Nowadays when you think of web browsers, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Safari,
and Microsoft Edge probably come to mind. After all, they are the most popular browsers out there,
with Chrome holding a large majority on desktop and laptop computers. But
in the early days of the World Wide Web, there was one name that reigned supreme:
Netscape Navigator. Although it was not the first web browser ever, it would quickly become the
most popular one soon after its release. It was available on pretty much every consumer operating
system. And if you had access to the internet in the mid ‘90s, it’s very likely that this program,
this web browser is how you experienced the World Wide Web for the very first time. And for a
company with offices in 14 countries and quarterly revenues of up to $120 million, it seemed as
if nothing could stop the driving force on the web browser marketplace that was Netscape. But
not long after the start of the new millennium, Netscape’s market share had dropped substantially.
With the rise of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Netscape lost the major influence they once had,
and by 2003, its parent company laid off most of Netscape’s employees, and disbanded the company
as we knew it. In today’s video, we’ll be taking a look at how this happened. We’ll
be traveling back to the 1990s and discussing the browser wars, and the Rise and Fall of Netscape.
Our story begins in 1993 with the release of Mosaic, a web browser developed by the National
Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois. It wasn’t the very first
web browser. That credit goes to the WorldWideWeb web browser developed by Tim-Burners Lee,
who also created the World Wide Web. Yeah, its name was later changed to distinguish it. Now
Mosaic was launched a few years afterwards, and brought many new features that we take for granted
today on modern browsers. While the WorldWideWeb browser had the ability to browse the web, that’s
really all it could do. It’s interface was usable but a bit complicated for those who didn’t know
much about the web. But its purpose was not to be used by everyday people, as it was developed for
the NEXTSTEP operating system, used by Berners-Lee on his NeXT Workstation. Mosaic introduced a more
graphical user interface with icons and introduced concepts like bookmarks. It was made available
free for non-commercial users. And since there were versions available for Windows and Mac OS,
it quickly became popular with more than 5,000 copies of the browser being downloaded every
single month. Now it didn’t take long for some to realize the commercial potential in pieces
of software like this. Mosaic itself was licensed to companies who wanted to use its technology in
other products. Marc Andreessen was the co-creator of the Mosaic browser and after graduating from
college moved to California where he met Jim Clark, co-founder of Silicon Graphics. Clark had
previously downloaded Mosaic and was so impressed by it that he connected the developers by email,
which is how he got in touch with Andreessen. He was planning on leaving Silicon Graphics
and wanted to get in on the next big thing, but he didn’t exactly know what that was yet.
An idea that they initially had was to create an online gaming service company. Andreessen
later said that the idea was similar to the Xbox Live or PlayStation Network of today.
But they were going to do it with Nintendo for the N64. The problem was, this was around 1994,
and the N64 wasn’t slated to ship until 1996. So that idea fell through. Eventually,
Andreessen proposed the idea of creating a web browser to challenge Mosaic. And the 2 decided
to go for it, hiring some of Andreessen's colleagues at the university that worked
on Mosaic, and some former employees of Silicon Graphics. As you can imagine,
it led to a very interesting mix of experience. As John Giannandrea said:
To fund the new startup, Clark invested $4 million. It was initially named Mosaic
Communications Corporation, after the browser that Andresson worked on. But this led to
legal issues with the University of Illinois. Who alleged that they stole the name and intellectual
property of Mosaic. Now you may ask, why did they decide to name the company after
the product they were going to compete with? Well, Mosaic was the name of the open source
research project at a university, although the college held the copyright to it. So there was
a bit of ambiguity regarding if the actual name itself received trademark protection.
The developers at Mosaic Communications had not taken any of the code from the research project,
so the only issue was the name. At that point, the web browser project was known only by a codename:
Mozilla. A portmanteau of “Mosaic and Godzilla” or short for “Mosaic Killer” depending on who
you ask. That name probably rings a bell, but we’ll talk more about that later on. Eventually,
it was decided that the name “Netscape” would be used for the browser, and eventually the
entire company. It was coined by Greg Sands, Netscape’s first product manager, who said:
The browser was initially known as “Mosaic Netscape”, when it was released as a public
beta only 6 months after the company’s founding on October 13th, 1994. But it would later be
renamed to Netscape Navigator. It introduced features like: continuous document streaming,
multiple simultaneous network accesses, and native support for the JPEG image
format. Even better it was announced that the first release would be offered to individual,
academic, and research users for FREE. The company had not made any profit up until that point,
and was low on the cash that they had. But although the browser was free for individuals,
businesses who wanted to use it had to pay for a license, which cost $99 per user. However,
the company later reversed this policy and only allowed non profit and academic organisations to
use the browser for free. This provided Netscape with a source of income, and allowed them to
double their revenue every quarter. Eventually the company went public in August of 1995,
only 16 months after its founding. The IPO was an immediate success, and Clark’s initial
$4 million investment was now worth over $600 million. Netscape Navigator quickly became the
most popular browser out there, and the company provided updates to it over the next few years.
