<< Netscape Epitaph - How did Netscape get here?

Nescape Browsers Epitaph: The Netscape story continues...

But the war was not over. While all looked bleak, there was still the final battle with Microsoft. And that battle was won! In early 2003, Microsoft finally succumbed and paid a settlement of $750 million dollars to AOL – thereby ending the war. Shortly thereafter, the once-mighty AOL granted Netscape it’s final blow – by relieving almost all of it’s staff of their jobs and announcing that no future versions of Netscape were planned.

A sad tale of rise, glory and fall – to say the least. There is one final note of hope to this story, dear listener. In a moment sympathy, the despotic king AOL granted the dying Netscape one brief glimmer of hope – freedom. The starved and dying browser was freed from the grasp of AOL and allowed to live on as a non-profit organization called the Mozilla Foundation. While this tiny group of crusaders has faint hope of making another profound impact upon the browser market again, it’s spirit and open-source architecture will live on to fight another day.