Netscape to be shut down after failing to win users

Netscape, the Web browser once used in 80% of all Internet sessions, will be shut down by AOL after failing to regain market share from Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Netscape users should switch to Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser, Netscape director Tom Drapeau wrote on his blog. America Online Inc. paid $9.8 billion in 1999 for Netscape, which by then had been crippled by Microsoft. The decision ends AOL's almost nine-year effort to revive Netscape, the browser that helped popularize Internet use by making it easier for millions of consumers to log on.

AOL bought Netscape to broaden its revenue sources as its dial-up Web-access service declined. America Online bought Time Warner for $124 billion in 2001. It now forms Time Warner's AOL Web unit. 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. "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.

blog.wired.com :

The browser that started it all is going the way of the dodo. Tom Drapeau, AOL's director of the Netscape brand, announced in a blog post Friday that AOL will cease development on all Netscape web browsers on February 1, 2008. The company will continue to support the current version of the browser, Netscape 9, by releasing patches or security fixes until that date. After February 1, all development will stop. Drapeau 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.

(2007-12-29 21:08:36 SGT) [Tech] Permalink

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