The End of Netscape – Who Would Have Noticed?
AOL has decided that funding the Netscape browser project was a bit of a waste of time lately and announced that it will shut it down on Feb. 1st. From the announcement on the Netscape blog:
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 reigns fully to Mozilla and encourage Netscape users to adopt Firefox.
Netscape was a dinosaur. It will not be missed, but it will be fondly remembered.
And while the news is headlining Techmeme, I don’t think anybody has spent much time thinking about Netscape lately.
Sure, I remember running Mosaic in the good old days and then switching to Netscape, then IE, then Firefox. Netscape was great at the time, but then it became a bloated piece of carp than I wouldn’t let anywhere near my machines. At this point, I don’t know a single person still using Netscape, even the last professor in my department switched last year (though he still likes to keep his documents on ladled floppy disks instead of folders on his hard-drive…).
The browser wars were a good thing, as they pushed development forward quickly. The net might look different today if it wasn’t for Netscape fighting it out with Microsoft and all the other players.
What does that mean for the browser market today? Not much. Flock is still nice, Opera is still a good niche program, Chris Pirillo probably still likes Maxthon, and the world is in order.
No Comments Yet