A Brief History

AOL has a long history on the internet, being one of the first companies to really get people online. Throughout its lifetime, it has been involved with a number of high profile acquisitions, perhaps the largest of which was the 1999 acquisition of the Netscape Communications Corporation. Netscape was known to many as the thought leader in web browsing, and had developed a number of complementary pieces of software that allowed for a rich suite of internet tools.

At the time of the acquisition, the Netscape team had begun working on converting their flagship product - the Netscape Communicator web suite - into open source software, under a new name: Mozilla. AOL played a significant role in the launch of the Netscape 6 browser, the first Mozilla-based, Netscape-branded browser that was released in 2000 and continued to solely fund the development and marketing efforts of Netscape-branded browsers. In 2003, an independent foundation was created to support the continued development of the open source web suite. AOL was a major source of support for the Mozilla Foundation and the company continued to develop versions of the Netscape browser based on the work of the foundation.

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.

Ode To Netscape

Netscape and its Navigator web browser began helping the world discover the internet in 1995. The high quality of the Navigator software, its adherence to open standards, and its timing in the industry helped it to amass a huge following of netizens. The spirit of Netscape has lived on through AOL's acquisition, through the foundation of Mozilla, and through many twists and turns in internet software. At its height, Netscape was the thought leader in web browsing, e-mail clients, HTML composition tools, as well as with a rich set of server technologies.

By and large, the name Netscape was synonymous with its Navigator web browser. After the forming of the Mozilla project, and subsequent shift in browser development to the Mozilla Foundation, AOL released several generations of web browsers under the Netscape name that borrowed at varying lengths from the advances made by those at Mozilla. While those at the Mozilla Foundation were developing the Firefox web browser, loyal Netscape enthusiasts installed and used the AOL/Netscape browsers. Over time, this has caused fragmentation of the Netscape faithful, as some have continued to use the Netscape browsers, and others have switched to using Firefox.

At this point in time, there is no doubt that Firefox, through its tireless dedication to web browsing and to open source software, is today's leader in web browsing. Firefox has grown to become the web browser that the Netscape browser community deserves. Towards that end, development of the Netscape Navigator web browser, Netscape e-mail client software, Netscape HTML composer software as compiled in the Netscape 7 Suite, Netscape Browser 8, and Netscape Navigator 9, has now been halted. Security patches for Netscape Navigator 9 will continue to be applied until February 1st, 2008, at which point the only support for Netscape web browser products will be a Netscape Product Archive, the UFAQ and the Netscape Community Forum. For nostalgia's sake, a Netscape theme can be installed for your Firefox web browser. The Netscape brand will continue to be serviced at http://www.netscape.com as a general use internet portal.

The Netscape team supports Mozilla and Firefox development.

For all Netscape enthusiasts out there, we recommend you try Firefox as your next main web browser. We know you won't regret it!

End-User Support Continues

End-User support for all previous and current versions of Netscape/Navigator will continue as usual and will not be terminated. We will also beef up our support for Firefox and Thunderbird here and on the UFAQ.