In a story that pretty much is anticlimatic, the browser wars ended yesterday with the announcement that AOL and Microsoft had agreed to settle their lawsuit and play nice with each other.

While it took longer than expected (by me) for true analysis of the settlement; it was obvious to me from the first story I read.

OK, the whole suit basically arose out of AOL’s (nee Netscape’s) contention that the bundling of IE with Windows was designed to crush Netscape (which, along with a terrible Netscape 4.x release, it did).

The settlement announced yesterday gives AOL seven years of royalty-free access to IE technology.

Huh?

So this means AOL – a content delivery company, not a technology company – will stick with IE.

In other words, bye bye Netscape.

Ironic. The suit that said MS was crushing Netscape was settled with … AOL & MS effectively crushing Netscape.

What a long, strange trip it was….