AOL, which in 1999 acquired Netscape Communications Corporation, has pulled the plug on Netscape Navigator. AOL will stop supporting Netscape Navigator (all versions) on February 1st, 2008.
A moment of silence, please.
“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. Recently, support for the Netscape browser has been limited to a handful of engineers tasked with creating a skinned version of Firefox with a few extensions,” Tom Drapeau, director of AOL’s Netscape Brand, writes on The Netscape Blog.
“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,” Drapeau writes.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Our first real browser, Netscape Navigator, is a fond memory. Netscape got a really raw deal as Microsoft abused their monopoly position to kill them off by bundling the shiteous Internet Explorer into Windows. But, what’s done is done and, really, Navigator’s been unofficially dead for years. We moved to Safari nearly four years ago (with occasional ongoing Firefox use and some dabbling with Camino, Shiira, Opera, and others for testing and to keep up-to-date).
Gandalf Sez: “Safari is pretty good but have been using FireFox for years, Safari doesn’t give me the range of options I want like blocking all those damned Google analytics (run NoScript and see how much they follow your movements) and those adverts.”
Thanks to Little Snitch 2.x we can watch and stop Google and the other marketing madness mayhem dead in its tracks. I wisely paid for it earlier this year. It is remarkable, as someone posted here previously, what sneaky web calls some site try to pull off. Google is certainly the worst. I definitely don’t recommend Little Snitch to the newbies, technophobic or grannies as dealing with the popping up approval boxes can be daunting unless you understand how useful they can be. Anyway, once you properly train Little Snitch with permanent denials of calls out to marketing URLS you don’t have to worry about it again. Bite me Google et al.
;-D
Microsoft used its monopoly in the OS to leverage IE for free onto almost every desktop in the world.
Netscape was doomed the day the Govt. didn’t stop that and we’ve all spent years suffering in browser hades for the worse.
I agree that OmniWeb is a good browser. But it is a little slower than I’d like now and needs a bit of updating in general. Maybe I’ve been out of the loop lately, but it seems I haven’t heard as much from the OmniGroup as I used to.
Netscape 4.7.9 was the best browser ever in terms of speed for the hardware and OS’s of the time.
Still waiting for that kind of “snappiness” to show its face in Firefox or Safari.
wow…good old ‘nutscrape’ navigator dead…hard to accept but easy to see…
it ruled back when: first mosiac (some of the authors of which went to microsh*t and wrote IE) and then navigator…killed by a piece of crap like IE…it amazing how inferiority wins! How is this possible? Market forces…shows you how truly ignorant and gullible many people are.
Atleast safari and firefox are seriously eating away at the edifice of crap that is IE. We live in hope.
Long live Lynx! First “browser” I used in Fall 1994 on a Mac IIci.
Here is a sad poem I have written for the Netscape Eulogy:
Goodbye Ol’ Netscape, just like Steve Ballmer, you got heavy
You started to crash more than Lindsey Lohan,
And now like OS/2 Warp and Atari 2600 games
You’re in the dead software levy.
We shall miss you Ol’ Friend and shall continue
To bitch slap I.E. as often as possible.
Bitchslapping the ground once for you…
Our “dead homey” Netscape Navigator. Peace Out.
:end poem – the rest is just a rant:
Now if only Safari could learn a bit of functionality from Firefox, then Internet Exploiter would bite the dust once and for all. The world of browsing will be perfect. Just as it was in 1996.
Andrew Hamilton
Video Production Las Vegas
http://www.hiproductions.com
I still use OS 9 on my old PowerMac G3 350 Blue ‘n White, and it only comes with Internet Explorer, which I refuse to use… and the only other browser I can find (that’s free – sorry iCab) is Netscape. I guess I should stockpile some .hqx’s of it then
SBC was nostalgic and kept the name AT&T;. Why doesn’t Mozilla drop the name Firefox and continue their browser as Netscape?
More blood on Safaris beach ball 😀 Now that Safari is on windows it’ll only be the doz fanboys that will be using IE in six months.
Another me sez: More blood on Safaris beach ball 😀 Now that Safari is on windows it’ll only be the doz fanboys that will be using IE in six months.
Me me sez: Yeah, and they’ll all be up to their eyeballs in malware and crashes. IE 7 remains a horrible POS even with all the current updates. Smart business IT pros forbid their users access to IE lately. I’ve been putting my clients on Firefox instead, but will be putting them on Safari for Windows once it is out of beta.
Check out the article here at MDN about increasing Safari market share on the net! Very nice. And it’s being taken away from IE.
(^_^) :-Derek