December 28, 2007
Netscape Navigator No More
After over 13 years of existence since the release of Mosaic Netscape 0.9, all development and support for Netscape Navigator will cease after February 1, 2008.
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 reigns fully to Mozilla and encourage Netscape users to adopt Firefox.
And actually, they express support for Firefox:
The Netscape Team fully stands behind the fine work being done by the Mozilla Foundation. We recommend that you download Mozilla Firefox and give it a try. We know you’ll enjoy it!
Source: Netscape Blog