Netscape Offline

Old school Internet users cannot but sigh when reminiscing about the good times they had using the now-AOL-owned Netscape. As of the first of March, the legendary Netscape Navigator browser is no longer receiving any kind of support, and its faithful users have been once again asked to consider Firefox and Flock for their online browsing future.

Once the proud choice of over 90 percent of surfers, Navigator saw its market share slip dramatically as users have moved on to the next generations of browsers, such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or Mozilla’s Firefox, leaving it below one percent of the total. "Netscape had a critical role in taking all of these zeros and ones - this very academic and technical environment - and giving it a graphical user interface where an average person could come online and consume information," Shawn Hardin, president of Flock, told Web User. The browser had a good run of 14 years before being left for dead, as Michael Andreessen launched it early in 1994, after co-authoring Mosaic, the very first popular web browser.

Users of Netscape Navigator waved their final good-bye to their favorite browser on February 29th, to see their icon of openness being laid to rest the day after. Sadly, there will be no void left to fill by other similar products, as the market has already been captured by Internet Explorer, who now dominates with a little over 70 percent worldwide. Second in line is Firefox, continuously cutting into Microsoft’s percentage because of the open sourcing community that works on it.

"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," Tom Drapeau wrote on the Netscape blog last December, announcing the browser’s termination.

Originally, the date of discontinuing support was set for February the first, but somehow they pulled through and gave it an extra month to live.

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