Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

netscape is dead

Netscape has been dying a slow death for some time, eclipsed by Mozilla and then Firefox. Today brings word that AOL has decided to officially kill it.

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.

(Netscape Blog: “End of Support for Netscape web browsers” - 12/28/2007)

In a way, it’s kind of sad — Netscape was an Old Skool browser mainstay. But I won’t shed too many tears — I wasted far too many back in the day when I still worried about Netscape 4 backwards compatibility. Thankfully, I haven’t had to crack open any version of Netscape in years, and my sanity is all the better for it.

Now if only we can hasten the demise of Internet Explorer 6.

Related articles:

• Information Week: “AOL Kills Netscape’s Future, Leaves Firefox To Battle IE (12/28/07)
• Computerworld: RIP: AOL kills Netscape (12/28/07)
• MacWorld: AOL to end support for Netscape browser (12/28/07)