AOL has announced that they will be officially sending the Netscape web browser to the deadpool in February. They will issue security fixes until February and then we will see no more updates for Netscape.

Goodbye. Gone forever.

The Netscape.com website will remain online as a portal.

Netscape has been around a very long time. It used to be the leading browser on the market and then was all but killed off when Microsoft began bundling Internet Explorer in with the Windows operating system. Netscape went open source and then we saw the spin off which everybody knows as Firefox. Mozilla was founded in 2003 with the help of AOL, and the Firefox browser was formed based on the Netscape code. Since then, Mozilla has continued to support Firefox while AOL essentially just copied what they did. So, Netscape and Firefox have been on parallel paths for some time.

The official blog post for this announcement states the following:

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.

You can still download Netscape here. The site also allows downloads of some of the really old versions, for those of you who want a dose of nostalgia.

What should they do with the Netscape browser? Perhaps sell it to Mozilla? One blogger thinks so.

Believe it or not, I have been using Netscape on my Mac for a couple months now. It works exactly the same as Firefox. But, with word now that support is going away, I guess I’ll be officially dumping Netscape and running Firefox on the Mac. It has been my favorite browser on the PC for some time now.