Unearthing the origins
of Firefox
America Online, which has see-sawed over its pricey Netscape acquisition for years, is once again readying the brand for a comeback try, CNET News.com has learned.
The move is a surprise, considering the company laid off hundreds of Netscape programmers less than a year ago and is reported to be developing a standalone browser based on Microsoft's rival Internet Explorer technology.
Even so, sources familiar with the plans said the Time Warner unit is putting the finishing touches on new versions of the Netscape browser and Web portal. The company expects to unveil them with a recharged marketing strategy in December or January.
AOL declined to detail the new Netscape's features, but sources familiar with the company's plans said this browser was a distinct effort from the IE-based release also in the works. AOL also kept mum on details of the portal or the marketing push beyond promising a launch near the New Year.
"Netscape continues to be one of the most valued brands and one of the most valued products on the Internet," said AOL spokesman Andrew Weinstein. "And the Netscape team is working hard to take advantage of those strong attributes to re-energise the brand and its products."
March 1993
Mid-1994
October 1994
November 1994
August 1995
August 1995
August 1996
October 1997
January 1998
November 1998
April 2000
May 2003
July 2003
September 2004
Key dates in browser history
Marc Andreessen announces the Mosaic browser, written in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Illinois and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.
Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen found Mosaic Communications (later Netscape).
First public beta of the Netscape Browser is released.
Mosaic Communications renames
itself Netscape Communications after a legal battle.
Netscape goes public at US$28 a share. It closes that day at US$58.25.
Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 1.0.
Netscape's lawyers complain to the US Department of Justice about Microsoft.
Justice Department charges Microsoft with violating terms of a 1995 consent decree.
Netscape creates Mozilla.org and says a new browser will be free and open source.
America Online buys Netscape for US$4.2 billion.
Federal judge says Microsoft abused its monopoly to capture the browser market.
AOL agrees to continue using the Internet Explorer browser and settles antitrust claims against Microsoft for US$750 million.
The Mozilla Foundation is created and AOL spins off Mozilla as an independent foundation.
Preview of Mozilla's Firefox 1.0 is released.
Microsoft's dominant IE browser hasn't enjoyed a significant feature update in years, opening up opportunities for small challengers including Netscape progeny Firefox, Opera Software's Opera and Apple Computer's Safari browser.
Even as a glimmer of competition opens up in the browser market, a weakened Netscape could find itself sidelined after years of abuse at the hands of Microsoft and subsequent neglect after AOL agreed to purchase the company for about US$5 billion in 1999.
"It certainly was one of the most powerful brands on the Internet at one point," said Jupiter analyst Michael Gartenberg. "However, that brand has been severely tarnished over the last several years. It's hard to see how they're going to (revitalise the brand) at a time when there's been such a decline in terms of consumers' perception of what Netscape is all about."
Microsoft maintains its stranglehold on the browser market. But the company is beginning to feel momentum for change thanks to mounting dissatisfaction with features and severe security problems with IE. Major computer security groups such as the US Department of Homeland Security's Computer Emergency Readiness Team recently recommended Web surfers switch from Microsoft's browser, although some of that criticism has since been blunted with last month's release of a major IE security update for users of Windows XP.
In an intriguing twist, the major catalyst for competition has come not from commercial browser efforts but rather collectives of open-source programmers. Open-source project licenses let others both use the software at no charge and contribute to its development.
Although Netscape gave birth to the most important open-source browser group, Mozilla, AOL has yet to capitalise on Mozilla's recent successes. While Mozilla and its Firefox preview releases win raves, AOL continues to use IE as the default browser for its proprietary online service and as the basis for its planned standalone browser. In recent months AOL has barely promoted Netscape 7, which was based on pre-Firefox versions of Mozilla and most recently updated in August.
Even before its full-version 1.0 release -- now scheduled for the second week of November -- Firefox has exceeded its goal of 1 million downloads in 10 days, surpassed 4.3 million downloads in one month, won plaudits from reviewers, and earned the interest of corporate developers, including Nokia. Scattered metrics suggest the browser might be cutting into Microsoft's still-overwhelming lead.
Even Netscape founder Marc Andreessen, who last year dismissed the state of browser navigation as "an embarrassment," recently weighed in with praise for Firefox, which he said along with open-source based Safari could threaten IE.
One of Andreessen's cohorts from the early Netscape days called that wishful thinking, noting that Microsoft has the resources to defend its browser dominance should a serious threat ever develop.
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