With all due disrespect to clueless AOL, I have seen total neglect in mentioning that Windows98 had come out, probably, a bit before AOL's purchase of Netscape. And, IE was embedded in the OS. Most people do not have any idea that this is true, and that IE can be removed. But this was blow number 1.
I bought this computer , almost exactly five years ago, and when Cox set up my cable connection, there was only a choice between Netscape4.51, I believe, and a browser, most likely based on IE from the ISP was Excite@home.
Netscape was the browser of choice at my workplace. Only with Win98SE, IE was preferred, mainly because it linked much faster with our new Mail system from Novell. Our IT was coming to me with questions about Netscape.
Then, came that pathetic excuse for a browser, which will go unnamed. Most likely someone at AOL pushed it too soon. And then came 100%, or so, adherence to W3C. It would have been fine when Netscape was on top, but not when it had hit the skids. That is what really killed Netscape, or more precisely a gecko engine for AOL. AOL was very interested to get away from Microsoft's stranglehold, but when AOL introduced a beta version of AOL7.0, and went gecko with the Compuserve division, most testers were adhamant in requesting that either AOL improve their version, so that pages would be read "correctly", or offer both the IE-based and gecko-based AOL, or forget about the entire thing. Blow number 3.
The decision became easy to make, when there was that deal with Microsoft. Blow number 3.
It is true that Netscape development died with these three blows, but it is simplistic to place all the blame on AOL. I think that Netscape, as an universal browser, committed suicide, with Microsoft holding the gun straight.
UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax) (CK-SillyDog)
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