Rest in peace Navigator! March 1st, 2008
With a whacking history and a high importance on the past of technology, today came to it’s end the last product of one of the biggest names in the history of web called Netscape. The melting of Netscape Communications into AOL in late 1998 is considered as one of the greatest acquisitions of the history of Internet, besides, AOL is one of the first and largest companies to get people online, again, today they decided to end support and not to mention further developing one of pioneer browsers ever offered to the community. Stating that:
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.
Nevertheless, AOL continued (until today) to provide support and release new versions of Netscape’s browser under the same name, apparently it came to the point where they reconsidered the roads to the profit, also their current business focus as stated above, finally realized that carrying-on to develop the browser it’s unworthy and promises no real benefit to the company. There are various reasons regarding this, but whatsoever may them be before going further I demand that we hold a minute of silence on my honor to the browser in question. Thank you.
Countdown: 1, 2, 3, 4, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58, 59, 60. Glory!!!
Although I myself wasn’t a user of Netscape Navigator nevertheless I admire what they did back then, their work had a big influence in the wide community of Internet users. Poor Netscape wasn’t able to wisely get over the competitive war of concurrent rival browsers. Plus, even in those moments when Netscape owned its deserved great popularity during the 1995, many other rival companies showed up on the scene with the same intention; delivering it’s own browsers to the customers and beating up the competitors.
One of those was the market monster called Microsoft with it’s rival browser dubbed Internet Explorer (formerly known as MSIE). Obviously, Netscape missed a descent strategy, since they became so famous they stopped inventing new features and shipping almost every version late. Soon enough their market share was experiencing a layoff, Microsoft in the other side conquered the market through it’s monopolistic strategy while shipping Windows OS with IE inside this way achieving it’s goal to “cut off Netscape’s air supply“. This race between Netscape Navigator and MS Internet Explorer in history is known as the Browser War I. Microsoft put an end to it!
As for Netscape basically there was nothing else to wait for but only planing for a withdrawal. In the end of 1997 Netscape’s glory started to run out, couple of months later they made Navigator’s source code open for the public meanwhile initiating the Mozilla project. One year after, there was no hope left for Netscape, which resulted in being bought by and continuing to work that way as a subsidiary of AOL.
Since then, AOL wasn’t providing any fresh features or new inventions via Navigator, also it evolved based on the functional Mozilla’s code, so to further endeavor was how unnecessary even more unworthy.
Jamie Zawinski, one of the first Netscape workers, later the head person of the Mozilla project, explains the situation after Netscape released it’s code to the public and some of the circumstances that caused Netscape to fall apart, highlighting the main drawbacks of what they did wrong back in 1998, also claiming his personal thoughts about AOL.
At this point, I strongly believed that Netscape was no longer capable of shipping products. Netscape’s engineering department had lost the single-minded focus we once had, on shipping something useful and doing it fast. That was no longer happening. Netscape was shipping garbage, and shipping it late.
And daring move or no, this was not going to change: Netscape no longer had the talent, either in engineering or management, to ship quality products. The magic was gone, as the magicians had either moved on to more compelling companies, or were having their voices lost in the din of the crowd, swamped by the mediocrity around them.
The Netscape I cared about was dead.
If you’re still curious to read further and get a closer look or better understanding of Jamie’s opinion, I suggest you read the resignation and postmortem article of his. With other words all this, the death of Netscape to be more concrete had happened nearly ten years ago.
Although, we’ll still be able to download Navigator from the archives and the Netscape portal will continue to function as duplicate portal of the one at AOL.com, nevertheless Netscape will navigate the world wide web no more.
Today, on the Netscape Portal down-right of the page we can notice their recommendation to us for switching to either Firefox or Flock. For me Flock’s interface is a little bit overloaded, hence Firefox is what I recommend too therefore, I think it ends up as the descent solution.
I wonder why Flock is listed first, but anyway, this is a small-time thing, with no importance.
To your informing, currently we are living the the second browser war.
Eventually, Netscape’s rise and fall throughout all this years reminds me of a Phoenix who today came to it’s ultimate decease.
Since they sold their soul to AOL they haven’t really been the same. That’s what happens when you make a contract with the devil.
It’s always sad to see great companies such as Netscape close down.
Some think that they weren’t that great since the AOL purchase in ‘98 some considered them to be the best. Either way, Netscape recommended downloading Firefox so if you were a Netscape user go ahead and DL Firefox, it shall rule the World one day.
Netscape aka Codename Mozilla
AMIIINNNN
Rest in Peace Netscape :S God bless you!
Firefox isn’t bad, but I prefer IE7 much more. I find it simpler and more convenient to use.
Michael, IE7 hasn’t impressed me, not really. One of the obvious drawbacks I could point here is the opening of new tabs, it takes sometimes up to 2 seconds if you’ve got many IE windows open or even tabs, as for in FF a new tab is just an eye blink. As for safety and security I don’t want to discuss about it. I’m looking forward though to IE8 final version, currently running the beta and pretty much is no serious change except more standard compliant. The way I see it Microsoft rushed a little to develop the next version of IE because of this. I believe you’re aware that most people yet use IE6 rather than IE7. In the end of this month I’m preparing a post for the stats I gathered from users visiting my site, and I assure you’ll get astonished when you see that IE7 and Vista both are far away from deserving users trust. Think you agree.
Good catch about that picture used by Dell too, I forgot to say