The end of Netscape

For those who started browsing in the late 90s need not introduction of the mighty Netscape. Netscape emerged from another browser called Mosaic which was the incidentally first Graphical web browser (MOSAIC and Netscape had the same Co-author). In the mid-1990s it had a user share of over 90%, which now stands at less than 1%. The downfall of Netscape can be attributed to two reasons - IE and AOL.

Like all monopolists Microsoft started to worry about the success of Netscape, so they decided to exterminate them. It bought the Internet Explorer from Spyglass Inc (they didn't want to waste time developing a new browser). Soon, Microsoft started to ship its IE with Windows as a part of the OS. This was the beginning of the legendary browser wars. Netscape and IE fought against each other in a fierce battle to gain the cyberdom. They released versions after versions, not caring much about fixing the bugs and loopholes. It was like the Edison-Tesla feud in the early 1900s. By 1998, Netscape began to realize that it was a losing battle. It couldn't compete with a large corporation like the Microsoft. Soon, IE became the most dominant web browser and Netscape was sold to AOL for $4.2 billion. Well, AOL is known for screwing things up (Time Warner AOL-read Wiki) and things were no different with Netscape. They kept on releasing versions of the browser that nobody now cared about and the latest is the Netscape Navigator 9.

Few days back I read an article in the BBC that AOL is discontinuing developments for Netscape beginning this February. This means that it is the end of the road of the once mighty Netscape (although, you can consider it to be clinically dead for years now). My first introduction to the world wide web was using a Netscape Navigator, to be more precise on a Netscape Navigator 4. I used to browse in Altavista and Yahoo for hours discovering the endless world of worldwide web (Google hadn't gained popularity at that time). Netscape was far better than the IE version that was bundled with the Windows OS. Soon like the millions of others I also shifted to IE, for no apparent reasons. Nobody knew that new versions of Netscape were actually being released. Microsoft thought it had won the battle, gaining a maximum user share of 96%. Well, as history goes it was not to be.

A new competitor emerged from the ashes of Netscape, the FIREFOX. The firefox had started the second browser wars. With the ease of use and better features like addons, tabbed browsing (borrowed from Opera) it started to win users. The war continues to this day with Firefox 2.0 and Microsoft with IE 7 trying to win higher user share. As of November 2007, Firefox has a market share of almost 17% and growing at a steady rate.

Another new entrant to the browser war is Apple's Safari 3 beta. It is one browser that is worth trying. Everything about Safari is sexy (the interface, the text box, just about everything). It is supposedly twice as fast as IE and is also faster than the Firefox. The only sore point about Safari for windows is that it doesn't support Gmail (for some apparent reason). Otherwise it is a good browser. Opera is another browser worth looking at if you are looking at a replacement for IE and Firefox, although it is more popular as Opera Mini for Mobile devices nowadays.

End Note: This post is a homage to the Netscape Navigator browser. May your soul continue to live on and may your successor Firefox dethrone the stupid Piece Of Shit IE as the most used browser.
P.S.: Safari is sexier than IE, and Firefox.

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