The end of an era: Netscape calls it a day

[Czar]

Although the Netscape web browser hasn't held significant market share in recent years, it is one of the most important pieces of software ever developed. Mosaic and Netscape literally helped to define the way the web would appear and function. Netscape came on the scene 13 years ago as the first commercial web browser and it maintained a majority market share for years; until Microsoft finally figured out how to muscle its way into a dominant role.

Netscape laboured on during a couple of years of 'browser wars' and eventually made their source code available to the open source community through the Mozilla project. Ironically, while Mozilla used this to create the Firefox browser, which is now a huge success, Netscape itself continued to melt away until...

As of the end of this month, the Netscape browser will be no more. AOL will stop developing and supporting for the browser as of February 1. The company is recommending that Netscape fans adopt Firefox as an alternative browser.

Farewell dear Netscape. Thank you for starting something truly amazing...

[Larwee]

I love browsers and have used just almost every browser there ever was and there are a lot more of them than most people realize.

Netscape isn't my primary browser but I sill use it at times. I'm presently using their latest, which is Netscape 9.

Netscape.com will still be around as a portal, but there will be no more Netscape browser. I hate to see it go mostly because it feels a little like the loss of a friend. I used the Mosaic browser and then the Netscape browser after the name change and I still use it at times. But the Netscape share of the browser market is very low and it really is no surprise that AOL has decided to pull the plug.

Here is some more information about all of this as written by Tom Drapeau, who is the lead developer for Netscape. http://blog.netscape.com/2007/12/28/end-of-support-for-netscape-web-browsers/