Friday, December 28, 2007

So Long and Thanks for all the Fish Netscape - AOL is Killing Netscape Development Feb 2008

TechCrunch - A Sad Milestone: AOL To Discontinue Netscape Browser Development

"Please observe a moment of silence for the Netscape browser. Netscape Navigator, the browser that launched the commercial Internet in October 1994, will die on February 1, 2008. AOL, which acquired Netscape in November 1998 for $4.2 billion, will announce today that they will discontinue development of the browser, currently on version 9.

In an email exchange yesterday with Tom Drapeau, Director of AOL/Netscape development, he said that only a handful of AOL engineers are still tasked with keeping the browser updated. Most of their efforts have been aimed at creating a Netscape-skinned version of Firefox with the Netscape look and feel.

..."

And so "Browser War I" is officially and finally over. Goodbye Netscape. The computing world is a better place because of you.

We've all seen thing coming for a long time, but "knowing" and actually seeing it happen is two different things.

Sigh, this makes me feel old. I remember when you couldn't go wrong by picking Netscape as your web server and for the desktop.

Still out with the old and in with the new I guess... ?

1 comment:

Joe Crawford said...

always new stuff in, the old stuff does seem to leave rather slowly though. :-)

Happy New Year!