see netscape web browser . netscape communications type subsidiary industry internet software & telecommunication founded april 4 1994 ; 22 years ago 1994 04 04 as mosaic communications corporation headquarters mountain view california u.s. as an independent company dulles virginia u.s. after becoming a part of aol key people marc andreessen and jim clark founders ; james barksdale ceo products internet suite web browser internet service provider web portal number of employees 2 500 1 parent aol 1999 present website isp.netscape.com netscape communications formerly known as netscape communications corporation and commonly known as netscape is an american computer services company best known for netscape navigator its web browser . when it was an independent company its headquarters was in mountain view california . 2 netscape s web browser was once dominant in terms of usage share but lost most of that share to internet explorer during the so called first browser war . the usage share of netscape had fallen from over ninety percent in the mid 1990s 3 to less than one percent by the end of 2006 . 4 netscape is credited with javascript the most widely used language for client side scripting of web pages as well as developing the secure sockets layer protocol ssl for securing online communication that was much used 5 before its successor tls took over . netscape stock traded from 1995 until 1999 when it was acquired by aol in a pooling of interests transaction ultimately worth us 10 billion . 6 7 shortly before its acquisition by aol netscape released the source code for its browser and created the mozilla organization to coordinate future development of its product . 8 the mozilla organization rewrote the entire browser s source code based on the gecko rendering engine ; 9 all future netscape releases were based on this rewritten code . the gecko engine would later be used to power the mozilla foundation s firefox browser . under aol netscape s browser development continued until december 2007 when aol announced that the company would stop supporting the netscape browser as of early 2008 . 10 11 aol has continued to use the netscape brand in recent years to market a discount internet service provider . 12 13 contents 1 history 1.1 early years 1.2 open sourcing 1.3 acquisition by america online 1.4 disbanding 1.5 final release of the browser 2 software 2.1 classic releases 2.1.1 netscape navigator versions 0.9 4.08 2.1.2 netscape communicator versions 4.0 4.8 2.2 mozilla based releases 2.2.1 netscape 6 versions 6.0 6.2.3 2.2.2 netscape 7 versions 7.0 7.2 2.3 mozilla firefox based releases 2.3.1 netscape browser version 8.0 8.1.3 2.3.2 netscape navigator version 9.0 2.4 end of development and support 2.5 mozilla thunderbird based releases 2.5.1 netscape messenger 9 3 product list 3.1 initial product line 3.2 later netscape products 3.3 propeller 3.4 netscape search 3.5 other sites 3.6 netscape technologies 4 current services 4.1 netscape internet service 4.2 netscape.com 4.3 dmoz 4.4 netscape forum center 5 see also 6 references 7 further reading 8 external links history edit early years edit netscape communications wants you to forget all the highway metaphors you ve ever heard about the internet . instead think about an encyclopedia one with unlimited graphically rich pages connections to e mail and files and access to internet newsgroups and online shopping . netscape navigator macworld may 1995 14 netscape was the first company to attempt to capitalize on the nascent world wide web . 15 16 it was originally founded under the name mosaic communications corporation on april 4 1994 the brainchild of jim clark who had recruited marc andreessen as co founder and kleiner perkins caufield & byers as investors . the first meeting between clark and andreessen was never truly about a software or service like netscape but more about a product that was similar to nintendo . 17 clark recruited other early team members from sgi and ncsa mosaic . jim barksdale came on board as ceo in january 1995 . 16 jim clark and marc andreessen originally created a 20 page concept pitch for an online gaming network to nintendo for the nintendo 64 console but a deal was never reached . marc andreessen explains if they had shipped a year earlier we probably would have done that instead of netscape . 18 18 the company s first product was the web browser called mosaic netscape 0.9 released on october 13 1994 . within four months of its release it had already taken three quarters of the browser market . 17 it became the main browser for internet users in such a short time due to its superiority over other competition like mosaic . 17 this browser was subsequently renamed netscape navigator and the company took the netscape name coined by employee greg sands 16 although it was also a trademark of cisco systems 19 on november 14 1994 20 to avoid trademark ownership problems with ncsa where the initial netscape employees had previously created the ncsa mosaic web browser . the mosaic netscape web browser did not use any ncsa mosaic code . 21 the internal codename for the company s browser was mozilla which stood for mosaic killer as the company s goal was to displace ncsa mosaic as the world s number one web browser . 22 a cartoon godzilla like lizard mascot was drawn by artist employee dave titus 23 which went well with the theme of crushing the competition . the mozilla mascot featured prominently on netscape s web site in the company s early years . however the need to project a more professional image especially towards corporate clients led to this being removed . original green and purple mozilla mascot a godzilla like lizard which represented the company s goal of producing the browser that would be the mosaic killer . on august 9 1995 netscape made an extremely successful ipo . the stock was set to be offered at us 14 per share but a last minute decision doubled the initial offering to us 28 per share . the stock s value soared to us 75 during the first day of trading nearly a record for first day gain . the stock closed at us 58.25 which gave netscape a market value of us 2.9 billion . while it was unusual for a company to go public prior to becoming profitable netscape s revenues had in fact doubled every quarter in 1995 . 