It is with great sadness that I post news stating that Netscape will receive no more updates
after February 1, 2008. I've been a long netscape user (since 1995).
"AOL has a long history on the internet, being one of the first
companies to really get people online. Throughout its lifetime, it has
been involved with a number of high profile acquisitions, perhaps the
largest of which was the 1999 acquisition of the Netscape
Communications Corporation. Netscape was known to many as the thought
leader in web browsing, and had developed a number of complementary
pieces of software that allowed for a rich suite of internet tools.
At the time of the acquisition, the Netscape team had begun
working on converting their flagship product – the Netscape
Communicator web suite – into open source software, under a new name:
Mozilla. AOL played a significant role in the launch of the Netscape 6
browser, the first Mozilla-based, Netscape-branded browser that was
released in 2000 and continued to solely fund the development and
marketing efforts of Netscape-branded browsers. In 2003, an independent
foundation was created to support the continued development of the open
source web suite. AOL was a major source of support for the Mozilla
Foundation and the company continued to develop versions of the
Netscape browser based on the work of the foundation.
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. 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.
AOL's focus on transitioning to an ad-supported web business
leaves little room for the size of investment needed to get the
Netscape browser to a point many of its fans expect it to be. Given
AOL's current business focus and the success the Mozilla Foundation has
had in developing critically-acclaimed products, we feel it's the right
time to end development of Netscape branded browsers, hand the reigns
fully to Mozilla and encourage Netscape users to adopt Firefox.
"
Article Link: http://blog.netscape.com/2007/12/28/end-of-support-for-netscape-web-browsers/
