Netscape is exiting the Web Browser scene: No more support for the Browser from Feb 1 2008

Announced in the Netscape blog on December 28, 2007, there will be no more security patches for the current version of the browser, Netscape Navigator from February 1, 2008. Netscape.com will still continue to serve as a general use Internet portal. After February 1 2008, Netscape users have to go to the UFAQ, the Netscape Archive, the Netscape Community Forum for information about Netscape. Tom Drapeau, the director of AOL's Netscape brand encouraged Netscape users to adopt Firefox. This signifies the end of Netscape's era.

I used Netscape more than 10 years ago, when I first started exploring the internet. Netscape has dominated the web browser market at that time. Back then I was using Alta Vista as my search engine. Today, I no longer use Netscape but Firefox and I have long been using Google instead of anything else as my search engine.

The market is very practical, if a company don't innovate and continuously provide the best product, it will be replaced by newer, better and innovative companies in no time. Netscape used to have more than 80% market share in 1995. Now, according to the study done by the web metrics company Net Application in Dec 2007, Netscape's browser share at just 0.60 %, while Microsoft Internet Explorer dominated with a 77.4 % share and Firefox accounted for 16 %.

When I look at the browser my blog's visitors used, a pathetic 0% of them use Netscape. In the table below, you can see the % is skewed to favor Firefox. It is not surprising as techies tend to use Firefox more. I would think my visitors, people who are interested in internet marketing are more tech savvy than the general internet public.










When we look at the browser usage for a consumer product blog, you can see the difference. We have a majority 60.33% using Microsoft Internet Explorer while only 34.71% is using Firefox. Sadly for Netscape, still 0% share.








From the two blog browser usages shown, we still see Firefox has a skewed % instead of the lower 16% Firefox market share. These results are skewed as blog readers tends to be more tech savvy than the general internet users. Firefox has a bigger popularity within the tech savvy population.

Anyhow, all Netscape users should quickly adopt Firefox (or other web browser) as support will cease from Feb 1 2008.