Moving quickly to integrate newly acquired Netscape Communications into its operations, America Online (AOL) announced that it will re-organise the combined company into four business units and lay off between 700 and 1,000 employees from a total workforce of 12,000.

The pink slips will be roughly equally divided between AOL and Netscape workers, largely in administrative areas such as human resources and accounting rather than technical jobs like engineering, officials said.

AOL also said that roughly 2,000 people from the new company and partner Sun Microsystems will be assigned to a project to develop electronic commerce.