In addition to bidding 2007 farewell, AOL will be thrusting the fallen Netscape Browser out the door in 2008. The announcement was made last Friday, and is the culmination of much wasted time, money, and effort invested in Netscape.
Though Microsoft entered the browser game after Netscape had established itself, Internet Explorer quickly caught up and eventually took over the reins. In 1998, about three years after its strong IPO showing, Netscape encountered financial difficulties, mostly thanks to the emergence of Internet Explorer.
In 1999, during the wonderful Internet bubble, AOL purchased Netscape for a prodigal $4.2 billion. The silver lining to this rather large cloud is that Netscape spun off what is now the independent Mozilla Foundation, which has since pumped out the successful open source Firefox Web browser. While Netscape’s browser saw little benefit from Mozilla’s efforts, Firefox gained significant momentum and now holds about 14% of the market, according to TheCounter.com. NetApplications pegs the browser at 16% of the market. Netscape’s market share is insignificant.
In the blog post announcing the impending end of Netscape Navigator, AOL’s director of the Netscape brand, Tom Drapeau, suggested that Netscape users shift over to Firefox. “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 reigns fully to Mozilla and encourage Netscape users to adopt Firefox.”
AOL will continue to offer security patches for Netscape Navigator until February 1, 2008. For users who find it difficult to let go of the browser, Drapeau suggests that they just install a Netscape theme for Firefox.
Source:
http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=13300C81I2K9
Jason Hahn
e: jhahn221@gmail.com
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