Just posted an internal email about what we ought to do about the End-of-Service announcement for Netscape. Usage of Netscape browsers has plummet even as Firefox as increased. Its finally hit the floor such that even AOL has given up on it. Why did they make NN 9? A snapshot of its use relative to total hits for the past ~30.5 days at two of the sites we run:

                   CVIEW             OVIEW
  Browser       Hits     %        Hits    %
  Netscape 7  108,739  0.18%    186,105  0.22%
   -- Mac       6,319  0.01%     33,249  0.04%
  Netscape 8   56,655  0.09%     85,817  0.10%
  Netscape 9        0  0.00%          0  0.00%

My first web browser was Netscape 1. Every version up to Netscape 7.0 was at one time my primary web browser until I switched finally to Mozilla Firefox in 2004. Browser crashes are not unknown in testing, so to loose my place with other stuff (wikis, notes, documentation) frustrates even myself, so I still use NN7.2 for testing.

There hasn’t been an update to NN 7.2 in 3 years, so EOS doesn’t really mean anything to those using it still. So, I don’t expect anyone to do anything. I haven’t heard demands that we provide support for NN8, so I doubt NN7 will be much different.

Too bad, it came in with a whimper and will go out with a whimper.