Netscape draws its last breath
As some of you may already have heard, the Netscape web browser software will cease to be supported as of February 2008. For those of us who can remember a time before the dominance of Internet Explorer (yes, such a time did exist, and I’m not entirely sure if things have improved since then in many ways), Netscape Navigator was probably our first introduction to the Web in all its glory—well, text with a few animated GIFs anyway. I can remember first surfing the Web using Netscape Navigator Gold at the University of Bolton (or Bolton Institute of Higher Education as it was back then), mostly looking for information about the Games Workshop universe. I also built my first web site using the Composer software which came bundled with the browser, and I don’t think it’s pushing the point too far to say that without Netscape I might not have got involved with the Internet as early as I did, or as deeply as I have now.
However, the only surprise in the announcement is that it has taken so long for AOL to realise that Netscape is no longer a viable commodity on the Web. With traffic to Netscape.com dropping like a stone and the rise and rise of Firefox making Navigator somewhat obsolete, it was only a matter of time before Netscape was quietly taken out the back and put down for its own good. Netscape pioneered something which nowadays we all take for granted (web browsing), developed and implemented core technologies such as the Secure Sockets Layer (used in most online transactions) and stood its ground against the anti-competitive practices of Microsoft for many years. It’s a shame to see it finally fall, but all good things must come to an end one day.
I feel as if I’ve just written an obituary. Perhaps I have. Here lies Netscape, October 1994 – December 2007.