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Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in
Mountain View, California Mountain View is a city in Santa Clara County, California, United States. Named for its views of the Santa Cruz Mountains, it has a population of 82,376. Mountain View was integral to the early history and growth of Silicon Valley, and is t ...
and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape web browser was once dominant but lost to
Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems (in ...
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. An early Netscape employee Brendan Eich created the
JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...
programming language, the most widely used language for client-side scripting of web pages and a founding engineer of Netscape
Lou Montulli Louis J. Montulli II (best known as Lou Montulli) is a computer programmer who is well known for his work in producing web browsers. In 1991 and 1992, he co-authored a text web browser called Lynx, with Michael Grobe and Charles Rezac, while he w ...
created HTTP cookies. The company also developed
SSL SSL may refer to: Entertainment * RoboCup Small Size League, robotics football competition * ''Sesame Street Live'', a touring version of the children's television show * StarCraft II StarLeague, a Korean league in the video game Natural language ...
which was used for securing online communications before its successor
TLS TLS may refer to: Computing * Transport Layer Security, a cryptographic protocol for secure computer network communication * Thread level speculation, an optimisation on multiprocessor CPUs * Thread-local storage, a mechanism for allocating vari ...
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."America Online Inc. Completes Acquisition of Netscape Communications Corp."
. Business Wire. March 17, 1999. Retrieved July 1, 2012.
"What's $10 Billion to AOL?"
. Morningstar. April 5, 1999. Retrieved July 1, 2012.
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. The Mozilla Organization rewrote the entire browser's source code based on the Gecko rendering engine, and all future Netscape releases were based on this rewritten code. 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. 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. As of 2011, AOL continued to use the Netscape brand to market a discount Internet service provider.


History


Early years

Netscape was the first company to attempt to capitalize on the emerging
World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...
. 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. The first meeting between Clark and Andreessen was never truly about a software or service like Netscape, but more about a product that was similar to Nintendo. Clark recruited other early team members from SGI and NCSA Mosaic.
Jim Barksdale James Love Barksdale (born January 24, 1943) is an American executive who served as the president and CEO of Netscape from January 1995 until the company merged with AOL in March 1999. Early life James Barksdale was born in Jackson, Mississippi. ...
came on board as CEO in January 1995. Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen originally created a 20-page concept pitch for an online gaming network to Nintendo for the Nintendo 64 console, but a deal was never reached. Marc Andreessen explains, "If they had shipped a year earlier, we probably would have done that instead of Netscape.""OPSWARE INC. / On the record: Marc Andreessen"
SFGate. December 7, 2003. Retrieved July 24, 2012.
The company's first product was the web browser, called ''Mosaic Netscape 0.9,'' released on October 13, 1994. Within four months of its release, it had already taken three-quarters of the browser market. It became the main browser for Internet users in such a short time due to its superiority over other competition, like Mosaic. 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 Cisco Systems, Inc., commonly known as Cisco, is an American-based multinational digital communications technology conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, manufactures, and sells networking hardware, ...
) 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 Mosaic Netscape web browser did not use any NCSA Mosaic code. The internal codename for the company's browser was ''Mozilla'', which stood for "Mosaic killer", as the company's goal was to displace NCSA Mosaic as the world's number one
web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...
. A cartoon
Godzilla is a fictional monster, or '' kaiju'', originating from a series of Japanese films. The character first appeared in the 1954 film '' Godzilla'' and became a worldwide pop culture icon, appearing in various media, including 32 films produ ...
-like lizard mascot was drawn by artist-employee Dave Titus, which went well with the theme of crushing the competition. The Mozilla mascot featured prominently on Netscape's website in the company's early years. However, the need to project a more "professional" image (especially towards corporate clients) led to this being removed.


