-year decline, but moved up some from the immediately previous month. With the shift to a social news site, Netscape had a unique visitor count of 8,248,000 in August, down from 13,175,000 a year ago. In July 2006, the site's audience was 7,811,000.

Some net properties continue to have rapid growth. News Corp unit MySpace had 49 million unique visitors in August, up 139% from last year.

The issue of audience growth, particularly at the websites that are part of the AOL unit, remains critical to the company's strategy of migrating from a subscription-based revenue model to one that relies more on internet advertising. Although Time Warner has not stated it in so many words, it would seem essential that the large AOL properties grow at least as fast as major competitors like MSN, Yahoo! and Google to capture their proportionate share of the growing online ad market.

Several weeks ago, I talked to an entrepreneur who received $5 million for his startup. Basically, he is building a payments system to allow websites to sell their content.

I was a bit skeptical. I said: "The problem is that since the Internet became available to the consumer, content has been mostly free. It's become ingrained. Media companies have attempted to sell content, but only a few have been successful, such as the Wall Street Journal."

Well, of course, today AOL announced that it is moving away from the paid content model. Basically, advertisers can't get enough ad inventory and it is propelling the growth of companies like Yahoo and Google.

True, free content is great for consumers. But what about AOL? Well, the fact is that the paid model is not working. It's a loser.

The good news is that AOL has a myriad of quality brands and enormous amounts of traffic. So, while AOL will be sacrificing cash flows in the short run (some say it could be $1 billion), the cost cutting and the hypergrowth in the online ad market should help smoothe the transition.

I talked to Dave Morgan, who is a veteran of the online advertising space, having founded Real Media in 1995. His latest venture is in online behavorial advertising space (the company is TACODA). His take on AOL's moves:

"It's great to see AOL start to focus on the right things - wide open access to content, video, and user-generated content. The question everyone's asking, of course, is whether AOL's recent moves are too little too late to have a real chance to catch Yahoo, Google and MSN, and whether their organization is nimble enough to play in that competitive set, and to play in a Web 2.0 world. They have lots of people that know how to run an ISP and proprietary online environments.

"They don't have lots of people that know pure web advertising and Web 2.0 technologies. However, I do think that what Jason Calcanis's group is doing with the new Netscape is a big step in the right direction. If I were them, I've give him their entire video strategy as well. They don't have much time to waste."

Blogger bio: Tom Taulli is the author of a variety of books, such as the Complete M&A Handbook.

As a writer, I need to submit my work to an editor.  Yes, the editing process can be grueling – but it makes my work better.

In October 2004, two tech veterans -- Jay Adelson and Kevin Rose – had an interesting brainstorm: Why not allow anyone to become an editor?  Thus was born Digg.com. Users submit stories to the site and the community can vote on them. The more diggs, the higher the priority a story gets.

Now, Digg is the third largest tech site, with about 8.5 million unique visitors in May.

Giving power to the community is certainly catching on (it's being called the "social web"). There is YouTube.com for videos; Wikipedia for an evolving encyclodpia; and even Yahoo! is getting involved, such as with its Answers service.  In fact, AOL is using its Netscape.com portal to allow for a Digg-like experience.

This week, Digg launched the new version of its site.  The big move: it is going beyond just tech news.  Now, you can Digg on World and Business, Video, Entertainment, Science and Gaming.

I had a chance to interview Adelson:

Yahoo! is in the midst of a huge overhaul to its site and services. Most notable is yesterday's release of Yahoo Publisher Network's new version and today's expected release of several new features on Yahoo! 360.

Users of Yahoo Publisher Network reacted positively to the changes.  YPN's new front page now includes how-to guides, help pages and demos as well as more reporting features such as information on average revenue per click.

Probably the best addition to the site is the Publisher Services tab which links to many other Yahoo services and products making publishers/users aware of them.  It links to Yahoo domains and registration, hosting and design, to Yahoo Small Business services and to Yahoo Search Marketing, to name a few. The YPN site now also explains how  to submit podcasts, videos and images, how to use APIs from Yahoo! Developer Network and so on.

This comes at a time that when some bloggers point fingers at MSN for hand-crafting search results and at the back drop of AOL releasing the redesigned Netscape web portal that would be similar to social bookmarking sites such as Digg.com but with a slant towards MySpace's social-networking.

Yahoo started the trading day on a positive yet subdued note.  Yahoo rallied strongly with the rest of the market after positive reactions to Bernanke's statements. Yahoo gained $1.17 or 3.95% to close at $30.79.

Cutting through all the buzz about the New Netscape (which we'll continue to talk about, I'm sure), there has also been a lot of news today about social networking and social search. And for some reason the buzz is all centered on your Yahoo!s, your Facebooks, your MySpaces. No one is really including Time Warner in that category.

And yet ... everything Time Warner is really honing in on now, in the company's internet divisions, is about taking advantage of the social nature of its audience (and really: what is AOL but a bunch of people who love to chat with one another via email, IM, and chatrooms?). Netscape's hugely viral strategy is just one more in a long line of highly democratic media, from AIMPages to this very blog before you.

Investors wonder, wonder, wonder. Today the stock ticked up a teensy bit on the news of the New Netscape, 14 cents to $17.11. I know a lot of you will say "no" but ... is this a buying opportunity? Are investors failing to key in to the opportunities Time Warner is seizing? Or is it just that the conglomerate is to big and unwieldy to be managed by the monstrous and multiple personalities at the helm? I keep asking myself, is Time Warner too cheap to pass up?