It was founded under the name Mosaic Communications Corporation on April 4, 1994, the brainchild of Jim Clark who had recruited Marc Andreessen as co-founder and Kleiner Perkins as investors.
Marc Andreessen explains, "If they had shipped a year earlier, we probably would have done that instead of Netscape." The company's first product was the web browser, called Mosaic Netscape 0.9, released on October 13, 1994.
This browser was subsequently renamed Netscape Navigator, and the company took the "Netscape" name (coined by employee Greg Sands, although it was also a trademark of Cisco Systems) on November 14, 1994, to avoid trademark ownership problems with NCSA, where the initial Netscape employees had previously created the NCSA Mosaic web browser.
The first beta versions were released in 1994 and were called Mosaic and later Mosaic Netscape.
The company also developed SSL which was used for securing online communications before its successor TLS took over. Netscape stock traded from 1995 until 1999 when the company was acquired by AOL in a pooling-of-interests transaction ultimately worth US$10 billion.
Instead, think about an encyclopedia—one with unlimited, graphically rich pages, connections to E-mail and files, and access to Internet newsgroups and online shopping. |- |style="text-align: left;"|—Netscape Navigator, Macworld (May 1995) |} Netscape was the first company to attempt to capitalize on the emerging World Wide Web.
Jim Barksdale came on board as CEO in January 1995.
However, the need to project a more "professional" image (especially towards corporate clients) led to this being removed. On August 9, 1995, Netscape made an extremely successful IPO.
While it was somewhat unusual for a company to go public prior to becoming profitable, Netscape's revenues had, in fact, doubled every quarter in 1995.
It is alleged that several Microsoft executives visited the Netscape campus in June 1995 to propose dividing the market (an allegation denied by Microsoft and, if true, would have breached antitrust laws), which would have allowed Microsoft to produce web browser software for Windows while leaving all other operating systems to Netscape.
After five preview releases in 1996–1997, Netscape released the final version of Netscape Communicator in June 1997.
The tide of public opinion, having once lauded Netscape as the David to Microsoft's Goliath, steadily turned negative, especially when Netscape experienced its first bad quarter at the end of 1997 and underwent a large round of layoffs in January 1998.
After five preview releases in 1996–1997, Netscape released the final version of Netscape Communicator in June 1997.
In February 1998, approximately one year prior to its acquisition by AOL, Netscape released the source code for its browser and created the Mozilla Organization to coordinate future development of its product.
Netscape Navigator was not free to the general public until January 1998, while Internet Explorer and IIS have always been free or came bundled with an operating system and/or other applications.
The tide of public opinion, having once lauded Netscape as the David to Microsoft's Goliath, steadily turned negative, especially when Netscape experienced its first bad quarter at the end of 1997 and underwent a large round of layoffs in January 1998.
Later, former Netscape executives Mike Homer and Peter Currie described the period as "hectic and crazy" and that the company was undone by factors both internal and external. ===Open sourcing=== January 1998 was also the month that Netscape started the open source Mozilla project.
The slogan for this open sourcing effort, "Free The Lizard", carried comedic sexual overtones. The United States Department of Justice filed an antitrust case against Microsoft in May 1998.
In October 1998, Netscape acquired web directory site NewHoo for the sum of US$1 million, renamed it the Open Directory Project, and released its database under an open content license. ===Acquisition by America Online=== On November 24, 1998, America Online (AOL) announced it would acquire Netscape Communications in a tax-free stock-swap valued at US$4.2 billion.
The Communicator suite was made up of Netscape Navigator, Netscape Mail & Newsgroups, Netscape Address Book and Netscape Composer (an HTML editor). On January 22, 1998, Netscape Communications Corporation announced that all future versions of its software would be available free of charge and developed by an open source community, Mozilla.
These had more features than the old Netscape version, including better support of HTML 4, CSS, DOM, and ECMAScript; eventually, the more advanced Internet Explorer 5.0 became the market leader. In October 1998, Netscape Communicator 4.5 was released.
In November, work on Netscape 5.0 was canceled in favor of developing a completely new program from scratch. ===Mozilla-based releases=== ====Netscape 6 (versions 6.0–6.2.3)==== In 1998, an informal group called the Mozilla Organization was formed and largely funded by Netscape (the vast majority of programmers working on the code were paid by Netscape) to coordinate the development of Netscape 5 (codenamed "Gromit"), which would be based on the Communicator source code.
On top of this, Netscape Browser 8 even broke Internet Explorer's ability to open XML files by damaging a Windows Registry key, and would do so every time it was opened, even if the user fixed it manually. AOL's acquisition of Netscape Communications in November 1998 made it less of a surprise when the company laid off the Netscape team and outsourced development to Mercurial Communications.