Initial public offering (IPO)

On August 9, 1995, Netscape made an extremely successful IPO, only sixteen months after the company was formed. The stock was set to be offered at US$14 per share, but a last-minute decision doubled the initial offering to US$28 per share. The stock's value soared to US$75 during the first day of trading, nearly a record for first-day gain. The stock closed at US$58.25, which gave Netscape a market value of US$2.9 billion. 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. The success of this IPO subsequently inspired the use of the term "Netscape moment" to describe a high-visibility IPO that signals the dawn of a new industry. During this period, Netscape also pursued a publicity strategy (crafted by
Rosanne Siino Rosanne Siino is the retired former Vice President of Communications for Netscape (Communications Corporation). Siino is responsible for crafting the 1990s message that "the web is for everyone", as well as making the pivotal decision to turn Marc ...
, then head of public relations) packaging Andreessen as the company's "rock star." The events of this period ultimately landed Andreessen, barefoot, on the cover of ''
Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...
'' magazine. The IPO also helped kickstart widespread investment in internet companies that created the
dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Comp ...
. 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 Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...
while leaving all other operating systems to Netscape. Netscape refused the proposition. Microsoft released version 1.0 of
Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems (in ...
as a part of the
Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturi ...
Plus Pack add-on. According to former Spyglass developer
Eric Sink Eric Sink is a software developer and writer. He is the author of ''Eric Sink on the Business of Software'' (2006), a collection of essays from his blog and the "Business of Software" column for the Microsoft Developer Network. He founded Sourc ...
, Internet Explorer was based not on NCSA Mosaic as commonly believed, but on a version of Mosaic developed at Spyglass (which itself was based upon NCSA Mosaic). This period of time would become known as the browser wars. Netscape Navigator was not free to the general public until January 1998, while Internet Explorer and
Internet Information Server Internet Information Services (IIS-pronounced 2S, formerly Internet Information Server) is an extensible web server software created by Microsoft for use with the Windows NT family. IIS supports HTTP, HTTP/2, HTTPS, FTP, FTPS, SMTP and N ...
have always been free or came bundled with an operating system and/or other applications. Meanwhile, Netscape faced increasing criticism for "
featuritis Feature creep is the excessive ongoing expansion or addition of new features in a product, especially in computer software, video games and consumer and business electronics. These extra features go beyond the basic function of the product and ...
" – putting a higher priority on adding new features than on making their products work properly. Netscape experienced its first bad quarter at the end of 1997 and underwent a large round of layoffs in January 1998. Former Netscape executives
Mike Homer Michael J. Homer (February 24, 1958 – February 1, 2009) was an American electronics and computer industry executive who played major roles in the development of the personal computer, mobile devices and the Internet. Life and career Homer w ...
and Peter Currie have described this period as "hectic and crazy" and that the company was undone by factors both internal and external. In January 1998, Netscape started the
open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...
Mozilla Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, ...
project. Netscape publicly released the
source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the ...
of Netscape Communicator 5.0 under the
Netscape Public License The Netscape Public License (NPL) is a free software license, the license under which Netscape Communications Corporation originally released Mozilla. Its most notable feature is that it gives the original developer of Mozilla (Netscape, now a s ...
, which was similar to the
GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general ...
but allowed Netscape to continue to publish proprietary work containing the publicly released code. The
United States Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a federal executive department of the United States government tasked with the enforcement of federal law and administration of justice in the United Stat ...
filed an
antitrust case In the United States, antitrust law is a collection of mostly federal laws that regulate the conduct and organization of businesses to promote competition and prevent unjustified monopolies. The three main U.S. antitrust statutes are the Sherma ...
against Microsoft in May 1998. Netscape was not a plaintiff in the case, though its executives were subpoenaed and it contributed much material to the case, including the entire contents of the 'Bad Attitude' internal discussion forum.


Acquisition by America Online

On November 24, 1998,
America Online AOL (stylized as Aol., formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...
(AOL) announced it would acquire Netscape Communications in a tax-free stock-swap valued at US$4.2 billion. By the time the deal closed on March 17, 1999, it was valued at US$10 billion. This merger was ridiculed by many who believed that the two corporate cultures could not possibly mesh; one of its most prominent critics was longtime Netscape developer
Jamie Zawinski Jamie Zawinski (born November 3, 1968), commonly known as jwz, is an American computer programmer, blogger and impresario. He is best known for his role in the creation of Netscape Navigator, Netscape Mail, Lucid Emacs, Mozilla.org, and XSc ...
.