Version 2.0 in 1995 introduced frames, and was the first browser to support both JavaScript. But
something else happened in 1995. Something that would change the course of Netscape’s history.
Microsoft released Windows 95. And alongside it, the first version of Microsoft Plus! And
included in that pack: the very first version of a little program called Internet Explorer.
Microsoft had created a web browser, and they had their sights aimed on Netscape Navigator
with a plan to decimate its market share. But first, let’s talk a bit about the browser itself.
Internet Explorer 1.0 was based on code licensed from Spyglass, Inc: one of the companies that
originally licensed the Mosaic browser from the University of Illinois. It didn’t have
as many features as Netscape Navigator did, but since it was licensed to Microsoft, royalties
had to be paid to Spyglass for each copy sold. With the release of Windows 95 OSR 1, Internet
Explorer 2.0 was pre-installed with the operating system. And this bundling of the web browser with
Windows is what would cause Netscape’s eventual downfall. It was just something that they could
not compete with. Remember, at this point Netscape was not free. So people who had purchased a brand
new computer and were new to the World Wide Web, just ended up using Internet Explorer
since it was already installed on their computer for free. But these business practices were very
controversial as it gave Microsoft an unfair advantage, which would lead to numerous legal
issues for the company. Microsoft took advantage of the bundling of Internet Explorer not only in
the market share department, but also on their bottom line. Since Microsoft was technically
selling the operating system and not Internet Explorer, they were not paying royalties to
Spyglass for the bundled copies of the web browser. This led to a dispute between the
2 companies, which resulted in Microsoft paying $8 million to Spyglass. And believe it or not,
this deal also stipulated that Microsoft was free to continue selling copies of Internet Explorer
with no further royalty payments. One year later in 1998, Windows 98 was released and included
version 4.0 of the web browser. But that same year, Microsoft was sued by the federal government
over allegations of monopolistic business practices. The antitrust case is one of the
most significant events in Microsoft’s history, as a divestiture almost occurred. It was actually
ruled in 2000 that Microsoft was a monopoly and had violated the Sherman Antitrust Act. The court
ordered Microsoft to split up into 2 business entities: one to create operating systems, and
one to create applications. However this didn’t occur as in 2001, after an appeal was filed,
the government announced that it would seek a lesser antitrust penalty. But the case exposed
Microsoft’s anticompetitive business practices for the entire world to see. Testimony from an
Intel employee alleged that a Microsoft executive informed him of the company’s plan to “extinguish”
Netscape and cut off their “air supply”. This was a claim that Microsoft challenged though. But it
was clear that the company was concerned about Netscape. Bill Gates himself identified Netscape
Communications as a competitor in an internal memo. Where it also directly states Microsoft’s
intent to get OEMs to ship Internet Explorer with their computers. This would essentially
guarantee the growth of Internet Explorer as people purchased new computers overtime.
