End of the road for Netscape.

AOL has announced the end of the line for it's Netscape web bowser, AOL aquired Netscape Communications Corporation back in 1999. Back in 2000 Netscape had roughly a 20% share of the browser market, today that share has dropped to just 0.06%.

"At the time of the acquisition, the Netscape team had begun working on converting their flagship product - the Netscape Communicator web suite - into open source software, under a new name: Mozilla. AOL played a significant role in the launch of the Netscape 6 browser, the first Mozilla-based, Netscape-branded browser that was released in 2000 and continued to solely fund the development and marketing efforts of Netscape-branded browsers. In 2003, an independent foundation was created to support the continued development of the open source web suite. AOL was a major source of support for the Mozilla Foundation and the company continued to develop versions of the Netscape browser based on the work of the foundation." states Tom Drapeau in his Web 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." continues Tom Drapeau.

"we will no longer support the Netscape web browser as of February 1, 2008" is one of Tom's last comments in the post.

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