Disbanding

During Netscape's acquisition by AOL, joint development and marketing of Netscape software products would occur through the Sun-Netscape Alliance. 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... Sun retained the intellectual property rights for all products and the engineering" On July 15, 2003,
Time Warner Warner Media, LLC ( traded as WarnerMedia) was an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate. It was headquartered at the 30 Hudson Yards complex in New York City, United States. It was originally established in 1972 by ...
(formerly AOL Time Warner) disbanded Netscape. Most of the programmers were laid-off, and the Netscape logo was removed from the building. However, the Netscape 7.2 web browser (developed in-house rather than with Netscape staff, with some work outsourced to Sun's
Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), Chinese postal romanization, alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the Capital city, capital of the China, People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's Li ...
development center"Sun Micro To Double Beijing Software Center"
. HPCwire. August 8, 2003. Retrieved July 1, 2012.
) was released by AOL on August 18, 2004. After the Sun acquisition by Oracle in January 2010, Oracle continued to sell iPlanet branded applications, which originated from Netscape.


Final release of the browser

The Netscape brand name continued to be used extensively. The company once again had its own programming staff devoted to the development and support for the series of web browsers. Additionally, Netscape also maintained the
Propeller web portal Propeller was a social news aggregator operated by AOL-Netscape. It was similar to Digg; users could vote for which stories are to be included on the front page and could comment on them as well. As of October 1, 2010, Propeller ceased to be acti ...
, which was a popular social-news site, similar to
Digg Digg, stylized in lowercase as digg, is an American news aggregator with a curated front page, aiming to select stories specifically for the Internet audience such as science, trending political issues, and viral Internet issues. It was launch ...
, which was given a new look in June 2006. 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. It featured a green and grey interface. 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 it would drop support for the Netscape web browser and would no longer develop new releases on February 1, 2008. The date was later extended to March 1 to allow a major security update and to add a tool to assist users in migrating to other browsers. 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 first beta versions were released in 1994 and were called Mosaic and later Mosaic Netscape. Then, a legal challenge from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (makers of NCSA Mosaic), which many of Netscape's founders used to develop, led to the name Netscape Navigator. The company's name also changed from Mosaic Communications Corporation to Netscape Communications Corporation. The browser was easily the most advanced available and so was an instant success, becoming a market leader while still in beta. Netscape's feature-count and market share continued to grow rapidly after version 1.0 was released. Version 2.0 added a full email reader called Netscape Mail, thus transforming Netscape from a single-purpose web browser to an Internet suite. The email client's main distinguishing feature was its ability to display
HTML email HTML email is the use of a subset of HTML to provide formatting and semantic markup capabilities in email that are not available with plain text: Text can be linked without displaying a URL, or breaking long URLs into multiple pieces. Text ...
. During this period, the entire suite was called Netscape Navigator. Version 3.0 of Netscape (the first beta was codenamed "Atlas") was the first to face any serious competition in the form of
Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...
Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems (in ...
3.0. But Netscape remained the most popular browser at that time. Netscape also released a Gold version of Navigator 3.0 that incorporated
WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed d ...
editing with drag and drop between web editor and email components.


Netscape Communicator (versions 4.0–4.8)

Netscape 4 addressed the problem of Netscape Navigator being used as both the name of the suite and the browser contained within it by renaming the suite to Netscape Communicator. After five preview releases in 1996–1997, Netscape released the final version of Netscape Communicator in June 1997. This version, more or less based on Netscape Navigator 3 Code, updated and added new features. The new suite was successful, despite increasing competition from Internet Explorer (IE) 4.0 and problems with the outdated browser core. IE was slow and unstable on the Mac platform until version 4.5. Despite this, Apple entered into an agreement with Microsoft to make IE the default browser on new Mac OS installations, a further blow to Netscape's prestige. The Communicator suite was made up of Netscape Navigator,
Netscape Mail & Newsgroups Netscape Mail and Newsgroups, commonly known as just Netscape Mail, was an email and news client produced by Netscape Communications Corporation as part of the Netscape series of suites between versions 2.0 to 7.2. In the 2.x and 3.x series, i ...
, Netscape Address Book and
Netscape Composer Netscape Composer is a WYSIWYG HTML editor initially developed by Netscape Communications Corporation in 1997, and packaged as part of the Netscape Communicator, Netscape 6 and Netscape 7 range of Internet suites. In addition, Composer can also v ...
(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 Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized so ...
community, Mozilla. Netscape Communicator 5.0 was announced (codenamed "Gromit"). However, its release was greatly delayed, and meanwhile, there were newer versions of Internet Explorer, starting with version 4. These had more features than the old Netscape version, including better support of
HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaS ...
4,
CSS Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone technolo ...
, DOM, and
ECMAScript ECMAScript (; ES) is a JavaScript standard intended to ensure the interoperability of web pages across different browsers. It is standardized by Ecma International in the documenECMA-262 ECMAScript is commonly used for client-side scripti ...
; eventually, the more advanced
Internet Explorer 5.0 Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 (IE5) is a graphical web browser, the fifth version of Internet Explorer, the successor to Internet Explorer 4 and one of the main participants of the first browser war. Its distribution methods and Windows integ ...
became the market leader. In October 1998, Netscape Communicator 4.5 was released. It featured various functionality improvements, especially in the Mail and Newsgroups component, but did not update the browser core, whose functionality was essentially identical to that of version 4.08. One month later, Netscape Communications Corporation was bought by AOL. 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. However, the aging Communicator code proved difficult to work with and the decision was taken to scrap Netscape 5 and re-write the source code. The re-written source code was in the form of the
Mozilla Mozilla (stylized as moz://a) is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, spreads and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting exclusively free software and open standards, ...
web browser, on which, with a few additions, Netscape 6 was based.


