Building on the already fruitfull relationship of AOL and HP, Hewlett Packard announced Monday that they will be pre-installing the Netscape browser onto all new machines.
Back in 1999 Netscape licensed their custom Internet portal service to the giant OEM. Today"s announcement is the first distribution deal since the 1990s when the browser wars were strong.
Customer of HP will be able to choose Netscape as their default browser during computer setup. Icons for the browser, which will be customized with links to HP and Compaq Web sites, will appear in the Windows Start menu.
HP hopes the inbuilt anti-phishing and spyware tools will enhance users experiences with the web and their HP machines. Netscape 8 is based on Firefox, but lets users switch between both the Firefox and IE browser engines. Many Web sites have been built to work with IE, so supporting both the Firefox and IE engines maximizes compatibility.
According to news.com Nick Labosky, a director at HP, said in a statement "We specifically chose the Netscape browser because it has the added advantage of hosting numerous security features while also having the ability to run both the Triton (IE) and Gecko (Firefox) rendering engines."