Aol May Cut 750 Positions

Sat., March 20, 1999

From Staff

America Online Inc., moving quickly to swallow its newly acquired Netscape unit, reportedly plans to slash up to 30 percent of the software pioneer’s workforce, or 750 employees.

The cuts in Netscape’s 2,500-workforce could come as soon as next week, TheStreet.com online financial news service reported Friday, citing unnamed sources close to the company. Netscape’s employees mostly work at its Mountain View, Calif. headquarters.

The report comes just two days after AOL, the largest provider of Internet access and online service, completed its $10 billion acquisition to create a new Web giant. Netscape pioneered the first widely used software for retrieving Internet information, but was forced to sell itself after a bruising business assault by software giant Microsoft Corp.

Jim Whitney, a spokesman for Dulles, Va.-based AOL, declined to comment on the report but said the parent will have “more information next week on how the two companies will operate together.”

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Aol May Cut 750 Positions

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