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. It picked up a few users, but was still very much a minority browser. It did, however, come with the popular Radio@Netscape Internet radio client. AOL had decided to deactivate Mozilla's popup-blocker functionality in Netscape 7.0, which created an outrage in the community. AOL reversed the decision and allowed Netscape to reinstate the popup-blocker for Netscape 7.01. Netscape also introduced a new AOL-free-version (without the usual AOL add-ons) of the browser suite. 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. Mozilla.org continued, however, as the independent Mozilla Foundation, taking on many of Netscape's ex-employees. AOL continued to develop Netscape in-house (with help from Sun's
Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), Chinese postal romanization, alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the Capital city, capital of the China, People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's Li ...
development center), but, due to there being no staff committed to it, improvements were minimal. 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.


Mozilla Firefox-based releases


Netscape Browser (version 8.0–8.1.3)

Between 2005 and 2007, Netscape's releases became known as ''Netscape Browser''. AOL chose to base Netscape Browser on the relatively successful
Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current an ...
, a re-written version of Mozilla produced by the Mozilla Foundation. This release is not a full Internet suite as before, but is solely a web browser. Other controversial decisions include the browser only being released for
Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...
and featuring both the
Gecko Geckos are small, mostly carnivorous lizards that have a wide distribution, found on every continent except Antarctica. Belonging to the infraorder Gekkota, geckos are found in warm climates throughout the world. They range from . Geckos a ...
rendering engine Rendering or image synthesis is the process of generating a photorealistic or non-photorealistic image from a 2D or 3D model by means of a computer program. The resulting image is referred to as the render. Multiple models can be defined ...
of previous releases and the
Trident A trident is a three- pronged spear. It is used for spear fishing and historically as a polearm. The trident is the weapon of Poseidon, or Neptune, the God of the Sea in classical mythology. The trident may occasionally be held by other mar ...
engine used in Internet Explorer, and switching between them based on a "compatibility list" that came with the browser. This effectively exposed users to the security vulnerabilities in both and resulted in a completely different user experience based on which site they were on. Examples are handling of right-to-left or bi-directional text, user interface widgets, bugs and web standards violations in Trident, etc. 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. 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. It also sees the browser return to multi-platform support across
Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...
,
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
and
Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lap ...
. Like Netscape version 8.x, the new release was based upon the popular
Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current an ...
(version 2.0), and supposedly had full support of all Firefox add-ons and plugins, some of which Netscape was already providing. Also for the first time since 2004, the browser was produced in-house with its own programming staff. 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. 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. 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. 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. Mercury was based on Mozilla Thunderbird. The product was later renamed Netscape Messenger 9, and an alpha version was released. In December 2007, AOL announced it was canceling Netscape's development of Messenger 9 as well as Navigator 9.


