Looks like it's the end of ALL Netscape browsers according to Tom Drapeau, AOL's director of the Netscape brand, End of Support for Netscape web browsers blog post.
It is very sad..nostalgic sad from my view because it was the first browser I used, until FF replaced it.
It's even sadder as a commentary, on how Microsoft bullies its way into markets, killing the innovators (I'm not talking about AOL) and removing choice from consumers.
Thankfully we still have FF (and yes Poi, Opera as well) - hopefully the handful of people who were still using NS8,9, will realize they were using a skinned FF and come over to FF - or will they move to the dark side?
SleepingWolf: There's also Safari ... although some have issues with Apple ( calling them at least as evil as MicroSoft ). I doubt Netscape users will join the dark side of the web. Most people using NN9 made a deliberate choice. Which choice most likely correspond to some needs IE is millions years away from fullfiling.
IMHO - AOL is the mark of death for anything they put their branding iron to...
And it didn't help that they purchased Netscape, said they were going to make it their official browser, and continued to put IE on their CD when people signed up.
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-- not necessarily stoned... just beautiful.
Tyberius Prime
Maniac (V) Mad Scientist with Finglongers
From: Germany Insane since: Sep 2001
posted 01-03-2008 19:34
icq still lives, even after it's been aquired by aol...
though you certainly might argue that it wasn't able to hold it's 90% share of the
im market...
I'd say Netscape's demise has very little to do with AOL buying them and very much to do with bad management prior to that but after the acquisition of Collabra (jwz has a whole lot to say about that...) and inability to understand how the web worked, failure to understand who actually used the browser for which reasons and which way they used it, and also with how the web would come to work later.
The story of Netscape is kinda similar to how Ericsson thought cell phones were only for the busy businessmen - not for the average individual for personal use - and got run over by Nokia because they were marketing and designing to the wrong segment of users, despite a huge initial technology lead. Ericsson eventually had to band together with Sony just to get out of the rut of yuppie electronics and into consumer electronics.
Originally Mosaic/Netscape was about dedicated people making a better browser than anybody had seen before. But after a few releases, Netscape the company was aiming at the corporate market, in groupware, and relied on sales of their products, servers and browser. Microsoft beat them at making actually working groupware and also beat them in not relying on sales of the browser product, which was a gigantic portion of the Netscape business. If Netscape had been more flexible and realised that users are the single most important factor for a web company on either side of the server-client divide, they could have managed. What Netscape really would have needed is a company like Google to come rescue them by freeing their source of income from being sales of a product competing with another product that was free of charge and bundled, but Google wasn't there yet.
AOL bought a ship that already had massive holes in the hull... they desperately poured money into Netscape trying to save it, which is a large part of why Mozilla is a viable alternative today, but they weren't interested in Netscape for the browser, and never had any larger interest in designing for non-customer users. Which is all a modern browsers is about, really. Users. All web developers should be glad for AOL buying Netscape. It's what paid the salary for all those developers of a brand new and rather buggy rendering engine for the five years it took between nc4 and nn7. Without AOL funding, mozilla.org would most likely have died when Netscape killed project Grommit (nn5) in favour of project Raptor (nn6), powered by Gecko.
quote: liorean said:
I'd say Netscape's demise has very little to do with AOL buying them and very much to do with bad management prior to that but after the acquisition of Collabra (jwz has a whole lot to say about that...)
Yeah right - it has nothing to do with IE becoming free and fully integrated as part of the OS.
I guess you missed the anti-trust trial that followed as well:
quote:Microsoft used its operating system monopoly power to dominate the browser market
? Microsoft used its clout in the software market to maintain its monopoly in operating systems
? Microsoft bundled its browser into its operating system to try to force Netscape out of the browser market
quote: SleepingWolf said:Yeah right - it has nothing to do with IE becoming free and fully integrated as part of the OS. I guess you missed the anti-trust trial that followed as well
I never said Microsoft wasn't instrumental in killing Netscape.
However, how much does that have to do with the AOL acquisition of Netscape? Netscape was badly managed way before AOL bought the company. That's my point. AOL just let the company continue the same way they already had been going, it hardly touched Netscape management and didn't present any demands of results from Netscape.
quote: liorean said:
I never said Microsoft wasn't instrumental in killing Netscape.However, how much does that have to do with the AOL acquisition of Netscape? Netscape was badly managed way before AOL bought the company. That's my point. AOL just let the company continue the same way they already had been going, it hardly touched Netscape management and didn't present any demands of results from Netscape.-- var Liorean = { abode: "http://codingforums.com/", profile: "http://codingforums.com/member.php?u=5798"};
Yes, agreed - but you're projecting that NS would have gone belly up on its own. We don't know that for sure, could navigator have made a course correction?
In fact NS started its decline when Navigator was still a much better browser than IE. The NS decline coincides sharply with MS giving its own browser (IE) away for free and bundling it with the OS. [Microsoft was also accused of bullying hardware makers not to distribute NetScape -they were found innocent of course.]
Today, if OEM PCs were shipping with *quality* browsers, they wouldn't be shipping with IE 7 would they? So an inferior browser ships along with the latest hardware technology because MS cleverly bundled IE with their lousy OS's - as they did their instant messenger and their media player and their version of Photoshop (MS Paint).
My point is that no matter how well, or poorly, NS was managed, Microsoft was eventually going to put them out of business because too much was at stake (the Internet) in Bill and Steve's eyes. MS is a monopolistic bully, devoid of innovation (e.g. Vista) and kills innovation in competitors whenever it can get away with it.
Sorry - didn't mean it quite like that. Of course, AOL may not have spelled the end for NS, but they certainly have a knack for buying into dying projects. AOL is king of flogging dead horses. My gripes with AOL are generally personal; that their products are geared toward breeding stupidity in otherwise ill-informed users, and that having an account with AOL is about as secure as hanging your genitalia out of a ground-floor window next to a busy Mosque.
Of course, I'm not saying that AOL didn't sign the death warrant for NS, but their involvement would certainly have made me think twice about using NS. I'm personally more likely to lick the chainpull in a public loo than use AOL for anything.
posted 12-29-2007 01:49
