A VIRTUAL MERGER

February 1999
		How will the merger of two of the largest Internet companies change the face of the Web? Two industry experts who differ on the agreement answer your questions.

Return to Forum Introduction What changes will the average computer users see? Will these mergers help or hinder competition? Will AOL be the death of Netscape? Why does AOL still distribute the Microsoft broswer with its software? Will this merger offer competition for Microsoft?

Forrest DeYoung of Aurora, CO asks: In order to provide further alternatives to Microsoft to the consumer is it likely that AOL or Sun might support another operating system to run the Java and AOL? Paul Gillian, editor of Computerworld, responds: One of the benfits of Java is that it runs on many operating systems. In fact, Sun would rather have you run anything but Windows :-). AOL also runs on the Macintosh but since it is a mass market product, it is unlikely to move to other operating systems anytime soon. One possible exception could be Linux, an operating system that is freely available on the Internet and is becoming quite popular. But AOL has not stated any plans in this area that I am aware of.   John C. Dvorak, hi tech writer, responds: I suspect that AOL will eventually support Linux. Sun already supports Solaris.