Please observe a moment of silence for the Netscape browser. Netscape Navigator, the browser that launched the commercial Internet in October 1994, will die on February 1, 2008. AOL, which acquired Netscape in November 1998 for $4.2 billion, will announce today that they will discontinue development of the browser, currently on version 9.
In an email exchange yesterday with Tom Drapeau, Director of AOL/Netscape development, he said that only a handful of AOL engineers are still tasked with keeping the browser updated. Most of their efforts have been aimed at creating a Netscape-skinned version of Firefox with the Netscape look and feel.
The team has been unable to gain any significant market share against Microsoft Internet Explorer. In fact, recent surveys suggest that Netscape currently has only 0.6% market share among browsers, compared to IE’s 77.35% and Firefox’s 16.01%. This, of course, is the same browser that once claimed more than 90 percent of the market, sparking the browser wars of the 1990s and the subsequent Microsoft antitrust trial.
Drapeau says AOL’s transition into an ad-supported web business leaves little room for any real effort at maintaining and evolving the Netscape Browser.
He also points to the success of the non-profit Mozilla foundation, which spun off of Netscape in February 1998 with $2 million in funding from Netscape and an additional $300,000 from Mitch Kapor. Firefox, which is part of Mozilla, brought in nearly $70 million in 2006 revenues, mostly from a search deal with Google. In a sense, Netscape lives on through the open-source efforts of Mozilla and Firefox.
Support for existing versions of Netscape Navigator will cease on February 1, 2008. After that, users can visit the UFAQ and the Netscape Community Forum for support.
AOL is also setting up a Netscape Archive where users will be able to download old versions of Netscape, without any support.
I sadly place the first browser I ever used into the TechCrunch DeadPool.
Who cares
That is sad news. I have to say, “Thank goodness for Safari and Firefox”.
I was using Mosaic prior to Netscape Navigator, but I dutifully downloaded all the betas of Navigator, from 0.93 to 1.1 and all the 2.0b1 through 2.0b7 and beyond. AOL ruined this browser, and while it doesn’t make too much sense to get nostalgic about an app, there’s no question we are.
word
I remember your heartfelt goodbye to Lynx.
I downloaded my first female, eh…”dress-optional” picture using Netscape.
Ah, those days!!!…
Netscape and my v.56 modem was all the social interaction I would ever need…
FINALLY!
I never used that browser and its just boring. The only people use that browser are people that didn’t know what IE is.
And they say tech folks aren’t sentimental.
Thanks to the few who have kept Netscape alive this long. There was no market justification for doing this, only a respect for legacy.
Thanks also to the Champagne Urbana gang who sponsored Mosaic’s development and then let it go to be commercialized.
AOL killed almost everything it acquired.
Netscape’s rise and fall symbolizes why it is important for all companies to constantly innovate and litigate when others use unethical tactics to hasten their demise.
Both Internet Explorer and Firefox can after Netscape. Why are they still around?
How did they manage to get popular debuting after one of the most important additions to the beginnings of the World Wide Web? We all know about Microsoft’s controversial tactics – but how does one explain FireFox?!
Why did Netscape not compete successfully? Was there internal politics?
We should all learn from this!
Good bye netscape.
how do you get net scape
Why is this sad? Netscape, well, sucks. I’ve never used it and I’m glad they’re stopping the usage of it.
More browsers equates to more headaches as a web designer. AOL has their own browser already, so there’s really no need to have just another browser.
hate to break it to you but its been dead for a long time already
ah i remember the excitement when netscape 2 came out and it supported frames! and then navigator came out with that golden ship’s wheel…those were the days.
netscape, you served us well.
@12 | it just official died
@6 | Everybody used to use it! / was the firefox (16%) of yesterday
yeah tis sad; it was the first graphical browser for many of us
I remember it taking hours to download the new netscape (With the golden nautical wheel)… haha
Those were the days when you couldn’t buy a .com, IRC was *the* reason for being online, AIM didn’t exist, and geocities was your only option for building your HTML site.
Hooray for the demise of Netscape! Internet Explorer, you’re next to go…
How did Firefox get popular? It became Netscape when AOL was letting Netscape die on the vine. It also has better extensibility and standards support.
The biggest reason is that it got a lot of PR for being faster than IE when it first became noteworthy.
Mosaic was actually the first browser; but I didn’t mourn it’s passing as I won’t Netscapes. I do still harbor some ill-will for Microsoft for the anti-competitive taking of the market.
#8
i remember AOL acquiring icq just to kill it. then they sued yahoo for coming up with yim but they lost.
RIP POS.
well. did you put ur 386 in deadpool too?
File this as another case study of “What happens when large corporations buy up smaller technologies and competitors.”
With Microsoft and Google’s current acquisition rate we’ll be seeing a lot more DeadPool entries in the future. Eating up the competition (i.e. One company “organizing the world’s information”) turns out not to be in our best interests.
Thank goodness. We need to move on.
IT served us well. Thanks for all Netscape and shame to Aol.
I remember buying a boxed copy of netscape to replace the Sprynet Mosaic browser I had. Wow! Thanks for trip down memory lane.
Decision and timing are both right. AOL, after all, is a respectable company (for being right some of the times).
Oh well, it had to come to an end sometime. I sure do remember the days of using NN, and I certainly remember the browser wars of the 90’s! Those were good times indeed.
As one of the stubborn loyal holdouts on Netscape just to keep the legacy living on, (even my tech support guy kept saying, “aol’s gonna take it out, you’ve got to segue NOW!”) I thank them for making it seamless to transfer to Firefox/Thunderbird with ease and compatibility.
