This makes me very angry. My first foray into the Net was with AOL, which I loved for a while. Once I tired of it, I got MindSpring, an Atlanta-based company which later merged with Earthlink. Mindspring's browser of choice was Netscape Navigator. I loved everything about Netscape: the way you could easily copy/paste its list of saved URLs to another computer...the way you could do the same with its Address book...the interface that let you quickly see what plugins the browser had and what function they fulfilled...and especially, a little feature (whose name escapes me) that allowed you to put the same URL in several different folders without having to do a copy/paste. This was a great device for me, as some links fit in more than one category. Black Ameria Web, for example, goes in both my "Black Culture" and "Audio Sites" folders. Best of all, Netscape was powerful, easy to use, well laid out, and not a major drain on computer resources.
Then Bill Gates decided to give away Internet Explorer for free. I can't stand people who can't compete fairly, and this was a major example of Gates just cheating far as i'm concerned. Worse, like so many of microsoft's moves, Gates actually pushed *inferiour* software on is in the form of IE. Most of Microsoft's major products and functionality over the years have been inferiour to the competition, but money, power, dirty tactics, and market penetrability have won the day. AOL destroyed Netscape, however, and i quit using it after that. I don't use Firefox for the simple reason that my main computer is a company laptop and i don't want anyone geting on me about it. I will use Firefox on the next home machine I build. Saddest of all is that Netscape's demise will be largely unheralded and unremarked. Most people the world around will not remember there was a better alternative to IE, won't remember yet another example of how Gates squashed creativity and innovation for greed, and won't realize just how free our choices are in this world. Very, very sad news... -------------- Original message -------------- From: "Reece Jennings" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> I'm a Firefox guy myself. I keep IE7 on my machine, but it's got dust on it. I DID buy something from Microsoft that I love, though. Windows Live OneCare. It does my virus, spyware and firewall protection, defrags my drives, backs up my drives, and a couple of other things. Maurice Jennings Have you or someone you know been threatened with foreclosure? KEEP your home and Stop Foreclosure in its Tracks! Get a Free, No Obligation Evaluation => http://www.legacyhomesavers.com <http://www.legacyhomesavers.com/> _____ From: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of ravenadal Sent: Sunday, December 30, 2007 10:27 AM To: scifinoir2@yahoogroups.com Subject: [scifinoir2] Plug Pulled on Netscape Navigator I have always hated Microsoft Explorer (I currently use Firefox) but I was big Netscape fan until AOL bought it and did what it did to Time Warner. ~(no)rave! http://www.foxnews. <http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Dec28/0,4670,NetscapeRIP,00.html> com/wires/2007Dec28/0,4670,NetscapeRIP,00.html AOL Pulls Plug on Netscape Web Browser Friday, December 28, 2007 By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer NEW YORK - Netscape Navigator, the world's first commercial Web browser and the launch pad of the Internet boom, will be pulled off life support Feb. 1 after a 13-year run. Its current caretakers, Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, decided to kill further development and technical support to focus on growing the company as an advertising business. Netscape's usage dwindled with Microsoft Corp.'s entry into the browser business, and Netscape all but faded away following the birth of its open-source cousin, Firefox. "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," Netscape Director Tom Drapeau wrote in a blog entry Friday. In recent years, Netscape has been little more than a repackaged version of the more popular Firefox, which commands about 10 percent of the Web browser market, with almost all of the rest going to Internet Explorer. People will still be able to download and use the Netscape browser indefinitely, but AOL will stop releasing security and other updates on Feb. 1. Drapeau recommended that the small pool of Netscape users download Firefox instead. A separate Netscape Web portal, which has had several incarnations in recent years, will continue to operate. The World Wide Web was but a few years old when in April 1993 a team at the University of Illinois' National Center for Supercomputing Applications released Mosaic, the first Web browser to integrate images and sound with words. Before Mosaic, access to the Internet and the Web was largely limited to text, with any graphics displayed in separate windows. Marc Andreessen and many of his university colleagues soon left to form a company tasked with commercializing the browser. The first version of Netscape came out in late 1994. Netscape fed the gold-rush atmosphere with a landmark initial public offering of stock in August 1995. Netscape's stock carried a then-steep IPO price of $28 per share, a price that doubled on opening day to give the startup a $2 billion market value even though it had only $20 million in sales. But Netscape's success also drew the attention of Microsoft, which quickly won market share by giving away its Internet Explorer browser for free with its flagship Windows operating system. The bundling prompted a Justice Department antitrust lawsuit and later a settlement with Microsoft. Netscape eventually dropped fees for the software, but it was too late. Undone by IE, Netscape sold itself to AOL in a $10 billion deal completed in early 1999. Netscape spawned an open-source project called Mozilla, in which developers from around the world freely contribute to writing and testing the software. Mozilla released its standalone browser, Firefox, and Netscape was never able to regain its former footing. Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. 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