[Larwee]

The Netscape browser is a type of sentimental thing to a lot of people with those people being people who used it in its early days and watched as new improvements were made.

Netscape hasn't been much of a factor in the world of browsers for the past several years. But a lot of people who haven't used it in years feel a kind of a loss simply for sentimental reasons. It is an old friend. They don't get together much any longer, but they just hate to see it go.

It started with some college students. Then Netscape became a commercial success and had a lot to do with the dotcom boom of the mid 1990's. Then in 1998, AOL bought Netscape Communications for 4.2 billion dollars.

The netscape.com site will continue as an advertising supported portal. But the Netscape browser will soon be no more.

In a way the Netscape browser will continue to live in the form of Firefox. Netscape had started converting their Communicator suite into open source under the name of Mozilla when they were purchased by AOL. Netscape browsers then became Mozilla based.

Eventually Mozilla became an independent foundation but AOL provided a lot of financial support to the foundation. As most people know, Firefox was developed by Mozilla.

There will be a lot of people who won't miss the Netscape browser because they didn't even know it was around.

The end of the Netscape browser doesn't come as much of a surprise and isn't going to change anything. It is probably more like the passing of an old friend to some people who have known about it for a long time.