Asa Dotzler, one of Firefox's original bug testers, greeted the news with "good riddance" in his blog post, but praised the various members of the Netscape team over the years for enabling the creation of Mozilla in 1998.
The company also developed SSL which was used for securing online communications before its successor TLS took over. Netscape stock traded from 1995 until 1999 when the company was acquired by AOL in a pooling-of-interests transaction ultimately worth US$10 billion.
By the time the deal closed on March 17, 1999, it was valued at US$10 billion.
Martin's Press, 1999. Michael E.
When AOL scaled back its involvement with Mozilla Organization in the early 2000s, the Organization proceeded to establish the Mozilla Foundation in July 2003 to ensure its continued independence with financial and other assistance from AOL.
On November 14, 2000, AOL released Netscape 6, based on the Mozilla 0.6 source code.
In the meantime, Netscape was taken over by AOL who, acting under pressure from the Web Standards Project, forced its new division to release Netscape 6.0 in 2000.
The same service is also available through Compuserve Forum Center. ==See also== Code Rush, a 2000 documentary about Netscape engineers SeaMonkey The Book of Mozilla == References == == Further reading == Jim Clark, Netscape Time: The Making of the Billion-Dollar Start-Up That Took On Microsoft, St.
It was not until August 2001 that Netscape 6.1 appeared, based on Mozilla 0.9.2, which was significantly more robust.
In the newly branded iPlanet, the software included "messaging and calendar, collaboration, web, application, directory, and certificate servers", as well as "production-ready applications for e-commerce, including commerce exchange, procurement, selling, and billing." In March 2002, when the alliance was ended, "iPlanet became a division of Sun...
Later versions of Netscape 6 were much-improved (especially 6.2.x was regarded as a good release), but the browser still struggled to make an impact on a disappointed community. ====Netscape 7 (versions 7.0–7.2)==== Netscape 7.0 (based on Mozilla 1.0.1) was released in August 2002 as a direct continuation of Netscape 6 with very similar components.
When AOL scaled back its involvement with Mozilla Organization in the early 2000s, the Organization proceeded to establish the Mozilla Foundation in July 2003 to ensure its continued independence with financial and other assistance from AOL.
Sun retained the intellectual property rights for all products and the engineering" On July 15, 2003, Time Warner (formerly AOL Time Warner) disbanded Netscape.
Netscape 7.1 (codenamed "Buffy" and based on Mozilla 1.4) was released in June 2003. In 2003, AOL closed down its Netscape division and laid-off or reassigned all of Netscape's employees.
However, the Netscape 7.2 web browser (developed in-house rather than with Netscape staff, with some work outsourced to Sun's Beijing development center) was released by AOL on August 18, 2004. On October 12, 2004, the popular developer website Netscape DevEdge was shut down by AOL.
One year later, in August 2004, the last version based on Mozilla was released: Netscape 7.2, based on Mozilla 1.7.2. After an official poll posted on Netscape's community support board in late 2006, speculation arose of the Netscape 7 series of suites being fully supported and updated by Netscape's in-house development team.
Also for the first time since 2004, the browser was produced in-house with its own programming staff.
The low-cost ISP was officially launched on January 8, 2004.
This was not to be. ===Mozilla Firefox-based releases=== ====Netscape Browser (version 8.0–8.1.3)==== Between 2005 and 2007, Netscape's releases became known as Netscape Browser.
Internet security site Security Watch stated that a trend of infrequent security updates for AOL's Netscape caused the browser to become a "security liability", specifically the 2005–2007 versions, Netscape Browser 8.
Its Netscape web browser was once dominant but lost to Internet Explorer and other competitors in the so-called first browser war, with its market share falling from more than 90 percent in the mid-1990s to less than 1 percent in 2006.
Additionally, Netscape also maintained the Propeller web portal, which was a popular social-news site, similar to Digg, which was given a new look in June 2006.
One year later, in August 2004, the last version based on Mozilla was released: Netscape 7.2, based on Mozilla 1.7.2. After an official poll posted on Netscape's community support board in late 2006, speculation arose of the Netscape 7 series of suites being fully supported and updated by Netscape's in-house development team.
The format did not do well as traffic dropped 55.1 percent between November 2006 and August 2007.
When it did, Netcenter, the new name for its site entered the race with Yahoo!, Infoseek, and MSN, which Google would only join years later. The original Netscape.com was discontinued in June 2006, replaced by the site that would eventually become Propeller.com.
Two continuations of the original Netscape.com portal are available; Compuserve.com, the Web site of Compuserve, and ISP.Netscape.com, the website for Netscape's dial-up discount ISP service, continue to use the Netscape.com layout as it was before June 2006.
The Gecko engine is used to power the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser. Netscape's browser development continued until December 2007, when AOL announced that the company would stop supporting it by early 2008.
