Netscape is dead...

Well, it's a sad day for all of us geeks. According to TechCrunch, AOL has officially decided to pull the life support plug on Netscape. My first exposure to the internet was in the summer of 1995 with AOL. After getting an $80+ bill (in those days, AOL didn't have unlimited usage) I had to find other means of accessing the web. I found a local ISP with unlimited service and then went to town. But wait! I needed something to explore the internet. What? A browser? What is that?

I had no idea what a browser was at that time. So I downloaded Netscape and away I went. At the time, the internet for me was this whole other world that the vast majority of the public still didn't know about. Of course, for several years after I got on the internet people were still thinking that AOL WAS the internet!

Of course, AOL ended up buying Netscape and not really doing a whole lot with it. I tried to keep using Netscape while Internet Explorer was beginning its dominance, but finally had to give it up in 1999 due to the fact that an increasing number of web sites were not functioning properly on Netscape.

I used IE for a few years until Firefox came out, and I haven't looked back since. Here's to you Netscape! It was nice knowing you for when I needed to know you!