AOL puts Netscape to sleep

Not a terrible big surprise or disappointment, it was this weekend that AOL picked for the permanent retirement of the once-ubiquitous and now nearly-forgotten Netscape browser. The browser was king in the early days of graphical web browsing, and for a long time was in a position similar to IE a few years back when it had a sweet 90+% market share.

This figure declined over time, primarily due to the arrival of IE. The software is still available for download (as a rehashed version of Firefox basically), but with a lack of security and feature updates it is only a matter of time before it is lost forever. Then again, it has a distant cousin in Firefox that is in some ways carrying on the spirit, and AOL is advising current Netscape users to switch to Firefox or other derivatives thereof. Farewell, Netscape.