Netscape Navigator, the world's first commercial Web browser once used in 80 percent of all Internet sessions, will be pulled off life support Feb. 1 after a 13-year run. Its current caretakers, Time Warner Inc.'s AOL, decided to kill further development and technical support to focus on growing the company as an advertising business. America Online Inc. paid $9.8 billion in 1999 for Netscape and after almost nine-years of efforts to revive Netscape, the browser will be killed once and for all.

While internal groups within AOL have invested a great deal of time and energy in attempting to revive Netscape Navigator, these efforts have not been successful in gaining market share from Microsoft's Internet Explorer,

Netscape Director Tom Drapeau wrote in a blog entry Friday. People will still be able to download and use the Netscape browser indefinitely, but AOL will stop releasing security and other updates on Feb. 1. Drapeau recommended that Netscape users should shift to Firefox instead. A separate Netscape Web portal will continue to operate.