Product list


Initial product line

Netscape's initial product line consisted of: * Netscape Navigator web browser for
Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for se ...
,
Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...
, OS/2,
Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, ...
, and
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
* Netsite Communications web server, with a web-based configuration interface * Netsite Commerce web server, the Communications server with SSL (https) added * Netscape Proxy Server * Netscape Merchant System, an e-commerce platform that supported multiple languages & currencies


Later Netscape products

Netscape's later products included: * Netscape Personal Edition (the browser along with PPP software and an account creation wizard to sign up with an ISP) * Netscape Communicator (a suite which included Navigator along with tools for mail, news, calendar,
VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...
, and composing web pages, and was bundled with AOL Instant Messenger and
RealAudio RealAudio, or also spelled as Real Audio is a proprietary audio format developed by RealNetworks and first released in April 1995. It uses a variety of audio codecs, ranging from low-bitrate formats that can be used over dialup modems, to high-fi ...
) * Netscape FastTrack and Enterprise web servers * Netscape Collabra Server, a NNTP news server acquired in a purchase of Collabra Software, Inc. * Netscape Directory Server, an LDAP server * Netscape Messaging Server, an IMAP and
POP Pop or POP may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Music * Pop music, a musical genre Artists * POP, a Japanese idol group now known as Gang Parade * Pop!, a UK pop group * Pop! featuring Angie Hart, an Australian band Albums * ''Pop'' ( ...
mail server * Netscape Certificate Server, for issuing
SSL SSL may refer to: Entertainment * RoboCup Small Size League, robotics football competition * ''Sesame Street Live'', a touring version of the children's television show * StarCraft II StarLeague, a Korean league in the video game Natural language ...
certificates * Netscape Calendar Server, for group scheduling * Netscape Compass Server, a
search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...
and
spider Spiders (order Araneae) are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs, chelicerae with fangs generally able to inject venom, and spinnerets that extrude silk. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species ...
*
Netscape Application Server Netscape Web Server was an integrated software platform for developing and running transaction-oriented business applications on the web. It was developed originally by Kiva Software, which Netscape acquired in 1997. When Netscape and Sun Microsyst ...
, for designing
web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection. History In earlier computing models like client-serv ...
s * Netscape Publishing System, for running a commercial site with news articles and charging users per access * Netscape Xpert Servers **ECxpert – a server for EDI message exchange **SellerXpert – B to B Commerce Engine **BuyerXpert – eProcurement Engine **BillerXpert – Online Bill Paying Engine **TradingXpert – HTML EDI transaction frontend **CommerceXpert – Online Retail Store engine * Radio@Netscape and Radio@Netscape Plus


Propeller

Between June 2006 and September 2007, AOL operated Netscape's website as social news website similar to
Digg Digg, stylized in lowercase as digg, is an American news aggregator with a curated front page, aiming to select stories specifically for the Internet audience such as science, trending political issues, and viral Internet issues. It was launch ...
. 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 Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...
) search results). Another version of Netscape Search was incorporated into Propeller.


Other sites

Netscape also operated a number of country-specific Netscape portals, including Netscape Canada among others. 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. Netscape NewsQuake (formerly ''Netscape Reports'') is Netscape's news and opinion blog, including video clips and discussions. As of January 2012, no new posts have been made on either of these blogs since August 2008.


