Netscape Communications was a popular computer services company in the 1990s that offered a web browser, Navigator. It was originally named Mosaic before it was renamed Navigator and quickly became successful with the growing interest in the World Wide Web. Many versions of Netscape included functionalities for browsing, authoring HTML pages, email, and reading newsgroups.
Netscape was predominantly popular in terms of number of users and usability, but it was quickly overrun by Microsoft s Internet Explorer (IE). Over time, IE invested capital in programming that eventually resulted in a more stable browser compared to Netscape s feature-laden version.
Components of Netscape
Netscape included the following components:
- Netscape Navigator
People oftentimes say Netscape even if they only mean the browser. However, Netscape Navigator refers to the browser in the Netscape suite of programs.
- Netscape Mail
This served as the application for email messaging and reading Usenet newsgroups. It allowed users to access and manage multiple email accounts in one place.
- Netscape Composer
This was designed to create HTML-based documents for the web. Users made tables or lists and added links and images to other pages using the toolbar buttons of Netscape Composer.
- Integrated AOL Instant Messenger (AIM)
This feature allowed users to communicate with anyone who used AIM. AIM was compatible with the AOL Instant Messenger standalone version.
Why did Netscape fail?
Aside from its feature-laden browser, here are the main reasons why Netscape failed:
- Poor product strategy
After Netscape released Netscape 4.0, they decided to rewrite the code from scratch. As a result, 5.0 was never released and 6.0 was released prematurely due to pressures from AOL. This gave competitors the time advantage to take over the market.
- Poor product planning
Netscape became too engrossed with competing against Internet Explorer that it kept adding features without breaks, preventing re-architecture time for the team. The code base became tangled, making it difficult for Quality Assurance to address.
