Netscape

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Netscape

(1)Netscape Navigator.

Netscape

(2)Netscape Communications Corporation.

Netscape

(1) For the browser, see Netscape Navigator.

(2) (Netscape Communications Corporation, Mountain View, CA, www.aol.com) Part of America Online (AOL), Netscape was famous for its Navigator browser in the early days of the Web. Founded in 1994 by James Clark, former patriarch of SGI, and Marc Andreessen, who, along with Eric Bina, created the Mosaic browser at the University of Illinois, Netscape quickly became the number one topic regarding the Web as Internet fever enveloped the nation in the mid-1990s.

Netscape ignited dot-com fever, reaching a market cap of USD $2 billion so fast that it became the most successful IPO in history. It also caused Microsoft to restructure its entire product line to become Internet compliant. In record time, Microsoft created the Internet Explorer (IE) browser and gave it away free; then built it into Windows 98. As a result, Netscape was forced to make its browser free and watch its market share dwindle as IE became the dominant on-ramp to the Internet.

The Netscape browser was one of the main issues in the Microsoft antitrust trial, during which Netscape was acquired by AOL (see Netscape Navigator).