It's an announcement that has almost slipped out unnoticed, but a blog entry posted last week officially marked the death of the Netscape browser, its latest update triggering a pop-up window urging users to switch to either Firefox or Flock.

No surprise that Internet Explorer wasn't on that list of official recommendations; it's largely because of Microsoft's aggressive pushing of Internet Explorer during the mid 1990s that Netscape's market share � which, at one point, was as high as 90% � was utterly decimated. Today it sits well outside the top five browsers and, according to stats at thecounter.com, the combined versions of Netscape accounted for less than 0.5% of internet browsing in the last month. So, what happened to this once-dominant piece of software?

The Netscape project was originally launched by Marc Andreessen, the leader of the team that produced NCSA Mosaic, the first popular internet browser � and thus carried huge promise. The browser was launched in 1994, and for the comparatively few people who were stumbling their way around the internet at the time it quickly become the automatic choice. These were the days when software downloads were unthinkable over our 28.8k modems; Netscape found its way into our homes through cover mounted CDs on computer magazines, and we took to it like a duck to water.

But Microsoft were busy at work on a rival, Internet Explorer, and by bundling the software with the Windows operating system they ensured that it pulled well ahead of Netscape. By 1998, delays in the launch of version 6 of Netscape (which was by this point owned by AOL) threatened its position, and when it emerged as a flawed, buggy piece of software its obituaries were already being written. In many ways, it's surprising that the browser has lasted as long as it has; indeed, much of the reaction to the recent news has been amazement that it still exists. It's perfectly possible that the current version of Netscape (version 9) is a fantastic piece of software engineering, but with Firefox and Internet Explorer battling for users and Safari and Opera mopping up the rest, Netscape was never going to get a look in.

A quick Google search reveals 31,000 pages that still include the phrase "best viewed using Netscape"; the majority of those show just how far the web has come since Netscape's heyday.