Netscape technologies

Netscape created the
JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...
web page scripting language. It also pioneered the development of push technology, which effectively allowed websites to send regular updates of information (weather, stock updates, package tracking, etc.) directly to a user's desktop (aka "webtop"); Netscape's implementation of this was named Netcaster. However, businesses quickly recognized the use of push technology to deliver ads to users, which annoyed them, so Netcaster was short-lived. Netscape was notable for its
cross-platform In computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several computing platforms. Some cross-platform software ...
efforts. Its client software continued to be made available for Windows ( 3.1, 95, 98, NT), Macintosh, Linux, OS/2,
BeOS BeOS is an operating system for personal computers first developed by Be Inc. in 1990. It was first written to run on BeBox hardware. BeOS was positioned as a multimedia platform that could be used by a substantial population of desktop users an ...
, and many versions of Unix including DEC,
Sun Solaris Solaris is a proprietary Unix operating system originally developed by Sun Microsystems. After the Sun acquisition by Oracle in 2010, it was renamed Oracle Solaris. Solaris superseded the company's earlier SunOS in 1993, and became known for it ...
,
BSDI Berkeley Software Design, Inc. (BSDI or, later, BSDi), was a corporation which developed, sold licenses for, and supported BSD/OS (originally known as BSD/386), a commercial and partially proprietary variant of the BSD Unix operating system for P ...
,
IRIX IRIX ( ) is a discontinued operating system developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to run on the company's proprietary MIPS workstations and servers. It is based on UNIX System V with BSD extensions. In IRIX, SGI originated the XFS file system a ...
, IBM AIX, and
HP-UX HP-UX (from "Hewlett Packard Unix") is Hewlett Packard Enterprise's proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system, based on Unix System V (initially System III) and first released in 1984. Current versions support HPE Integrity Se ...
. Its server software generally was only available for Unix and Windows NT, though some of its servers were made available on Linux, and a version of Netscape FastTrack Server was made available for Windows 95/98. Today, most of Netscape's server offerings live on as the
Sun Java System Sun Java System was a brand used by Sun Microsystems to market computer software. The Sun Java System brand superseded the Sun ONE brand in September 2003. There are two major suites under this brand, the Sun Java Enterprise System suite of infrast ...
, formerly under the Sun ONE branding. Although Netscape Browser 8 was Windows only, multi-platform support exists in the Netscape Navigator 9 series of browsers.


Current services


Netscape Internet Service

Netscape ISP is a dial-up Internet service once offered at US$9.95 per month. The company serves web pages in a compressed format to increase effective speeds up to 1300 kbit/s (average 500 kbit/s). The
Internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise priva ...
is now run by
Verizon Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas ...
under the Netscape brand. The low-cost ISP was officially launched on January 8, 2004.


Netscape.com

Netscape drove much traffic from various links included in the browser menus to its web properties. Some say it was very late to leverage this traffic for what would become the start of the major online portal wars. Netscape's exclusive features, such as the Netscape Blog, Netscape NewsQuake, Netscape Navigator, My Netscape and Netscape Community pages, are less accessible from the AOL Netscape designed portal and in some countries not accessible at all without providing a full URL or completing an
Internet search A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...
. 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. Meanwhile, Netscape.co.uk now redirects to AOL Search, with no Netscape branding at all.


DMOZ

DMOZ (from directory.mozilla.org, its original domain name, also known as the Open Directory Project or ODP), was a multilingual open content
directory Directory may refer to: * Directory (computing), or folder, a file system structure in which to store computer files * Directory (OpenVMS command) * Directory service, a software application for organizing information about a computer network' ...
of
World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...
links owned by Netscape that was constructed and maintained by a
community A community is a social unit (a group of living things) with commonality such as place, norms, religion, values, customs, or identity. Communities may share a sense of place situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, t ...
of volunteer editors. It closed in 2017.


See also

* Code Rush, a 2000 documentary about Netscape engineers * SeaMonkey *
The Book of Mozilla ''The Book of Mozilla'' is a computer Easter egg found in the Netscape, Mozilla, SeaMonkey and Firefox series of web browsers. It is viewed by directing the browser to . There is no real book titled ''The Book of Mozilla''. However, apparent qu ...
*
Lou Montulli Louis J. Montulli II (best known as Lou Montulli) is a computer programmer who is well known for his work in producing web browsers. In 1991 and 1992, he co-authored a text web browser called Lynx, with Michael Grobe and Charles Rezac, while he w ...
, a founding engineer of Netscape Communications, creator of HTTP cookies * Brendan Eich, early Netscape employee, creator of JavaScript


References


Further reading

* Jim Clark, ''Netscape Time: The Making of the Billion-Dollar Start-Up That Took On Microsoft'', St. Martin's Press, 1999. * Michael E. Cusumano and David B. Yoffie, ''Competing On Internet Time: Lessons From Netscape And Its Battle With Microsoft'', The Free Press, 1998, 2000. * Fortune Magazine
"Remembering Netscape: The Birth Of The Web"
July 25, 2005.


External links


Archive of official site circa 1994
{{Use mdy dates, date=July 2011 1994 establishments in California 2008 disestablishments in Virginia Yahoo! Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq Computer companies disestablished in 2008 Computer companies established in 1994 Defunct computer companies of the United States Defunct companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Technology companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Defunct companies based in Virginia 1999 mergers and acquisitions 1995 initial public offerings