Netscape, Oracle Team to Promote Products

Netscape Communications Corp. and Oracle Corp. have teamed up to promote each other’s products in a move aimed at undercutting Microsoft Corp.’s hold on the software market. Oracle will use only Netscape’s Internet browsing software in its design for an operating system to run the low-cost network computers it is promoting. It will not offer Microsoft’s competing browser, Internet Explorer. In exchange, Netscape will offer Oracle’s data-base software with its programs used by businesses to set up shop and publish on the Internet. Microsoft is introducing its own proposal for a network computer that’s designed to compete with products from Oracle and Sun Microsystems Inc.