Let us all keep our heads down and observe few minutes of silence for the departure of Netscape Navigator on 1st February 2008.
Netscape Navigator was one of the earliest internet browser which brought internet to live in 1990s. It was acquired by AOL in 1999 and AOL launched the first Netscape 6 browser, a Mozilla-based, Netscape-branded browser in 2000 and in 2003, an independent team was founded to continue the development of Netscape Communicator web suite.
With the entrance of Firefox into the internet browser market which is largely dominated by Internet Explorer all these while, Firefox managed to gain a hold itself a strong firm place in the market. As what they pointed out in Netscape’s Blog:
While internal groups within AOL have invested a great deal of time and energy in attempting to revive Netscape Navigator, these efforts have not been successful in gaining market share from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Recently, support for the Netscape browser has been limited to a handful of engineers tasked with creating a skinned version of Firefox with a few extensions.
AOL’s focus on transitioning to an ad-supported web business leaves little room for the size of investment needed to get the Netscape browser to a point many of its fans expect it to be. Given AOL’s current business focus and the success the Mozilla Foundation has had in developing critically-acclaimed products, we feel it’s the right time to end development of Netscape branded browsers, hand the reins fully to Mozilla and encourage Netscape users to adopt Firefox.
There you go, AOL says we should just end the use of Netscape and everyone should adopt Firefox. A sad milestone for Netscape indeed, but its legacy and brand will remain in our minds, always.
Starting from 1st February 2008, Netscape Navigator’s development and support will end at version 9, and will also be putting up an archive for all its previous versions for your collection, if you would like to remember back the old days.
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