Netscape Navigator - Rest In Peace.
After a long haul of 13 years, AOL has finally decided to discontinue any further development and technical support for Netscape Navigator, the first commercial browser on the internet. The support would be ON till 1st Feb ‘08. AOL, the owners of Netscape have decided to develop Netscape as an advertising business instead of the development and maintenance of the software. The software would be available for use, but there would be no further security or software updates. The small pool of users who still use Netscape are advised to download and use Mozilla FireFox instead.
“While internal groups within AOL have invested a great deal of time and energy in attempting to revive Netscape Navigator, these efforts have not been successful in gaining market share from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer,” Netscape Director Tom Drapeau wrote in a blog entry Friday.
The decline of Netscape navigator started in 2002, when Microsoft saw a huge potential in the Web Browser market and started giving out Internet Explore, as a bundled package with the Windows Operating System. Netscape initially developed on a platform called as Mosaic, the internet very first browser, that could display both images and text at the same time. It went through various updates, and the latest version was Netscape 9.0. However the present Netscape version was just a skin of Netscape on the Firefox platform. This showed that AOL had stopped working on development of the software further.
The Web Browser Usage statistics for November 2007 are:
Browser usage in Nov 2007
| November 2007 | Browser Stats |
|---|---|
| Browser | Percentage |
| Internet Explorer 7 | 21.0% |
| Internet Explorer 6 | 33.6% |
| Internet Explorer 5 | 1.6% |
| Firefox | 36.3% |
| Mozilla | 1.2% |
| Safari | 1.8% |
| Opera | 1.8% |
[Stats Source:W3Schools]
As we can see, Netscape isn’t mentioned in the list of browsers being used. The current approximate usage of Netscape Navigator is about 0.6%.
I would actually miss Netscape Navigator, as I currently use it to experiment with all the Firefox add-ons and various tool-bars. If I find them useful, I incorporate them in Firefox. But now that Netscape would stop any further security and software updates, many of the add-ons wouldn’t work with Netscape navigator.
However,AOL has decided to keep the archived version of Netscape Navigator online and Netscape website would continue as a online portal.
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3 Responses to “Netscape Navigator - Rest In Peace.”
By Veerasundar on Dec 30, 2007 | Reply
Its sad that one time leader in web browser market is going to death. But as technology moves on, the tools also should get moved. Lets expect something better from AOL.
By ettle on Jan 21, 2008 | Reply
Maybe the time of netscape is really over. We have to move on and expect for more software birth. What we have today maybe a history tomorrow.
By Jalaj on Feb 4, 2008 | Reply
Thank God! One browser less for browser compatibility testing.