Did Netscape just change to AOL Netscape?

Been using Netscape at home for years. As of yesterday, my homepage was Netscape, which had their version of news and blog links and a list of volunteer content managers (if I understand correctly what I was looking at).

Today it’s AOL.

Looking more closely, I see AOL * Netscape in the title block, but it seems to be AOL content, look, and feel.

I’m not especially fond of AOL. I’m also mildly disoriented.

I googled “AOL Netscape Merge” and found many sites from 1998 talking about a proposed merger. Perhaps they’ve been merged for a long time, and only AOL-ized their homepage today?

Anyway, I find it curiously Orwellian that there’s no mention of the change on the page. “We have always been AOL.”

Sailboat

AOL did end up buying Netscape in 1998 (cite). No idea why they just now changed the website.