Netscape Sells Navio To Oracle

Oracle Corp. announced Monday it will buy Navio Communications Inc., a company formed by Netscape Communications Corp. last year to develop Internet software for consumer electronics products.

Oracle plans to use Navio software to aid its effort to develop so-called network computers, which are simple, inexpensive machines for computing functions.

Oracle aims to popularize the computers and other simple devices in homes, businesses and schools as an alternative to more expensive personal computers. The new machines lack the hard disks that PCs use for storing software and instead get programs as needed from the Internet or other computer networks.

Oracle will merge Navio into its existing Network Computer Inc. unit, created last year to sell hardware and software for network computers, to form a new company, NCI. The company will sell products under the NCI brand.

Terms of the deal were not immediately disclosed. But Oracle reportedly will exchange its Network Computer Inc. stock for Navio.

The arrangement could help both Oracle and Netscape as they seek to compete on various fronts against Microsoft Corp., the dominant maker of personal computer software, which is aggressively spreading into all sorts of Internet software products.

Redwood City, Calif.-based Oracle, the largest maker of corporate database software, has been vigorously promoting the network computer as an substitute to computers that rely on operating systems such as Microsoft’s Windows.

The NC devices, to be sold at about $500, are less costly than PCs and pare thousands of dollars a year in maintenance costs.

Netscape is battling Microsoft in the market for software that manages computer networks and for browsers. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company’s Navigator browser is being challenged by Microsoft’s Explorer, which it gives away.