Netscape — the first victim of the Browser War
Netscape or Netscape Navigator was one of the first game-changing applications in the internet’s history. Launched by Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark, it was a highly innovative and had absolutely zero competition in 1995. The 2 founders had worked on the NCSA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications) Mosaic Browser as a part of the company Mosaic Communications Corporations which they founded. The company itself was renamed as Netscape Communications, launching the Netscape Navigator 1.0
When Netscape launched its browser in early 1995, it created quite a stir and ended up as the sole portal to access the web. Microsoft was desperately working to build its Internet Explorer having licensed Mosaic’s tech. On August 9th 1995, Netscape went public in its IPO at $28 per share, and at the close of the day, it was valuated at $3 billion! But Microsoft not far behind, and on the very same day launched Windows 95 and Windows 95 Plus which included Internet Explorer and TCP/IP to access the web. This was the birth of the product that would go on to eventually kill Netscape.
Netscape and Internet Explorer kept trading blows over the next 2 years. But by the time Internet Explorer 3.0 was launched, Microsoft had caught up with Netscape and could offer all the features Netscape had. To differentiate itself from Microsoft, Netscape launched decided to target the enterprise segment and launched the Netscape Communicator 4.0 bundle package in late 1996. Communicator included a web editor, email app and an address book similar to present day email clients. But this application failed to make much of an impact.
Netscape continued to focus in parallel on both Navigator and Communicator, but Windows bundled with Internet Explorer continued to pose stiff competition to Netscape. This rivalry took another bitter turn when Microsoft dropped its IE logo on the launch day of its Internet Explorer 4.0 in Netscape’s office. Netscape in retaliation, toppled the IE logo and placed the Mozilla dragon over it.
The company was clearly struggling and AOL purchased Netscape for $4.2 billion in 1998. But then what caused the downfall of Netscape? Development efforts were rather slow. After the release of Netscape 4.0 in 1996, the next version Netscape 6.0 took more than 3 years and was launched in 2000. There was no version 5.0. Three years is too long a period between versions. Customers have to be engaged by offering them updated versions based on user feedback. But then why did Netscape wait so long between the releases?
Because Netscape made the single worst strategic blunder that any software product company could make — they decided to rewrite code from scratch. Netscape clearly hadn’t learnt from history. Borland made the same mistake when they rewrote Quattro Pro (spreadsheet software) from scratch. Microsoft also came close to committing the same blunder when they rewrote the Word code from scratch as a part of Project Pyramid. Fortunately the older version of Word was also in active development, so they had something to ship.
This is primarily because programmers in general are not very enthusiastic about code modification compared to building something grand and brand new. Also, its harder to read code than to rewrite. It is this misconception that new code is better than old code that has led to the downfall of these companies. Old code is tried and tested. Old code has tonnes of bug-fixes (that undoubtedly make it harder to read) but nevertheless make it more robust.
Netscape by choosing to rewrite the code from scratch gave three years of time to Microsoft to catch-up and that’s exactly what Microsoft did. By April 2000, Netscape 6.0 was done and dusted. Another 2 years later, Netscape 7.0 was launched. In 2003, AOL laid off most of the Netscape staff and outsourced subsequent versions 8.0 and 8.1 between 2005 and 2007. But the public wasn’t interested any longer. Finally, the last version, Netscape Navigator 9 was released in January 2007. Ultimately AOL pulled the plug on Netscape in February 2008.
Netscape wasn’t able to hold its ground in the ‘browser wars’ with rival Internet Explorer, and today, Netscape is only a memory to some 90s kids. But Netscape’s open-source transition into Mozilla resulted in Firefox, which has been fairly successful. Netscape certainly did not die in vain. Its rivalry with Microsoft is what has resulted in innovation in the browsing space today.
Source:
https://www.engadget.com/2014/05/10/history-of-netscape/
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-never-do-part-i/
