In the face of Microsoft Corp’s debacle with the US Department of Justice, speculation in The Wall Street Journal that Netscape Communications Corp may be considering selling all or part of itself throws up more questions than answers. The paper suggests Netscape is having serious discussions with America Online Inc, Oracle Corp, Sun Microsystems Inc and IBM Corp about strategic investments or buying the whole company. In the light of its huge fourth quarter losses (CI No 3,335), Netscape may well need extra investment. Oracle may want a slice of Netscape’s Internet action, Sun could be looking to extend into software, and the Java link makes some sense, America Online would certainly be interested in adding Netscape’s home page to its service, and IBM, well that depends how well IBM thinks its own Lotus Domino Web software will do alone, although buying into Netscape would leave it with two major, competing brands. It somehow seems unlikely that any one of these would buy the company lock stock and barrel at present, even if all they really wanted was to go for Microsoft, but they might throw money in. Our own long-standing theory is the Novell Inc would make a good home for Netscape (CI No 3,126), and Novell’s recent decision to collaborate more closely with Netscape (CI No 3,336) doesn’t make that possibility any less likely. Netscape shares responded to the speculation by climbing $2.6875, or nearly 14%, to close at $21.9375 on Thursday.
