Netscape Navigator No More

Dec 28th, 2007: Quietly announced during the holiday break in a blog post, AOL/Netscape has canceled support for their once popular Navigator web browser. Writing the final chapter in the long battle with rival Microsoft's Internet Explorer, AOL has finally thrown in the towel. Citing decreased engineering resources and the increased popularity of Mozilla's Firefox browser, AOL ends support including security updates for all Netscape browser products effective Feb 1^st 2008.

The Browser Wars

During the infancy of the world wide web, from 1994 to 1997, Netscape Navigator was the only game in town. Unfortunately for Netscape, having 90% of the browser market would not go unnoticed by Microsoft for long. While Netscape was adding functionality to its Internet Suite, including email and a WYSIWYG html editor, Microsoft began re-branding and improving a close cousin of the MOSAIC based browser called Spyglass eventually becoming Internet Explorer (IE). Microsoft released IE for free and started bundling it with their operating system shortly thereafter, inflaming what would become known as the "Browser Wars".

Netscape was ill prepared to fight a war with Microsoft, and try as they might, could not keep up with the seemingly endless resources in Redmond. Eventually, in what amounted to admitting defeat, Netscape released the source code to the Netscape Communicator Suite and set up the Mozilla Foundation to continue maintenance of the open source code base.

In November 1998, after struggling with massive layoffs, Netscape announced they were being acquired in a stock only deal by AOL worth an estimated 4.2 billion dollars. AOL continued support for the Mozilla Foundation.

From the Ashes a FireFox

Many developers working on the Mozilla Foundation found the code they were entrusted with too difficult to maintain or improve. A decision was made to start from a clean slate and develop a new browser, and Firefox was born. Meanwhile at Microsoft, after the defeat of Netscape, IE developed at a glacial pace. Firefox was introduced and heralded for features not present in IE, tabbed browsing, pop up blockers and customizable themes and plug-ins.

Today the browser wars are starting to heat up again with Netscape's descendant Firefox looking to take back the top spot from Internet Explorer. IE 7 has been updated incorporating many of the features found in it's competition including tabbed browsing and pop up blockers.. Current statistics show IE with an estimated 78% market share, which is down considerably in recent years, eaten away in large part by Firefox, currently at 15%. AOL makes it clear which horse they are betting on with this quote from the announcement.

Q: I use Netscape now. Now that Netscape is stopping support, what do I do?
A: The Netscape Team fully stands behind the fine work being done by the Mozilla Foundation. We recommend that you download Mozilla Firefox and give it a try. We know you'll enjoy it!

Firefox can be downloaded from http://en.www.mozilla.com/en/firefox/

Although not mentioned by AOL, users who prefer the integration of the old Communicator suite, the Mozilla SeaMonkey suite might be a better fit. Containing a Web Browser, Email Application, and HTML editor, and IRC chat client, Seamonkey is open source, supported, and free to download at http://www.seamonkey-project.org/.