AOL to End Netscape Support in March

Today, we would've been penning AOL's Netscape's orbituary had it not been for the last minute breather given to the browser on Wednesday this week.

Tom Drapeau, director of Netscape, AOL, who famously stopped development on Netscape in December last year, and who set Feb 1, 2008 as the deadline for ending all support to the browser was the same person who on Wednesday pushed forth the deadline to March 1st this year
The reason he cited is that Netscape and partners need more time to complete work on the tools necessary for users to migrate to Mozilla's Firefox or Flock's Flock browsers.

In a post to the Netscape blog, Drapeau explained that Mozilla, Flock, and AOL are working towards providing tools to ease migration to the recommended Flock and Firefox alternatives.

He also said that for Netscape 9 users, an upgrade would be issued through the browser's integrated update feature to help streamline the process of choosing between alternatives (Firefox and Flock).

But even for Drapeau, Flock is a new recommendation, because in December 2007, he had recommended only Firefox as possible successor to Netscape. Flock is a free browser with social networking features, and is built on Firefox code base. read full story

4 Years Ago Today - Netscape Corporation Killed, Mozilla Foundation Born

4 years ago today, 15 July 2003, AOL Time Warner disbanded Netscape Communications Corporation - the company that sparked the Dot Com Internet boom in the mid-90's with its 1995 IPO. Also 4 years ago today, The Mozilla Foundation was established. mozillaZine reported at the time:

"It has been learned through public and private sources that AOL has cut or will cut the remaining team working on Mozilla in a mass firing and are dismantling what was left of Netscape (they've even pulled the logos off the buildings). Some will remain working on Mozilla during the transition, and will move to other jobs within AOL.

The news isn't all doom and gloom, folks. I've been informed that the number of volunteer Mozilla hackers started eclipsing the number of Netscape hackers last month, and that a number of folks have already been snatched up by other organizations. ".More>>