(1) For the browser, see
Netscape Navigator.
(2) (Netscape Communications Corporation, Mountain View, CA) Part of America Online (AOL), Netscape became famous because of its Navigator browser in the early days of the Web. 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 regarding the Web as Internet fever enveloped the world in the mid-1990s. James Barksdale was the CEO of Netscape from 1995 until it merged with AOL in 1999.
Netscape Ignited Dot-com Fever
Netscape reached a market cap of $2 billion so fast that the company became the most successful IPO in history. It also caused Microsoft to restructure its entire product line to become Internet compliant (see
Internet Explorer). The Netscape browser was a primary issue in a U.S. antitrust trial against Microsoft in 1998, causing Netscape to be acquired by AOL (see
Netscape Navigator).