Defunct Brands in Software/Internet — Data-Driven List
Explore 5 discontinued or defunct brands in Software/Internet. Quick timelines, fate, and links to each profile.
This page is generated automatically from our brand dataset. Entries are sorted by the most recent closure (or earliest known activity when end year is unknown).
- Yahoo! Messenger 1998–2018 • Yahoo shut it down in July 2018 after 20 years. By then most people had moved to texting and phone apps. People who used it when they were younger still remember things like the Buzz button and the away messages they used to write.Software/Internet
- AOL Instant Messenger 1997–2017 • Service discontinued on Dec. 15, 2017 after declining usage, and shifts in mobile and social messaging.Software/Internet
- Orkut 2004–2014 • Orkut was an early social network that shaped online life in Brazil and India before Google shut it down.Software/Internet
- Netscape 1994–2008 • AOL acquired Netscape in 1999 in a deal worth 10 billion dollars. The Netscape brand lingered through the 2000s as a minor portal and browser label before AOL ended all support for Netscape-branded browsers on March 1 2008. The Mozilla codebase Netscape open-sourced in 1998 went on to power Firefox, and technologies Netscape engineers invented including JavaScript, SSL encryption, and HTTP cookies remain foundational to the modern web.Software/Internet
- Napster (original) 1999–2001 • Shut down following court rulings against its centralized P2P service; company later filed Chapter 11 (2002) and the brand was reused by successors.Software/Internet