Much like my stalwart support of WordPerfect as everyone moved to MS Word, there’s an underdog element that appeals…
Mike, a correction.
You say: “He also points to the success of the non-profit Mozilla foundation, which spun off of Netscape in February 1998 with $2 million in funding from Netscape…”
The Mozilla Foundation was established in July 2003. Source: http://www.mozi...tion/about.html
Bye Bye Netscape! One less browser for web designers to worry about.
I can’t wait for people to stop using IE 6. I would prefer Netscape v 0.1 over that browser any day!
A nostalgia-filled fond farewell to Navigator. It was my browser in the mid to late 90s. In fact, because Netscape communicator /calendar would only sync with a Palm Pilot, I was forced into the not-so-loving arms of Palm. A half dozen Palm PDAs as well as Treos (300, 600, 650 and 700) later, I have finally broken away from Navigator / Palm and am quite happy with Firefox and my BB curve. Thanks Mike for the walk down memory lane.
Good. NS was a p.o.s. back in it’s hayday and it is now.
I use Firefox but IE was my favorite when I first started with the web after I broke out of the Compuserve (another AOL death) closed off service.
Samuel,
I think he was just summarizing the spin-off. AOL spun off Mozilla in 1998, and then Mozilla formed their own foundation in 2003.
AOL did one thing right at least! Thanks for Mozilla guys!
MGZ
I used Mosaic before Netscape Navigator, but in my mind Netscape deserves a place in history for a completely different reason. More than anyone else, Netscape made it OK and easy for vendors to release buggy software. It’s not that vendors hadn’t shipped poor quality software before (MS Word 6 for the Mac comes immediately to mind), but Netscape did several things that no one had previously done.
First, they routinely made Beta versions available to anyone who wanted to try out an early build. Second, they shifted a large share of the testing to users, thereby reducing the cost of their own internal testing and QA effort. Third, they released new versions incrementally with only modest functional enhancements, much as is now done in many open source projects. If memory serves, there were at least 15 different versions of Netscape 4.
Finally, and perhaps most important, Netscape recognized the value of the FTP and HTTP protocols as a way to distribute new versions of software products. Before Netscape, vendors had to create physical media to ship patches and updates of software, with an associated manufacturing and shipping cost. Netscape simply posted the newest version on their website and we, the users, incurred the cost of downloading it.
Today, frequent releases and downloadable updates are the norm for many products and services. Netscape was the vanguard of this trend. I won’t miss Netscape, but they certainly deserve their place in the history of the Internet and of software development practices.
RIP netscape. we all will miss you.
Sad.
Ten years ago I was introduced to the Internet. For the longest time, Nescape WAS the Internet for me. Everything happened inside it. I opened IE a few times back then only to be left confused why I should use it over Netscape.
will miss those constant navigator crashes :p
That’s sad!
I think what’s sad is the people managing Netscape stopped caring or implementing new features. I certainly hope Firefox will pick up where Netscape left off.
Wait – there’s a Netscape browser?
It’s hard to be upset by this. Rather, I think we should rejoice in the “justice” of the marketplace. AOL has a history of making really bad choices with respect to their users – their motivations have been to maximize their near-term profits by foisting Advertising-festooned products on their captive audience. Similarly, they didn’t care to improve their browser platform, but rather turn it into a delivery platform for unwanted software and services.
With a little be of TLC, the Mozilla foundation was able to show that a user-centric effort was able to re-create a viable challenge to the dominant browser (IE), and become the favored browser of the web development community and early-adopters.
I am thrilled to see the consumer-centric “heroes” winning this battle. Perhaps the corporate giants will learn a lesson from this and begin to be more focused on their user base and less driven by their near-term revenue stream.
Thanks for many web surfing memories…
Who works at AOL? Because what once use to be the cornerstone of the American internet experience is now just a graveyard for great ideas. Wasn’t it AOL that first created the online social network before it became Spaced and Booked out; wasn’t it AOL that taught us how to send instant messages before chat and text became popular. And now the great Netscape suffers the same fate that most AOL services face; the graveyard. My suggestion to AOL is to Open Source of your products/services while the bandwagon still has room for a dying company. You once had over 25 million faithful paying customers and now you won’t even release numbers on your once domination of the online experience. Time Warner-AOL reminds me of The Lord of The Rings; locked away in their impenetrable fortress only to watch a single orc blow it up. And that orc just happens to be the execs at AOL.
Oh and someone should start an AOL Deadpool:
Compuserve
ICQ
Netscape
for someone who started out using netscape in its early days, it’s a truly sad thing to see it gone
.
I remember struggling to make things work in netscape navigator using its plugin SDK in my first job . anyway, nice trip down memory lane.
One less browser to deal with
thanks alot AOL….
you killed something that was wonderful.
People would still be using NN if you let it grow.
and WHY did you pay 4.2 billion for it ????
That’s just sad… My first internet connected computer ran Netscape 2.0. IIRC it came as part of the sign-up package (on 3.5″ floppy discs!) from my ISP at the time.
I stopped using Netscape after 4.3 (I think that was the version) was never updated. If it hadn’t been for a little browser, then known as Phoenix (you might know it better by it’s present name, Firefox), I probably would still be stuck using IE.
-A
Ding Dong the witch is dead!
RIP
@Adam: Dude, I’d forgotten about “Phoenix”!
I remember exploring html by opening NN’s wysiwig build app. Anyway, perhaps NN can share stories with Mosaic on the other side? AOL does seem to have an anti-Midas-touch.