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aboutNetscape was the first widely adopted Web browser and arguably the biggest influence on the Internet as we know it today. Born out of the NCSA Mosaic project Netscape version 1 was released in December 1994 and quickly gained up to 80% market share until Microsoft belatedly woke up to the potential of the Internet. In 1995 Microsoft started it's anti-competitive practices and 'the browser wars' by bundling Internet Explorer 3, a 'middleware' application, with Windows 95 and thus leveraging it's Windows monopoly by giving away a competitor to Netscape for free. In January 1998 Netscape Communications threw in the towel and gave away the programming code behind Netscape. This move spawned the mozilla.org project; a team of programmers who took on the Netscape code, adopted Netscape's internal name - mozilla - and set about developing a free, standards compliant Internet Explorer alternative. In October 1998 Netscape released the last of it's own browsers (version 4.5) and in November 1998 Netscape Communications was taken over by America Online (AOL) who demonstrated faith in Netscape by supplying Internet Explorer to it's customers. Two years after mozilla.org started Netscape (AOL) released a 'Netscape' - version 6 - developed by the mozilla.org project. If Netscape wasn't dead by this time, version 6 certainly pushed it into a coma as the underlying immature mozilla.org code (0.6 milestone) produced a browser littered with bugs. Not until 'Netscape' 6.2 did the world receive a successor to Netscape 4.5 that was usable. 'Netscape' 7, released August 2002, was the first 'Netscape' based on mature mozilla.org code (version 1.0.1). However with AOL and Microsoft reaching an agreement allowing AOL to use Internet Explorer for another 7 years, AOL sacking 50 Netscape employees, the formation of the Mozilla Foundation and the splintering and now narrowing of the the Mozillla focus into Firebird and Thunderbird, the future is very cloudy for 'Netscape' users. |
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