I’ve been a fan of the Netscape browser for a long time, since version 4. The main reason? I just plain like the way it looks and functions. I liked it back then on Windows, and I like it now on the Mac, far better than Firefox.

Yes, I’m fully aware that they’re the exact same thing under the hood ;-) The thing is, Firefox on OS X just looks god-awful ugly. So when I saw some screenshots for Netscape, I decided to give it a go.

Well today I happened upon this post from Netscape, announcing the end of support (also called an “end of life” statement) for the long-standing browser.

From the article:

While internal groups within AOL have invested a great deal of time and energy in attempting to revive Netscape Navigator, these efforts have not been successful in gaining market share from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Recently, support for the Netscape browser has been limited to a handful of engineers tasked with creating a skinned version of Firefox with a few extensions.

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 reins fully to Mozilla and encourage Netscape users to adopt Firefox.

While I tip my hat to Microsoft’s masterful play of the competitive “browser wars”, I’m really saddened by this because as we all know, MSIE is a less-than-stellar product. While Microsoft is spending time trying to create its own standards and force everybody else to adopt them, the real web-standards that work are supported on browsers that hold roughly 10-15% of market share (depending on sub-markets - IT for example has a higher adoption rate for Firefox than any other general market segment).

So what’s all this mean?

Netscape hasn’t really been a leader in the browser wars since Firefox entered the scene several years ago, and was dying anyway. Given that the latest version of Netscape is basically Firefox with a few infinitesimal tweaks, Netscape was dead already. This is just the eulogy.

Although I’ll admit - I’m sad to see Netscape go. I’ll miss it.