News recently broke that AOL was evaluating the newest version of its Netscape browser for distribution with the company's services. While this is not shocking news, a foot in the door for any non-Microsoft browser means bad news for Microsoft -- and uncertainty for AOL users.

What does this have to do with you and your business? Since you're not likely using AOL for your Internet access, there should be no impact, right? Maybe. It's the direction of the browser market that could be at issue, so there are several reasons why you should follow this issue closely.

AOL's relationship to open source is the first reason to watch its decision-making process as it moves along. The Netscape browser is based upon the Gecko open-source engine. Pundits are still saying that serious software companies don't distribute open-source software. Two years ago, those same pundits were saying that open source had no place in the enterprise. Then NASA dumped Oracle in favor of MySQL, and suddenly there was an enterprise open-source market.

The second reason you should pay attention to this most-recent incident in the MS/AOL love-hate relationship is the growing distrust and dissatisfaction people have with Microsoft where standards are concerned. (See Lori MacVittie's related buzzcut, "Browser Wars, Episode II: Attack of the Moaner.") If AOL lends its support to the Gecko open-source group, people once again will feel that they have a real choice. And they'll be right. With 34 million new users, if AOL's tech staff starts working alongside the volunteers on the Gecko project to improve and expand the browser, Web sites that support only IE will have to go. If AOL attempts to keep improvements to the Gecko engine proprietary, then this risk is reduced. As a result, if you use one of the IE-only Web sites out there, you should watch doubly close.

Security is the third reason you should watch what happens in this case. Have you calculated IE's total cost of ownership lately? If you're applying all the security patches Microsoft puts out, the investment is huge. If you're not applying them, are you sleeping at night? I'm not claiming that Netscape has no security issues -- every piece of software has bugs that can be exploited to breach your security. But Netscape is not tied into your operating system. Therefore, it's arguably less risky and certainly requires less patching.

Ya' Can't Sell What Folks Don't Want

The final reason to follow this situation to the bitter end: the people in your organization (I recently heard them called "Torvaldniks") who do not want Microsoft products to be considered for anything. Just as the Microsoft bigots will claim MS is the right solution to every problem, the Torvaldniks will do the same thing against Microsoft. If AOL moves to Netscape, all the above arguments will come up -- as well as some I haven't thought of or listed. For good measure, here's another that you will probably hear: Netscape runs on multiple platforms, IE does not.

What should you do? Watch and wait. And, if you test your public Web pages against multiple browsers, add Netscape back onto that list -- especially if you removed it when the horrid version 6.0 came out. Release 6.2 is much better. Still, without a weighty decision on AOL's part, it's probably too late for this improvement to help Netscape's browser market share. If you have a public Web site that requires IE, I also suggest that this is one more reason to rethink your policies.