AOL, on December 28, 2007, announced that its support of the Netscape brand web browser would cease; on it's final day, January 31, 2008 the browser was given a one month stay of execution, to March 1. At that point, for all intents and purposes, the life of the first commercial, graphical web browser will end. While no more than a footnote now, the history of the web as we know it will soon lose what was once a major player and will permanently remain a significant part of Internet history.

Of course, the browser itself has really been on life support for a long time; ever since the release of Internet Explorer 4.0, the market share for Netscape dwindled and dwindled, to its current level of about eight percent. In fact, the latest—and now last—version is really nothing more than Firefox 2 with a custom theme and a few add-ons. This theme was packaged up for Firefox users even before Netscape 9 was released last year, further indicating the browser's status as an afterthought.

On a limited personal note, I'd like to note that as a University of Illinois alumnus, someone who has actually been to (and interviewed with) NCSA, and someone who both makes a decent living off the web and used Netscape as his very first web browser (Navigator 3, baby), I'm really quite sad to see it go. I must say that I'll probably install the theme just to give Netscape one final hurrah, and perhaps you can too.

More Information:
Wired.com

American Public Media's Marketplace

Wikipedia on Netscape