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"Six months from now, you won't consider Netscape to be a browser company" -- Netscape President Jim Bankoff.
  technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

Netscape dropping its history-making Web browser


June 13, 2001


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2001, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2001, The Syracuse Newspapers

   Netscape's web browser is about to become history. Sources in the computer industry say Netscape Communications, now owned by the combined America Online - Time Warner conglomerate, is giving up on the browser market.
   AOL Time Warner apparently is going to turn Netscape Communications into nothing more than a Web "portal" -- a site people pass through on their way to other sites. (Yahoo is the best known portal, and there are thousands of others.) Netscape's Web browser, called Netscape Navigator, and its other software such as Netscape Communicator apparently would be left without support. New versions of Netscape's browser and e-mail software would be canceled, these sources said.
   Paul Thurrott, author of a daily insider newsletter on Windows, said last week AOL Time Warner will recast Netscape as Netscape.com, a Web portal for Time Warner's media properties such as CNN and Fortune Magazine.
   "Six months from now, you won't consider Netscape to be a browser company," Thurrott quoted Netscape President Jim Bankoff as saying.
   Netscape had about 90 percent of the Web browser market in the mid-1990s, but slipped steadily after Microsoft developed its own browser, Internet Explorer. Microsoft built Internet Explorer into every version of Windows. This was clearly unfair to Netscape, because many Windows users innocently assumed that the only way to do anything on the Web was through Internet Explorer.
   In the last few years, Netscape's browser fell behind as Microsoft added feature after feature to Internet Explorer while Netscape Navigator languished. The latest Navigator, version 6.0, runs too slowly and seems awkward in many ways, especially compared to its sleek rival, Internet Explorer 5.5.
   AOL Time Warner itself has no discernable confidence in Netscape's software. AOL's online service uses Internet Explorer, not Netscape Navigator, as its standard browser and Time Warner's Road Runner cable Internet service refuses to support customers who have problems with Netscape Navigator. This is bizarre in the extreme.
   Equally strange is the predicament of millions of Linux users. Linux is the second most popular computer operating system worldwide, ahead of Apple's Macintosh and the many versions of Unix. Both the Macintosh and Unix have their own versions of both Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer.
   But Linux users have no such choice. Netscape Navigator is the only full-featured Web browser that runs under Linux. Other Linux browsers, such as one from Opera Software and a browser called Konqueror from the KDE organization, are missing important features.
   This would seem to give Microsoft a wide-open opportunity to offer a Linux version of Internet Explorer. But the company apparently decided to hold off on creating a Linux version of Internet Explorer to discourage defections from Windows to Linux.