Bye Bye To Netscape

These days it’s hard to believe that Netscape Navigator was once the dominant browser, with over 90% of the market – in fact you have to be of a certain age not to say “What?” But in the days before Internet Explorer consolidated its position, Netscape was the one.

 

Times change, however, and now Netscape is vanishing slowly into the sunset. As of Saturday its owner, AOL, stopped support for the browser, which now has a share of 0.6%, according to the BBC.

 

The people behind Netscape have recommended that users migrate to either Firefox or Flock, which are both built on the same technologies.

 

The first version of Netscape appeared in 1994, authored by Marc Andreessen, the man behind the Mosaic browser. Shawn Hardin, President and CEO of Flock, recalled for the BBC,

 

"Netscape had a critical role in taking all of these zeros and ones - this very academic and technical environment - and giving it a graphical user interface where an average person could come online and consume information. During its halcyon days it really felt like the internet and Netscape were really the same thing."

 

But then Microsoft began bundling Internet Explorer with Windows, and the eventual end was in sight.