MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA — In the mid-1990s, Netscape Navigator owned more than 90 percent of the Web-browser market. On March 1st, it quietly faded into history after slipping to a market share of just 0.6-percent.Last week AOL, which bought Netscape Communications Corporation in 1998, shuttered the browser’s support department after halting development last year. AOL recommended diehard Netscape users upgrade to either Firefox or Flock, both of which are built on the same technology underlying Navigator.
Navigator grew up with its creator, Marc Andreeson, who as a college student co-authored the Web’s first popular browser, Mosaic. The first Navigator was released in 1994. Within a year, Microsoft released the first version of its Internet Explorer, and the competition between the two became known as “the browser wars.” Microsoft eventually won, based in part on the company’s ability to bundle IE with its ubiquitous Windows operating systems, leading to a bitter war of words about whether Microsoft engaged in anti-competitive practices. Today IE controls about 80 percent of the browser market. Firefox is the next most popular browser, particularly in Europe, where it enjoys a 28-percent market share.
Netscape users were fanatical in the Web’s early days, and as Netscape’s star began to wane, many switched to the Mozilla Foundation’s Firefox.
“I think we represent the hope that was Netscape,” Mitchell Baker, chairwoman of the Mozilla Foundation, told BBC News. “We have picked up many of the things that Netscape launched, but we’ve taken them further in terms of openness and public participation.”
Baker was one of the first Netscape employees. She and other former Netscape staff members established the Mozilla Foundation after Netscape laid them off in 2003. Firefox, Mozilla’s flagship product, is open source and has been downloaded more than 500 million times worldwide.
Flock is gaining market share as a “new-age” browser because it allows users interact with social-networking sites without having to navigate to their pages. Its president and chief executive officer called Navigator one of the cornerstones upon which the Web’s mass appeal was built.
“Netscape had a critical role in taking all of these zeros and ones — this very academic and technical environment — and giving it a graphical user interface where an average person could come online and consume information,” Shawn Hardin told BBC News. “During its halcyon days, it really felt like the internet and Netscape were really the same thing.”
