Rest in peace Netscape

I started using NCSA Mosaic way back in 1994. The first version had been released in November 1993, being the first graphic-oriented browser which reached widespread popularity.

One of the developers, Marc Andreesen, created his own company called Netscape to develop a new browser. The product was called Netscape Navigator and by the end of 1994 it was the de facto standard among web surfers.

Another extinct thing at American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Microsoft licensed the browser Spyglass Mosaic and re-branded it into Internet Explorer 1.0. The so called Browser Wars raged for a few years before Microsoft emerged victorious. Since then Netscape was bought by AOL and the Netscape Communicator suite has been converted into open source under the name of Mozilla. New versions of the Netscape browser have appeared and the last major one was 9.0 released this summer.

However, an official message recently announced that the Netscape browser support will stop on February 1st.

Netscape, I’ve called you bad things in the past but it still saddens me to see you go. Rest in peace.