Netscape tried to copy Digg when it came out with its voting system some time ago. As expected, the move failed miserably. Netscape is now a pit of user bots, crap submissions, and a dwindling community.

AOL could have learned a lesson from that move, but it looks like they decided to ignore it. As reported by Tech Crunch, AOL is Beta testing a new portal design for it’s site.

I guess someone over at AOL liked Yahoo’s portal design and figured they might as well copy it and use it as their own.

Yahoo’s design.

AOL’s new design.

Tech Crunch noted:

AOL says they are building best of breed products, not simply copying things from Google, Yahoo and others that are proven to work and porting them to its less cutting-edge audience. In the past year, though, we’ve seen them largely copy digg and then release a new mail product that would have been awesome two years ago but which stacks up poorly to the current versions of Gmail and Yahoo Mail.

Shameful. Is it THAT hard to do something different when you’re a huge corporation?