Netscape Navigator

Year: 1994
Creator: Marc Andreessen, Jim Clark
Company: Netscape Communications (founded as Mosaic Communications)
Location: 501 East Middlefield Road, