The world shrugs and moves on.
I meant to bring this up a few days ago, but I've been too busy doing things that matter. AOL has officially pulled the plug on the resurrected Netscape project. This would have been a huge story several years ago, but come on. Those of us who keep up with this sort of thing are not even remotely surprised, and those who don't have no idea why this would ever have been newsworthy. Netscape 6 was a mess, and is really only noteworthy for how sad it made those of us who remember when Netscape far outclassed Internet Explorer, and for ultimately leading to the creation of Phoenix, the browser that would become Firefox. Subsequent versions failed for various reasons, several outside of the Netscape team's control, but the bottom line is that this browser has been irrelevant for years.
The resurrected versions published recently by AOL were rebranded editions Firefox 1.x, loaded down with entirely unnecessary features (which is exactly what doomed Netscape Communicator in the first place) and an ungodly UI that made early versions of Opera look friendly. Even relaunching it as a slimmer, less cluttered version with the old, once beloved Navigator name didn't work, as it was still essentially Firefox with a few extensions and a big, fat pile of links to Netscape and AOL-hosted sites. Basically, no one other than nostalgics cared, and it turns out that's not a very profitable business model.
Phrases like, "end of an era," are showing up in articles about this news, but the truth is the Netscape era ended long ago. Don't get me wrong, I loved Netscape, and I continued to use it for some time after the rest of the world had moved on. But the name "Netscape" is a mirage; its spiritual successors are Firefox and Seamonkey, not the marketing tactic that name became.
I meant to bring this up a few days ago, but I've been too busy doing things that matter. AOL has officially pulled the plug on the resurrected Netscape project. This would have been a huge story several years ago, but come on. Those of us who keep up with this sort of thing are not even remotely surprised, and those who don't have no idea why this would ever have been newsworthy. Netscape 6 was a mess, and is really only noteworthy for how sad it made those of us who remember when Netscape far outclassed Internet Explorer, and for ultimately leading to the creation of Phoenix, the browser that would become Firefox. Subsequent versions failed for various reasons, several outside of the Netscape team's control, but the bottom line is that this browser has been irrelevant for years.
The resurrected versions published recently by AOL were rebranded editions Firefox 1.x, loaded down with entirely unnecessary features (which is exactly what doomed Netscape Communicator in the first place) and an ungodly UI that made early versions of Opera look friendly. Even relaunching it as a slimmer, less cluttered version with the old, once beloved Navigator name didn't work, as it was still essentially Firefox with a few extensions and a big, fat pile of links to Netscape and AOL-hosted sites. Basically, no one other than nostalgics cared, and it turns out that's not a very profitable business model.
Phrases like, "end of an era," are showing up in articles about this news, but the truth is the Netscape era ended long ago. Don't get me wrong, I loved Netscape, and I continued to use it for some time after the rest of the world had moved on. But the name "Netscape" is a mirage; its spiritual successors are Firefox and Seamonkey, not the marketing tactic that name became.
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