Despite all of this, Microsoft was never forced to stop bundling Internet Explorer with Windows,
which resulted in the decline in market share for Netscape Navigator. But Netscape at this point was
creating more than just a web browser. Version 3.0 introduced an entire suite of applications,
and eventually in version 4.0 got a new name: Netscape Communicator. Included was of course
Navigator, but also an email client, HTML editor, address book, news client, calendar,
and a conference program. And the company itself was still valuable. So much so that in 1998,
America Online purchased Netscape Communications for $4.2 billion. But by the time the deal closed,
the transaction was valued at about $10 billion. At this time, Netscape still held more markershare
than Internet Explorer did. You see, Internet Explorer had a much more gradual gain in market
share than Netscape did. It wouldn’t be until 1999 when the 2 browsers held about the same
amount of market share: 40%. But Internet Explorer surpassed Netscape after that,
and the browser that once dominated the world wide web was, by 2002, struggling to
keep even a 10% share. But all wasn’t lost for Netscape. A year before the acquisition by AOL,
Netscape did something major. They made Netscape Communicator free and open source,
which resulted in the creation of the Mozilla Organization, deriving the name from Netscape
Navigator’s original codename. This group was still under the control of Netscape as it wasn’t
a formal company yet. But it eventually went on to begin development of the Mozilla Application
Suite. You could consider this the next generation of the Netscape Communicator suite,
as it contained many of the same types of applications. Not long after the AOL buyout, the
Mozilla Organization split off to form the Mozilla Foundation, with a goal of being a seperate
sustainable entity. AOL even donated $2 million to help the new non-profit get off the ground. Yes,
the modern day Mozilla Foundation traces its roots back to Netscape. This new organization would
continue development of the Mozilla Application Suite until around 2005. At this point, Mozilla
was instead focusing on creating 2 standalone applications. Applications you might know as
Firefox and Thunderbird. This announcement led to the creation of another independent group to
continue development of the Mozilla Application Suite. They took the name SeaMonkey from the
project’s original codename. SeaMonkey has appeared in some of my older videos, and fun fact,
the included web browser is known as SeaMonkey Navigator. And since this project is derived from
Mozilla, SeaMonkey, Firefox and Thunderbird share some of the same source code. But development
of Netscape itself was not completely finished yet. And this is where things can get somewhat
confusing. AOL continued to develop versions of what became known simply as Netscape until
around 2008. These versions function just like older releases of Netscape Communicator did,
by providing a web browser, email client, address book, HTML editor, etc. Yes, even
though AOL helped separate the developers of the Mozilla Application Suite into a separate company,
they still created what you could consider a competing product. However, these versions
of Netscape are actually based on the Mozilla Application Suite. And the final version, 9.0.0.6,
is based on Firefox. However this version brought back the old, familiar name Netscape Navigator.
So that is the story of Netscape. What started out as a simple concept,
a web browser to challenge Mosaic, went on to be arguably one of the most important products
in the history of the World Wide Web. When you think of Netscape today, you probably just think
of the browser. But this browser shaped the way we use the World Wide Web more than some
might realize. Technologies like JavaScript and SSL, things that we still use on the web today,
were initially created at Netscape. And the applications I mentioned before: SeaMonkey,
Firefox, and Thunderbird. Programs that you may use today, even to watch this video right now,
all owe their existence to Netscape. And believe it or not, the Netscape brand itself was never
completely discontinued. In 2012, AOL took ownership of the Netscape name, before renaming
the actual Netscape Communications subsidiary to New Aurora Corporation and selling it off. And you
wanna know who it was sold to? Microsoft. Yeah, that makes for an interesting turn of events. AOL
kept the brand name and Netscape.com URL, while Microsoft got 800 of Netscape’s patents. And they
paid about $1 billion for this. But that’s not even the craziest part. Get this. A few
years later, Microsoft sold the company and the patents to Facebook, who is its present day owner.
But since the Netscape brand is owned by AOL and now Verizon, they can still use it if they
want to. And they actually do. While going to Netscape.com will redirect you to AOL.com, going
to isp.netscape.com will bring you to a landing page known as the “Netscape Internet Service”. It
contains news, weather, and a search function. And yes, all of this information is current. This is
current news, current weather conditions. This isn’t some snapshot of the website from years
back. But you want to know what is a snapshot from years back? The website hosted at mcom.com,
the original URL for the company back when it was called Mosaic Communications. To give you
the gist of what happened here, a former Netscape employee was able to convince AOL to host this
1994 version of the website in 2008. This was around the time AOL was ceasing development
of the Netscape application. So yeah, this website is still up today and it’s exactly
how the Mosaic Communications website looked in 1994. It’s pretty awesome. I’ll have the full post
explaining how this happened linked down below. It's really worth a read if you’re interested in
this kind of stuff. So even though Netscape is forgotten by most, the company is technically
still around. Just in a very unlikely place. And these websites that use the Netscape name
and even provide download links to old versions of the browser. They serve as an important reminder
of the impact that Netscape had, and still continues to havem to this day. That’s all
for today’s video. I want to thank you all very much for watching. If you enjoyed this episode,
be sure to give it a like and get subscribed. And as always, I will see you all in the next video.