Netscape Communications Corporation

Netscape Communications Corporation was a software company best known for creating the Netscape Navigator web browser. It was bought by AOL in 1999.

History

The company was founded as Mosaic Communications Corporation on April 4, 1994 by Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark. It was one of the first companies to work with the nascent World Wide Web. It released a browser called Mosaic Netscape 0.9 on October 13, 1994. This browser was later renamed Netscape Navigator. The company changed its name to Netscape Communications Corporation on November 14, 1994.

Microsoft released version 1.0 of Internet Explorer (IE) as part of the Windows 95 Plus Pack, according to Spyglass (the developer of Internet Explorer), this was not borrowed from Netscape as is commonly believed, but there was a part of Mosaic in it.

After this, Microsoft released a series of IE successively, and both Netscape and Internet Explorer added new features, although these didn't always work correctly.

This was known as the browser wars, in which both companies put a lot of resources into their browsers to make one better than the other, but Internet Explorer started to take the lead due to the large amounts of money invested in it. him and the decision to include the default browser in Microsoft Windows. Meanwhile, users began to complain about the large number of errors and problems that they experienced due to the great speed of its development, so the new priority was to make browsers work well, instead of adding new features.

Open source

In January 1998, when Netscape started the Mozilla open source project. Netscape, knowing that Internet Explorer was by far the most widely used browser, published Netscape's source code, hoping that it would become a popular open source project. This code was released under the Netscape Public License, which is similar to the GNU General Public License, for Communicator 4.5. Netscape focused on making it able to send email and be functional for businesses.

Acquisition by AOL

America Online (AOL) announced on November 24 that it would acquire Netscape Communications for US$4.2 billion, though they say AOL was more interested in other Netscape properties than the browser itself.

On November 14, 2000, AOL released Netscape 6.0 based on Mozilla 0.6 (Version 5 was skipped). Unfortunately, Mozilla 0.6 was still far from stable, so the effect of Netscape 6.0 was to further alienate users from the Netscape brand. It wasn't until August 2001 when Netscape 6.1 appeared based on Mozilla 0.9.2 which was much more robust and almost a year later Netscape 7.0 arrived (a few days after Netscape Communicator 4.8 was released, showing that the efforts of the developers of Netscape remained divided).

After the case in which Microsoft was found guilty of abuse of monopoly power^{[citation needed]} and was sentenced to pay $750 million to AOL and share some technologies, including letting AOL license and distribute Internet Explorer free for 7 years. This was billed as the 'Death of Netscape'.

On July 15, 2003, AOL divested itself of the Netscape brand, removed the logo from its building, and laid off most of the programmers.

News

Currently Netscape is just a brand within AOL, which is used to provide the Internet at low cost. AOL contracted with a Canadian company to release Netscape 8.0 based on Mozilla Firefox.

Tom Drapeau, the company's director, announced that as of February 1, 2008, Netscape would no longer receive updates. On January 28, it was announced that support and development would be extended for another month. The history of Netscape and Netscape Communications Corporation ends with the release of version 9.0.0.6, on February 20, 2008 (although it officially ends on March 1, 2008).

Some people think this strategy was to outshine Microsoft and support the Mozilla Foundation.

Products released by Netscape

The initial line of Netscape products:

• Netscape Navigator: Internet browser for Windows, Macintosh, Unix and GNU/Linux
• Netsite Communications Web server, with a web-based communication interface
• Netsite Commerce web server: simplified secure connections (with SSL)
• Netscape Proxy Server

Other Netscape products:

• Netscape Personal Edition
• Netscape Communicator: (a researcher who included tools for email, news, calendar and composing web pages, also included AOL Instant Messenger and RealAudio)
• Netscape FastTrack and Enterprise: Web server
• Netscape Collabra Server
• Netscape Directory Server
• Netscape Messaging Server
• Netscape Certificate Server
• Netscape Calendar Server
• Netscape Compass Server
• Netscape Application Server
• Netscape Publishing System
• Netscape Xpert Servers
  • ECxpert
  • SellerXpert
  • BuyerXpert
  • BillerXpert
  • TradingXpert
  • CommerceXpert