AOL marketed a discount ISP service under the Netscape brand name. A new version of the Netscape browser, Netscape Navigator 9, based on Firefox 2, was released in October 2007.
In November 2007, IE had 77.4% of the browser market, Firefox 16.0%, and Netscape 0.6%, according to Net Applications, an Internet metrics firm.
On December 28, 2007, AOL announced that on February 1, 2008 it would drop support for the Netscape web browser and would no longer develop new releases.
This was not to be. ===Mozilla Firefox-based releases=== ====Netscape Browser (version 8.0–8.1.3)==== Between 2005 and 2007, Netscape's releases became known as Netscape Browser.
Netscape Browser 8.1.3 was released on April 2, 2007, and included general bug fixes identified in versions 8.0–8.1.2 ====Netscape Navigator (version 9.0)==== Netscape Navigator 9's features were said to include newsfeed support and become more integrated with the Propeller Internet portal, alongside more enhanced methods of discussion, submission and voting on web pages.
A beta of the program was first released on June 5, 2007.
The final version was released on October 15, 2007. ===End of development and support=== AOL officially announced that support for Netscape Navigator would end on March 1, 2008, and recommended that its users download either the Flock or Firefox browsers, both of which were based on the same technology. The decision met mixed reactions from communities, with many arguing that the termination of product support is significantly belated.
Others protested and petitioned AOL to continue providing vital security fixes to unknowing or loyal users of its software, as well as protection of a well-known brand. ===Mozilla Thunderbird-based releases=== ====Netscape Messenger 9==== On June 11, 2007, Netscape announced Netscape Mercury, a standalone email and news client that was to accompany Navigator 9.
The format did not do well as traffic dropped 55.1 percent between November 2006 and August 2007.
In September 2007, AOL reverted Netscape's website to a traditional news portal, and rebranded the social news portal as "Propeller", moving the site to the domain "propeller.com." AOL shut down the Propeller website on October 1, 2010. ===Netscape Search=== Netscape operated a search engine, Netscape Search, which now redirects to AOL Search (which itself now merely serves Bing (formerly Google) search results).
Of the two, only the latter explicitly uses the Netscape branding. Netscape.com next served as an AOL Netscape-branded mirror duplicate of the AOL.com portal with the URL, replacing the former social news website in September 2007.
The new AOL Netscape site was originally previewed in August 2007 before moving the existing site in September 2007. Netscape.com now redirects to AOL's website, with no Netscape branding at all.
The Gecko engine is used to power the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser. Netscape's browser development continued until December 2007, when AOL announced that the company would stop supporting it by early 2008.
On December 28, 2007, AOL announced that on February 1, 2008 it would drop support for the Netscape web browser and would no longer develop new releases.
These additional features were included in the final version of Netscape Navigator 9 (version 9.0.0.6), released on February 20, 2008. ==Software== ===Classic releases=== ====Netscape Navigator (versions 0.9–4.08)==== Netscape Navigator was Netscape's web browser from versions 1.0–4.8.
The final version was released on October 15, 2007. ===End of development and support=== AOL officially announced that support for Netscape Navigator would end on March 1, 2008, and recommended that its users download either the Flock or Firefox browsers, both of which were based on the same technology. The decision met mixed reactions from communities, with many arguing that the termination of product support is significantly belated.
The portal of Netscape Germany was shut down in June 2008. The Netscape Blog was written by Netscape employees discussing the latest on Netscape products and services.
As of January 2012, no new posts have been made on either of these blogs since August 2008. ===Netscape technologies=== Netscape created the JavaScript web page scripting language.
Some content from DevEdge has been republished at the Mozilla website. After the Sun acquisition by Oracle in January 2010, Oracle continued to sell iPlanet branded applications, which originated from Netscape.
In September 2007, AOL reverted Netscape's website to a traditional news portal, and rebranded the social news portal as "Propeller", moving the site to the domain "propeller.com." AOL shut down the Propeller website on October 1, 2010. ===Netscape Search=== Netscape operated a search engine, Netscape Search, which now redirects to AOL Search (which itself now merely serves Bing (formerly Google) search results).
The social news site moved to the Propeller.com domain, where it stayed until ending operations in October 2010.
As of 2011, AOL continued to use the Netscape brand to market a discount Internet service provider. AOL renamed the Netscape Communications Corporation to New Aurora Corporation, and transferred the Netscape brand to themselves.
As of January 2012, no new posts have been made on either of these blogs since August 2008. ===Netscape technologies=== Netscape created the JavaScript web page scripting language.
It closed in 2017. ===Netscape Forum Center=== Netscape also has a wide variety of community-based forums within Netscape Forum Center, including its browser's community support board.
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