The Death of Netscape Navigator
Netscape Navigator is the first commercial web browser. Released in 1994, Navigator started losing its popularity when Internet Explorer was introduced to the web by Microsoft. And get this–free!
AOL has been supporting Netscape for over ten years. Last December 28, 2007, though, AOL officially announced that they will discontinue support to Netscape. Effective February of this yaer, they have cut off Netscape’s life support.
Internal groups inside AOL had invested much time, effort and energy to revive Netscape Navigator. But these attempts have never been successful because Microsoft Internet Explorer holds the biggest market share. And it was thought to be moot to keep the browser alive, given the leaps and bounds of advancement the competition has gained over the years.
So Netscape has turned itself into a portal rather than a browser. For many of us, Netscape’s lifeblood will still live in the open-source browser we know as Mozilla Firefox!