Netscape, 1994-2008

From Christian Science Monitor | Sci/Tech:

A Web browser bows out as a data boom rumbles on. Feb. 1 marks the end of Netscape Navigator, the first commercial browser, 13 years after it sparked the dotcom boom. The computer program will still work. Retro romantics can even download a copy. But AOL, which has looked after the historic browser during its slow skid to a halt, will no longer support it and will stop releasing technical or security updates. Nescape trotted out in 1994 - a time when modems squealed and the consumer Internet was little more than an electronic postal service. While not the first browser, Netscape is seen by many Web historians as the evangelist that the Internet needed. Mosaic had made some inroads among researchers. But Netscape turned everyday computers into portals. Suddenly, the World Wide Web was within easy reach. Thus began the dotcom age, and the gold rush that swept through Silicon Valley and Wall Street in the late 1990s. Nine months after its launch, Netscape had $20 million in sales and a market value of $2 billion. But Netscape's dominance among browsers was short-lived. In 1995, Microsoft released Internet Explorer, which came bundled with each copy of Windows. Explorer blasted from 0 to 60 percent market share in just four years - and hit 95 percent by 2002. Despite tweaks, Netscape could never keep up and has been running on empty ever since.

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