Dowbrigade

End of an Era pt I

It seems like ancient history in the digital age, but it was less than 10 years ago
that the browser wars broke out. Netscape owned the field (although I remember
seeing my first page in Mosaic in
1994) until the Microsoft Empire, in its first major power play, ate Netscape’s
lunch with Internet Explorer.

This week both of these historic apps suffered virtual digital deaths. 

First, AOL, which bought Netscape in 1998, laid
off 50 Netscape developers and announced they would no longer support the app.
Meanwhile, Microsoft
announced that the next version of IE would be fully integrated into
the Windows OS and not be offered as a stand-alone application. So
sorry Mac and Linux users.

Does this mean all of us will use Windows or AOL to reach
the net in the future? Or does it rather open the door to innovation by
brash new browsers like Safari, Opera, iCab and the open-source permutations
on Mozilla.  I prefer to believe the latter.

For example, the first browser to incorporate a really good, RSS 2.0 compatible
news aggregator and an easy universal blogging tool is a guarenteed winner….