(1) (Netscape Communications Corporation, Mountain View, CA, www.netscape.com) Part of America Online (AOL), Netscape specializes in Web software, including the Netscape Web browser. Founded in 1994 by James Clark, former patriarch of SGI, and Marc Andreessen, who, along with Eric Bina, created the Mosaic browser at the University of Illinois, Netscape quickly became the number one topic of conversation as Internet and Web fever enveloped the nation in the mid-1990s.

Netscape seriously impacted the status quo. Igniting dot-com fever, it reached a market cap of $2 billion so fast that it became the most successful public stock offering in history. It also caused Microsoft to restructure its entire product line to become Internet compliant. In record time, Microsoft responded with its own browser that it gave away free and then built into Windows 98. As a result, Netscape was forced to make its browser free, all the while watching its market share dwindle as Microsoft's leverage made Internet Explorer (IE) the dominant on-ramp to the Internet.

The Netscape browser was one of the main issues in the Microsoft antitrust trial, during which Netscape was acquired by AOL (see AOL).

(2) A Web browser from Netscape. In 2005, Version 8.0 was introduced for Windows with a Web site rating system that warns users if a site is suspicious. For trustworthy sites, it renders pages using Internet Explorer technology, but for dubious sites, pages are displayed in Gecko, the same rendering engine used in Firefox.

Version 8.0 integrates toolbar buttons for weather, movies, stocks and other information, and a Webmail button can be configured to go directly to all the user's Web-based e-mail accounts. It also lets different family members have their own bookmarks and settings. For more information, visit http://browser.netscape.com.

Although it made the Gecko browsing engine optional in Version 8.0, starting with Version 6.0 in 2000, Netscape was based on Gecko. Also, as of Netscape 6.0, the Navigator name was dropped. Netscape Navigator was the browser's official name, but from day one, most everybody called the browser just plain "Netscape." In the Mozilla Foundation's suites of Internet applications, the browser function is still called Navigator (see Mozilla).

The Final Blow
In December 2007, AOL announced that February 1, 2008 would be the last update for Netscape, although it would still be available for download. See Netscape Communicator.