AOL pulls plug on Netscape browser

The Netscape web browser has long since been eclipsed by its Firefox offshoot but AOL has announced it's formally pulling the plug on its historic software.

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Netscape's Tom Drapeau wrote in a blog: "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."

Support for the Netscape Navigator browser will continue to the 1 February 2008, he said, but AOL is recommending people move to Firefox. The Netscape.com portal will still be available, though, and nostalgia buffs can reskin Firefox with a Netscape look.

Netscape was key to making the world wide web useful and the company's initial public offering is considered the beginning of the dot-com boom. The software raised the prospect of a computing environment that could rival Microsoft Windows.

But Microsoft fought back with Internet Explorer, winning Netscape's dominant market share. Netscape came back in 1998 with a plan to make its browser open-source software, but that didn't immediately improve the company's prospects and Netscape ended up an AOL subsidiary even as the company continued to ship Microsoft's browser. Sun Microsystems bought rights to the Netscape server software.

AOL wasn't successful in trying to resurrect the Netscape browser using a Firefox foundation, Drapeau said.

He said: "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."

Stephen Shankland writes for CNET News.com