It was the year 1990 something and the browser wars were just starting up. Internet Explorer was already been released which was based off the NCSA Mosaic browser. But another browser came out and started to change the way the internet behaved.
April of 1994
The browser was once dominant but lost to IE in the 1990’s it was far better browser to navigate the thing called the internet or worldwide web. This sparked what is called a browser war.
Yes, IE and Netscape battled it out for the best browser.,
IPO
In 1995 it launched an IPO and it went from $28 a share to $75 dollars at the end for the day it closed at $58.25 for a market value of $2.9 million. Which was good for Netscape it made it a popular web browser.
Microsoft
Took notice of this product and they didn’t like it one bit, something to challenge them seemed just wrong. Microsoft got sued but Netscape wasn’t part of it.
America Online (AOL)
In 1998, AOL came a knocking on the door and they did a stock swap and that was valued at $4.2 billion, yes that is a billion dollars. Before the merger was closed in 1999 the value of Netscape was at $10 billion. That is when the popular browser started to fall flat on their face. It just went downhill from there. By 2007 the market share was as follows:
- IE 77.4%
- Firefox 16%
- Netscape .6%
It officially died on March 1, 2008, after a final release on Feb. 20, 2008
In my opinion
To this day I would prefer anything but IE. I used Netscape for everything and everywhere. However, there where certain sites designed with IE in mind and still to this day you can only use IE with certain programs. Netscape was a far better and superior product. But bad management ruined it. Yes, it made others come out and play. Which is good.
Citation
Information for this article was taken from Wikipedia
