Oxymoron of the day: Civil War
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Netscape navigates to exit
NETSCAPE WILL fade to black tomorrow when AOL ends support for the Navigator browser. And yet it seems like yesterday that Netscape was the hottest company in tech.
A little over a decade ago, with fewer grey hairs and a 32-inch waist, your reporter worked for ZDnet and everybody used Netscape. Microsoft was just beginning to get its act together with IE but the iconography of the Netscape brand (‘N’ letter with shooting stars and the ship’s wheel) was everywhere.
Netscape was the Google of the Nineties, a revolutionary force born in the smoking cauldron of software wizardry, to mix up the metaphors. It was the on-ramp to the internet and, for many, the Netscape front-end *was* the internet.
How could something so strong go so wrong? Plenty of reasons. Netscape was unconvincing when it said it would monetise its popularity by selling complementary server software. Microsoft was happy to give away rival programs. Netscape never did enough to push itself as a portal and it sold to the wrong company, AOL.
At some point, most of us tried out IE and never went back, or else we later moved to Firefox and liked it. AOL tried to revive Netscape as a browser-cum-portal but it was a case of too little, too late.
Today, Netscape has less than one per cent market share and the end of support will soon erode that yet further. With Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera and the rest around, Netscape is no longer necessary. Still, plenty of us will remember the first times we clicked on our favourite internet destination, waiting ages for images to appear at 38 kilobits per second, having paid a tenner a month to a friendly ISP for the pleasure. µ
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Well, let me help out a little. Please visit:

http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/ms_exhibits.htm

Start reading. This can be quite tedious, but it is exceptionally enlightening. As you go along, you see Netscape's increasing alarm as they learn of Microsoft's illegal tactics to force Netscape out of the marketplace.

For those not wishing to go through them all, read for example Exhibit 88. Also check out Exhibit 34.

Exhibit 38 has what is likely the famous quote from Bill Gates: "How much do we need to pay you to screw netscape?? ('this is your lucky day')".

Personally I'm still plowing through this material. It has, however, been most informative.
It was W2K-Pro that in retrospect - forced me away, how it all seemed easier to download and install updates.
I tried hanging onto the email side of things, but AOL messed that up and I went searching, and still have not found a product that compares.
Well glad to see you're up and coming, now, mate. 
Not to mention, browser-cum-portals (that's a Potter thingie, right?). 
That Vole bumbled IE, will likely get Microsoft a stiff comeuppance from the European Comeuppance-mission. 
And still yet the sauciness of that cheeky vole, to spite it all, is now about making the Vista more "green." 
Green Software--Hello world, is there an ECO in ear?

Vista is already bios-degradable!

So, the European Commiserate has receipts and license for its Netscrape Navigator and Complicator for the Far Side of the World? 

And enCarte Blanche over the rest of OS privateers, as well, I presume.

Well finally at least there is a L’Académie Française for OS packages with the teeth to nip OS in the OS, bud.

Pity. Corn is now more than a buccaneer.

AST adds: Anyone have a clue what he's on about?
It would make more sense than "Firefox".
Apparently you got your dial-up Internet connection after the Mosaic era, which certainly deserve at least a mention in your article.

It didn't support any fancy HTML trickery, neither any kind of scripts, plug-ins, style sheets and barely supported tables. But, despite lacking disk caching, it was damn fast. HTML was always all about formatted text and some images, the rest is bloat.

Then Netscape helped to turn obsolete our then-state-of-art 56K modems. And worse, it allowed the still-sluggish java applets inside pages, so I kind of enjoyed its painful and slow death.

And stay dead.