24 the success of this ipo subsequently inspired the use of the term netscape moment to describe a high visibility ipo that signals the dawn of a new industry . 25 26 during this period netscape also pursued a publicity strategy crafted by rosanne siino then head of public relations packaging andreessen as the company s rock star . 27 the events of this period ultimately landed andreessen barefoot on the cover of time magazine . 28 netscape advertised that the web is for everyone and stated one of its goals was to level the playing field among operating systems by providing a consistent web browsing experience across them . the netscape web browser interface was identical on any computer . netscape later experimented with prototypes of a web based system which would enable users to access and edit their files anywhere across a network no matter what computer or operating system they happened to be using . this did not escape the attention of microsoft which viewed the commoditization of operating systems as a direct threat to its bottom line i.e. a move from windows to another operating system would yield a similar browsing experience thus reducing barriers to change . it is alleged that several microsoft executives visited the netscape campus in june 1995 to propose dividing the market an allegation denied by microsoft and if true would have breached antitrust laws which would have allowed microsoft to produce web browser software for windows while leaving all other operating systems to netscape . 29 netscape refused the proposition . microsoft released version 1.0 of internet explorer as a part of the windows 95 plus pack add on . according to former spyglass developer eric sink internet explorer was based not on ncsa mosaic as commonly believed but on a version of mosaic developed at spyglass 30 which itself was based upon ncsa mosaic . microsoft quickly released several successive versions of internet explorer bundling them with windows never charging for them financing their development and marketing with revenues from other areas of the company . this period of time became known as the browser wars in which netscape communicator and internet explorer added many new features and went through many version numbers not always in a logical fashion in attempts to outdo each other . but internet explorer had the upper hand as the amount of manpower and capital dedicated to it eventually surpassed the resources available in netscape s entire business . by version 3.0 ie was roughly a feature for feature equivalent of netscape communicator and by version 4.0 it was generally considered to be more stable on windows than on the macintosh platform . microsoft also targeted other netscape products with free workalikes such as the internet information server iis a web server which was bundled with windows nt . netscape could not compete with this strategy . in fact it didn t attempt to . netscape navigator was not free to the general public until january 1998 31 while internet explorer and iis have always been free or came bundled with an operating system and or other applications . meanwhile netscape faced increasing criticism for the bugs in its products ; critics claimed that the company suffered from featuritis putting a higher priority on adding new features than on making them work properly . this was particularly true with netscape navigator 2 which was only on the market for 5 months in early 1996 before being replaced by netscape navigator 3 . the tide of public opinion having once lauded netscape as the david to microsoft s goliath steadily turned negative especially when netscape experienced its first bad quarter at the end of 1997 and underwent a large round of lay offs in january 1998 . later former netscape executives mike homer and peter currie described the period as hectic and crazy and that the company was undone by factors both internal and external . 32 open sourcing edit january 1998 was also the month that netscape started the open source mozilla project . netscape publicly released the source code of netscape communicator 4.0 in the hopes that it would become a popular open source project . it placed this code under the netscape public license which was similar to the gnu general public license but allowed netscape to continue to publish proprietary work containing the publicly released code . however after having released the communicator 4.0 code this way netscape proceeded to work on communicator 4.5 which was focused on improving email and enterprise functionality . it eventually became clear that the communicator 4.0 browser was too difficult to develop and open source development was halted on this codebase . instead the open source development shifted to a next generation browser built from scratch . using the newly built gecko layout engine this browser had a much more modular architecture than communicator 4.0 and was therefore easier to develop with a large number of programmers . it also included an xml user interface language named xul that allowed single development of a user interface that ran on windows macintosh and unix . the slogan for this open sourcing effort free the lizard carried comedic sexual overtones . the united states department of justice filed an antitrust case against microsoft in may 1998 . netscape was not a plaintiff in the case though its executives were subpoenaed and it contributed much material to the case including the entire contents of the bad attitude internal