From BBCNews:
Final goodbye for early web icon
By Jonathan Fildes
Science and technology reporter, BBC NewsA web browser that gave many people their first experience of the web is set to disappear.
Netscape Navigator, now owned by AOL, will no longer be supported after 1 March 2008, the company has said.
In the mid-1990s, as the commercial web began to take off, the browser was used by more than 90% of people online.
Its market share has since slipped to just 0.6% as other browsers such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) and Firefox have eroded its user base.
The company recommends that users upgrade their browser to either Firefox or Flock, which are both built on the same underlying technologies as Navigator.
“I think we represent the hope that was of Netscape,” Mitchell Baker, chair of the Mozilla Foundation which coordinates development of Firefox, told BBC News.
“We have picked up many of the things that Netscape launched but we’ve taken them further in terms of openness and public participation.”
Ms Baker was one of the first employees at Netscape in 1994.
…
Netscape was created by Marc Andreessen who as a student had co-authored Mosaic, the first popular web browser.
His company Netscape Communications Corporation released the first version in 1994.
According to Shawn Hardin, President and CEO of Flock, Netscape played an important role in making the internet “a relevant mass market phenomenon”.
“Netscape had a critical role in taking all of these zeros and ones – this very academic and technical environment – and giving it a graphical user interface where an average person could come online and consume information,” he told BBC News.
“During its halcyon days it really felt like the internet and Netscape were really the same thing,” he said.
…
“While internal groups within AOL have invested a great deal of time and energy in attempting to revive Netscape Navigator, these efforts have not been successful in gaining market share from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer,” said Tom Drapeau on the Netscape blog last year, when the demise of the browser was first announced.
For the past week Netscape users have been shown a message alerting them to the end of support for the browser.
“Given AOL’s current business focus, support for Netscape browsers will be discontinued as of March 1st, 2008,” the message reads.
It then suggests users upgrade to either Flock or Firefox.
Linkage:
Firefox
Flock, The Social Web Browser