Mike @ TechCrunch gets sentimental over the death of Netscape Navigator, the first real browser that opened up the Internet to all of us.

Oh, well, shed no tears for Netscape; after all, it’s not really dead. In fact it’s very much alive…it’s just called FireFox now.

(Photo Credit: Opera Watch)

Update: Of course this is now the story du jour on TechMeme, especially on a slow day like this. Good Morning Silicon Valley has an interesting angle:

The younger and colder-eyed among you might say good riddance or about time, but for those whose first experiences with the Web took place inside a Netscape window, who eagerly jumped to download (on dial-up) each new point release, the passing still evokes some fond nostalgia for those early, heady days.

Hm… my first online experience was Compuserve, via a dumb blank screen, where you had to type in commands a’la DOS. Somehow I am not longing to get it back. Netscape was great at a time.. but for now, I think TechDirt’s title says it all: Wait… AOL Was Still Making A Netscape Browser? Or perhaps this Digg commenter: AOL is still around?