Aol Pulls Plug On Netscape Web Browser Netscape first Victim of the Browser Wars

[Saint_Michael 3]

Well we have our first official victim of the browser wars AOL-Time Warner have finally giving up and will be not supporting the Netscape browser as of Feb 1 2008. Of course the two big reasons for the loss of Netscape is internet explorer and of course firefox, the cousin of Netscape. Of course people will still be able to use it, just it won't be supported after 13 years in the business.

Well we all know for those who been following the browser wars that one day one of the big name browsers were going to call it quits. But the time frame though was a bit longer then i suspect since 2004 (birth of firefox), but again though not to many people switch at first until the spread the firefox campaign started. Of course we all knew that no name browsers would soon be lost and only the big name browsers would stay.

So now that Netscape is out the question will be who is next?

SOURCE

[strange-garden 0]

That is such a shame. I use IE but seeing something like that finish after 13 years is pretty sad.

[jlhaslip 4]

I won't miss it. It is/was a Gecko-based rendering engine, the same one as Firefox uses, but with all the extra junk they added, it was slow and did not search properly. They favoured their own accounts or advertisers too heavily. And the NS browser was slower and bulky, so it means one less browser to check before publishing a site... good. Saves me some work...

[Watermonkey 0]

I haven't used Netscape in years! I'm surprised they lasted this long to be honest! IE is just a virus/malware/spyware/hacker magnet so, for me at least, it's FF or Opera with just the occasional Safari thrown in to make it interesting.

[Saint_Michael 3]

Same here I I stopped using Netscape at version 6 back in the mid to late 90's and stuck with internet explorer since then. I can't remember the reason I stop I think it was the fact when I start designing it was messing with the designs, but either way certain events set up its doom and so here we are today.

[adriantc 0]

I used Netscape for a while before finally settling for Mozilla Firefox. In fact Netscape was my second browser. At first I used, like everybody who has just purchased a computer for the first time, Internet Explorer. Once I heard it was no good I started looking for alternatives. My first contact with Netscape was disappointing, so I switched to Opera (which I used for almost an year). Since then I have been a faithful used of Mozilla Firefox.It's sad when a browser that challenges Microsoft's supremacy goes away, but something good may come out of this. The few people using Netscape will probably switch to another browser (not back to Internet Explorer). So it could be considered a good thing for Opera or Firefox.As for what browser is next? I think in the future we will have only a few browsers with enough users to be considered true browsers. If you ask me the future belongs to Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera and maybe one or two other browsers. The rest can be ignored... If people are to switch for Internet Explorer they will get what their neighbor has, or what their friends have. It is a snowball effect... I hope the great winner of the browser competition will be Mozilla Firefox, but it looks like it will take some time before it overtake Internet Explorer.

Edited December 29, 2007 by adriantc (see edit history)

[Forbez 0]

To be honest, remove all other browsers and just keep Firefox and Internet Explorer. Those are the most used so whats the point of having others? Perhaps AOL one, but thats gets VERY annoying after a while.BUt some of these browers are very demanding for web-designers to design to. Something which works on FF will probably work on IE. But what works on those, won't work for netscape. Which is extremly annoying having to re-code your design.Good riddens.

[gamescoper 0]

well its only ie, ff and opera left. I think ie will be next as it is a complette waste of space for many people and opera is going up as many people who use a wii will have to use the opera browser meaning its between ff and opera, ooh thats gonna be a hot fight with pices of binary flying everywhere

[Saint_Michael 3]

IE won't be going anywhere soon unless Microsoft collapses just because Microsoft is the only reason why these other browsers are here. So if IE goes bye bye then every hacker, cracker, phreaker, and phiser will be going after the others ones, and you could say say IE is the shield of the internet because with that being the only browser being constantly attack its give the others a chance to grow, modify the code and make it stronger. On top of that most major businesses use explorer not for just surfing the net, and on top of that as long as their is a windows operating system there will always be a internet explorer.

[gamescoper 0]

not realy they can remove the browser but there will still be the internet connection DLLs and stuff so IE can go away but it will leave something behind

[jlrr94 0]

Some days ago I saw that AOL is going to end support for Netscape. What do u think about this decision?

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[Arkan 0]

I think it'll be the only "dead" from this war for a certain time. IE is too big and with Microsoft backing it up I can't see IE going to sleep anytime soon. I'd rather think of Opera being in trouble as they failed to convince too many users. They've got that nice password manager (I think it's called WAND) and the tabbed browsing, but that's all. Firefox on the other hand is getting bigger and bigger (I wouldn't be shocked to hear that Google made a bid one day) but it's got a big problem with the amount uf memory it uses.

[Carson 0]

I'm not really surprised to hear this. I think netscape just has too much competition, and it would pointless for them to continue. I think I only actually used it once. Still though, its a shame to see it go after so long.