What happened to Netscape?

Netscape was an early innovator in the fledgling internet technology industry. Before the internet boomed and became a part of everyday life, Netscape was the first mover as an embryonic search engine providing technological services for content providers to customise web content. Now, with so much user generated content on the web, it is almost incredulous to fathom that in the early 90s, business enterprises existed purely to generate web content.

The Netscape web browser, the then dominant browser in terms of market share, lost the majority of that share to Microsoft's Internet Explorer during what was belatedly described as the first of a number of browser wars.

Following immense competitive pressures, consumer usage of Netscape fell from over 90% market share in the mid 1990s to less than 1% by the mid 2000s. A number of strategic decisions led to Netscape's rapid demise including the charging of consumers a monthly fee to use the browser.

The decision by Microsoft to load Internet Explorer for free on all new Windows powered computers pretty much rendered Netscape's business plan obsolete.

Interestingly, American and European authorities launched anti-trust action against Microsoft following massive anti-competitive competitive breaches.

The action undertaken by both American and European authorities against Microsoft saw regulatory authorities winning large settlements forcing Microsoft to reveal source codes or face further fines. The damage however had already been done to Netscape, it was a case of too little, much too late.

Netscape, credited with developing the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol securing online communication with SSL technology is still widely used to secure internet communications.

JavaScript, the highly successful client-side scripting of web pages, another Netscape innovation, is still the most widely adopted programming language.

Netscape was a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ exchange; floated in 1995, the stock was publically traded an until 1999 when it was acquired by America Online (AOL) in a pooling-of-interests transaction.

The deal, ultimately worth $10 billion USD involved complex cash and script transactions ensuring Netscape technology was utilised by a dominant internet business.

Shortly before the AOL acquisition, Netscape released the source code for the browser creating the foundations of the Firefox browser with the Mozilla Corporation coordinating future future development of the browser.

Mozilla fully rewrote the entire source code with all future Netscape releases based on the rewritten code, the protocols now power the successful free-to-download Firefox browser.

One could argue that while the Netscape browser is now an almost forgotten relic of internet history, a number of innovations outlived the initial product forming the basis of contemporary online software.

The product life cycle of the information age is relatively short, the initial challenge was how to not only develop the technical aspects of the business but how to develop a sustainable business plan generating revenues to finance the research and development providing a return on investment.

Out of the ashes of Netscape rose Firefox, technically the best of the current browsers with the strongest technical protocols.