Open Directory Called "An Essential Part of the Search Toolkit" and one of the "Most Exceptional and Useful Sites for Web Searchers"

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA, (January 20, 2000) -- Netscape Communications, a subsidiary of America Online (NYSE: AOL), announced that the Netscape Open Directory Project (ODP) has been named to the 1999 "Best of the Net" list by About.com's Guide to Web Search as one of top 10 tools, sites, books and other search related resources of last year.

Praising Open Directory as one of the top tools for searching the Web, About.com's Chris Sherman said in his Guide to Web Search that "the ODP is rapidly becoming a major presence in the world of Web search and should be a part of every serious searcher's arsenal of tools." Citing the Open Directory's ease of use, Sherman continued, "It's a simple, straightforward menu of major topic categories. It's immediately apparent that ODP has a singular purpose: to help you find your way around the Web." A full review of the Open Directory Project can be found at http://websearch.about.com.

"Only a year and a half after its launch, the Open Directory is quickly on its way to becoming the largest and most comprehensive Web directory in cyberspace," said Jim Martin, senior vice president and general manager of Netscape. "The enthusiasm the Open Directory Project has brought to the Web has been overwhelming, and this distinction is just one more example of how the online community has embraced the open source movement."

Netscape's Open Directory Project is the first Internet directory search service built by the Web community at large and is an easy and fast way to find information relevant to users needs. The Open Directory Project empowers the Web community to review and categorize sites based on their area of interest and expertise. The Open Directory Project offers more than 1,200,000 sites in over 190,000 categories from 229 countries in 44 languages, and is available at http://dmoz.org.

The Open Directory Project delivers up-to-date and relevant search results by employing the industry's first freshness dating system delivering less than one-percent dead links. Consumers can easily recommend new sites for the directory and, with more than 21,000 contributors, new sites are quickly reviewed, categorized and added to the directory. Netscape helps facilitate communication in the Open Directory Project community with the newly integrated AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ services.

To promote its continued growth, Netscape makes the Open Directory Project available to anyone under a free use license. More than one hundred leading Internet companies have licensed the directory including AOL, Netscape, Lycos, HotBot, and InfoSpace. In addition, the Open Directory powers the all-new AOL Search(SM) feature on the AOL service and AOL.COM.

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