AOL tosses Netscape into the dustbin of history

"AOL is abandoning all work on the Netscape browser and wants users to migrate to Firefox. Not that there are many left: in the mid-1990s, Netscape commanded well over 80 per cent of the internet browser market. But it has been moribund for many years, with share down to one per cent, at best."

"In an obituary on the Netscape blog, lead developer Tom Drapeau threw in the towel today. "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", he wrote.

AOL is stopping support on all Netscape browser versions on Feb 1. Die-hard users can, of course, continue to browse the Net, but this may be unwise, considering there won't be any more security patches. Drapeau recommends that people who like the interface, should download a Netscape skin or 'theme' for their Firefox browsers."

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sorry, firefox and ie7, opera----it never stood a chance

Its a shame really as I have used every version since Netscape Navigator 1.0 . Really tho stopped using after Netscape 4 , too many bugs . Went to Mozilla then FireFox and the rest is history .

wtf netscape has a web browser? i just though it was a third-rate internet provider... :lol:

Like Peat, I used Netscape right from version 1.

Unlike Peat, I stuck with it right up to up to version 7, one of the main reasons being the lack of a credible alternative email client. I also didn't feel that Firebird (as it was then called) was sufficiently developed in the early days.

I made the switch in late 2003 or early 2004, not long before the change of name to Firefox, but retained Netscape for the email side. The release of Thunderbird in December 2004 signalled the end of my use of the Communicator suite.

Anyone who worked with Netscape's Web server will remember how efficient it was. In comparison, Apache hobbles along like a crippled dog. The loss of that side of things really was a shame.

That's a shame. Though I haven't used Netscape for a while, I preferred it to Seamonkey because it was more resource efficient. Hopefully AOL will release the source code but I'm doubting that...