The browser that helped kick-start the commercial web is to cease development because of lack of users…
“An historic name in software will effectively pass into history in February as AOL discontinues development and active support for the Netscape browser, according to an official blog…”
On Friday, roughly a decade after Netscape’s fortunes started to slide; AOL announced it is finally pulling the plug on the Netscape browser, saying the respected brand that launched…
the commercial Internet in 1994 had little chance of ever regaining market share against its archrival Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
The Web portal, which took over Netscape Navigator in the $4.2 billion acquisition of Netscape Communications in 1999, said development on the browser had recently devolved into a “handful of engineers tasked with creating a skinned version of Firefox with a few extensions.” Firefox is the open source browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation.
“While internal groups within AOL have invested a great deal of time and energy in attempting to revive Netscape Navigator, these efforts has not been successful in gaining market share from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer,” Tom Drapeau, AOL’s director of development, wrote on the Netscape Blog.
With AOL sounding the final death knell for Netscape, AOL’s Drapeau, encourages Netscape’s remaining users to make the move over to the Firefox browser. Nostalgic users can still download old versions of the browser from AOL’s archives, although a better option for the Netscape look is to install a Netscape theme for Firefox.
“After February 1, 2008, AOL will no longer provide updates and support for Netscape, which is often considered the first true mass-market browser…”
AOL will keep delivering security patches for the current version of Netscape until Feb. 1, 2008, after which it will no longer provide active support for any version of the software, according to a Friday entry on The Netscape Blog by Tom Drapeau, lead developer for Netscape.com. The Netscape.com Web site will remain as a general-purpose portal.
While once commanding 90% of the browser market, Netscape Navigator now accounts for less than 1%, and AOL had no interest in spending what it would take to revive the brand. Instead, the company, which was once a subscriber-supported portal, preferred to spend its resources on its transition into an ad-supported Web business. The change left “little room for the size of investment needed to get the Netscape browser to a point many of its fans expect it to be,” Drapeau said.
Instead, AOL said it would leave it to the Mozilla Foundation to do battle against IE. When AOL acquired Netscape, the latter company was working on converting its browser into open source software that was later called Mozilla and became the foundation of Firefox.
The start of the saga dates back to 1994, when a University of Illinois student named Marc Andreessen, co-author of Mosaic, the first popular web browser, founded a company called Netscape Communications, after taking the world by storm with the NCSA Mosaic browser.
“Mosaic was written while Andreessen was a student at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois in 1992.”
For a time, it looked like Netscape would be the dominant player on the Web, as Microsoft seemed to regard the Internet as somewhat irrelevant. But other companies followed its success, notably Microsoft, which bundled its Explorer software with its operating systems.
In 1995, Netscape had a stellar IPO, with shares almost tripling in value on the first day of trading, and the dot-com boom was born. Soon enough though, Microsoft got in the game and released its Internet Explorer browser. By 1997, Microsoft was already up to “Internet Explorer 4,” with significant advances over its three earlier versions.
This culminated in a highly-publicized legal battle, which saw Microsoft accused of anti-competitive behavior.
Although the settlement saw Netscape gain many concessions from Microsoft including the ability to exploit IE code, it has been unable to gain back its market share.
By 1998, not coincidentally, Netscape’s financial results had turned south and the company started laying-off employees. A year later, America Online bought the struggling company for $4.2 billion, in what now looks like an exorbitant waste of money, but it was 1999, after all.
Birth of Mozilla:
At the time of the acquisition, Netscape had started building an open-source version of the browser called “Mozilla,” an effort that in 2003 produced the independent Mozilla Foundation.
In July 2003, AOL helped finance the creation of not-for-profit Mozilla with $2 million and helped at the development of Firefox by providing technical support, employees, equipment and intellectual property such as codes. AOL fired most of its Netscape development employees in 2003.
Before the Foundation’s creation, Drapeau said, “AOL played a significant role in the launch of the Netscape 6 browser, the first Mozilla-based, Netscape-branded browser that was released in 2000 and continued to solely fund the development and marketing efforts of Netscape-branded browsers.”
“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,” Drapeau said.
“With AOL sounding the final death knell for Netscape, Drapeau encourages Netscape’s remaining users to make the move 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 is the right time to end development of Netscape-branded browsers, hand the reins fully to Mozilla, and encourage Netscape users to adopt Firefox,” Drapeau said.
Users will still be able to download old versions of Netscape from an archive, currently located here: (http://browser.netscape.com/downloads/archive/), though they will not be supported by AOL, Drapeau wrote.
While Netscape failed to compete successfully against Internet Explorer, Mozilla has managed to make headway.
Internet Explorer had 84.7 percent of the Web browser market as of June, according to Amsterdam-based OneStat.com, which tracks Internet statistics. Firefox had 12.7 percent.
Microsoft’s tactics in grabbing market share from Netscape Navigator with IE was one of the main issues in the U.S. Department of Justice’s antitrust cast against Microsoft. The software maker was found to have abused its Windows monopoly and was forced to make changes in its business practices.
Apple Inc., which introduced a test version of its Safari Web browser for Microsoft’s Windows in June, has 4.9 percent of the browser market behind Internet Explorer and Firefox, Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs said in June.
“Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington, agreed to pay Time Warner $750 million in May 2003 to settle antitrust charges over Internet browsers.”