Netscape, the once mammoth browser, which roamed the internet freely and widely, has finally been discontinued. AOL has announced that they will stop supporting Netscape browser beginning February 2008. In the heated market of web browsers Netscape could not defend its turf against Internet Explorer and Firefox.

From Nescape Blog … 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.
…
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.

Netscape blog puts everything quite clearly that no more security patches or updates will be provided after February 1st 2008. They advise users to adopt Mozilla Firefox as an alternative to Netscape. In fact, Netscape browsers once dominant 90% market share has currently dwindled down to a meager 0.6% A quick look at traffic pouring in to Netscape’s website sums up the trend quite well.

Click image of graph to zoom.

Source: BBC

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