Netscape was the internet company behind the popular Netscape web browser whose headquarters were in Mountain View, California.
The company was founded by James Clark and Marc Andreessen on April 4, 1994. It was initially called Mosaic Communications Corporation. Clark had previously founded and been the chairman of Silicon Graphics, which manufactured computer workstations. Andreessen was a recent graduate of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; while in college, he was also employed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), where he led the development of internet browsing software.
Mosaic created a graphical interface to replace the UNIX command line standard that was in use at the time. With the ability to display colorful graphics and a simple point-and-click interface for finding, viewing, and downloading data over the Web, the free software made the Internet widely accessible for the first time beyond the scientific branches of academia and the government where it started. The two founders wanted to further this popularization process and capitalize on it by marketing a commercial-quality Web browser, Web-server software, development tools, and related services.
The company released the web browser, Mosaic Netscape 0.9, on October 13, 1994. It quickly gained in popularity, taking over three-quarters of the browser market within four months of its release. The browser’s superiority over its competition allowed it to become the main browsers for internet users in such a short time period. On November 14, 1994, the company was renamed Netscape, coined by employee Greg Sands, and the browser was renamed Netscape Navigator. This was primarily to avoid trademark ownership issues with NCSA, which had previously created the NCSA Mosaic web browser. The internal codename for the Navigator browser was Mozilla, which stood for “Mosaic killer”.
Netscape had an extremely successful initial public offering (IPO) on August 9, 1995. The plan was to offer the stock at $14 a share, but it was doubled to $28 a share due to a last-minute decision. During the first day of trading, the stock’s value soared to $75 and closed at $58.25, giving the company a valuation of $2.9 billion. Netscape had a very good track record: its revenues had doubled every quarter in 1995. The IPO helped kickstart the widespread investment in internet companies that created the dot-com bubble.
However, Netscape slowly was overtaken by its competitors, including Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Its market share fell from over 90% in the mid-1990s to less than 1% in 2006.
Netscape was acquired by America Online (AOL) in 1999 for $10 billion. Shorty before its acquisition, Netscape released the source code for its browser and created the Mozilla Organization to coordinate the future development of its browser, ultimately leading the creation of Firefox. AOL was acquired by Verizon on June 23, 2015 for $4.4 billion.
Mosaic created a graphical interface to replace the UNIX command line standard that was in use at the time. With the ability to display colorful graphics and a simple point-and-click interface for finding, viewing, and downloading data over the Web, the free software made the Internet widely accessible for the first time beyond the scientific branches of academia and the government where it started. The two founders wanted to further this popularization process and capitalize on it by marketing a commercial-quality Web browser, Web-server software, development tools, and related services.
The company released the web browser, Mosaic Netscape 0.9, on October 13, 1994. It quickly gained in popularity, taking over three-quarters of the browser market within four months of its release. The browser’s superiority over its competition allowed it to become the main browsers for internet users in such a short time period. On November 14, 1994, the company was renamed Netscape, coined by employee Greg Sands, and the browser was renamed Netscape Navigator. This was primarily to avoid trademark ownership issues with NCSA, which had previously created the NCSA Mosaic web browser. The internal codename for the Navigator browser was Mozilla, which stood for “Mosaic killer”.
Netscape had an extremely successful initial public offering (IPO) on August 9, 1995. The plan was to offer the stock at $14 a share, but it was doubled to $28 a share due to a last-minute decision. During the first day of trading, the stock’s value soared to $75 and closed at $58.25, giving the company a valuation of $2.9 billion. Netscape had a very good track record: its revenues had doubled every quarter in 1995. The IPO helped kickstart the widespread investment in internet companies that created the dot-com bubble.
However, Netscape slowly was overtaken by its competitors, including Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Its market share fell from over 90% in the mid-1990s to less than 1% in 2006.
Netscape was acquired by America Online (AOL) in 1999 for $10 billion. Shorty before its acquisition, Netscape released the source code for its browser and created the Mozilla Organization to coordinate the future development of its browser, ultimately leading the creation of Firefox. AOL was acquired by Verizon on June 23, 2015 for $4.4 billion.
Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Netscape-Communications-Corp
https://www.britannica.com/technology/Netscape-Navigator
https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-netscape-lessons-20160808-story.html
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mozilla-Corporation
https://www.britannica.com/technology/Firefox-Web-browser
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Netscape-Communications-Corp
https://www.britannica.com/technology/Netscape-Navigator
https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bs-ed-netscape-lessons-20160808-story.html
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mozilla-Corporation
https://www.britannica.com/technology/Firefox-Web-browser
Interesting to get some in depth backstory on Netscape, and to see what happened to it. I had no idea that it contributed to firefox! How else has it impacted new browsing systems?
ReplyDeleteAs a Clark I approve of this message. In . actuality thought thank your the post an enlighten the history of the creation of net scape very interesting
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