Netscape Finally Put Down

Stony Stevenson writes to point out that Netscape has finally reached end of line with the release of version 9.0.0.6. A pop-up will offer users the choice of switching to Firefox, Flock, or remaining with the dead browser, but no new updates will be released. "Nearly 14 years after the once mighty browser made its first desktop appearance as Mosaic Netscape 0.9, its disappearance comes as little surprise. Although Netscape accounted for more than 80 per cent of the browser market in 1995, the arrival of Microsoft's Internet Explorer in the same year brought stiff competition and surpassed Netscape within three years."

Comments

Re:Again?

[timeOday]

Ask Atari or Napster. Old trademarks never die, they just get adopted by successively seedier operations.

Re:Just Deserts

[hey!]

Basically, Netscape was executed the "embrace and extinguish" strategy on Mosaic; although I preferred Mosaic's simplicity, eventually so many web pages depended on Netscape's non-standard (and largely half-assed) extensions people had to use Netscape.

Of course, Mosaic may have been too purist.

In any case, Netscape was taking a page out of Microsoft's book. Microsoft knew exactly what Netscape was up to; they understood that eventually the www wasn't going to be a globally distributed hypertext document, but a software deployment platform. Netscape was on track to owning that platform, and Microsoft, whose business was built around owning the platform everybody used, decided to displace them. Neither party was particularly virtuous here.