Fortunately, today we have the possibility to choose from a huge number of web browsers, but this was not always the case. Years ago this software market was much more limited in terms of titles available, and Netscape was one of the most important.
When the Internet took its first steps and began its journey on the personal computers that users had at home, obviously the world of browsers was not as widespread as it is now. At the end of the last century, the proposal offered by the giant Microsoft with its Internet Explorer, was the maximum reference when it came to sailing. But little by little some solutions appeared that tried to displace and stand up to this important software.
One of the most important titles that marked an era is precisely the one we are going to focus on now, we are talking about Netscape.
Getting started with Netscape, the alternative browser
Initially, the company that owns this well-known program, Mosaic Communications Corporationsaw the light in April year 1994. It was founded by Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark and it can be said that it was one of the pioneers in everything related to the use of technology. world Wide Web. Precisely for this reason, its top managers made the decision to launch its own web browser.
At first the name it obtained was Mosaic Netscape, which was released in October of the same year, 1994. But its nomenclature changed shortly after and that was when the popular Netscape Navigator. One of the main objectives of this project was to compete directly with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which was included with Windows 95.
Little by little its acceptance by the general public grew. One of the big movements occurred in 1998. It was then that in January Netscape began its journey as a project of open source from Mozilla. Its top managers were fully aware that overshadowing the Microsoft project was quite complicated. Hence, they made the decision to publish their source code to try to attract a greater number of users.
Growth and end of the program
The truth is that at that time there were many followers of this alternative browser and they migrated from Internet Explorer. So much so that a few months later the giant AOL, then known as America Online, made the decision to acquire Netscape Communications for a figure around 4.2 billion dollars. It was this company that later launched the well-known Netscape 6.0, which at that time was based on Mozilla 0.6.
From then on, new versions were launched, including a special one for the corporate market, but the company never managed to unseat the Microsoft giant. In fact, when Microsoft was found guilty of monopoly, in a way this led to the beginning of the end for Netscape. The software giant was forced to pay $750 million in fines. Furthermore, from that moment on it had to share some of its own technologies and the decision was supported because AOL could now license and distribute Internet Explorer for free for the next seven years.
Hence, the significant decline that Netscape suffered, for many, meant the end of the program. In 2005 the company abandoned the Netscape project and fired a good part of its team. He The end of the project occurred in 2008 definitively after the release of Netscape 9.
Despite everything and despite the years that have passed since then, many who migrated to this alternative continue to remember the browser fondly. One of the reasons is that they were able to put aside the giant Internet Explorer to grow this browser that will be part of the internet history.