Netscape Browser to Die a Quiet Death in February 2008

Come February 1, 2008, AOL will cease development on all Netscape browsers.. according to a blog post by Tom Drapeau, AOL's director of the Netscape brand. He recommends that anyone running a Netscape-branded browser make the switch to Mozilla Firefox, the open-source browser upon which the last few versions of Netscape have been based.

"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," he writes. "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."

Originally released in 1994, Netscape Navigator was the underdog contender in the "browser wars" of the late 1990s, when it faced stiff competition from Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. Unfortunately, Netscape, which needed to be downloaded and installed, lagged behind when Microsoft begun including IE on the desktop of every new Windows computer.

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technorati tags: netscape navigator, browser wars, navigator dead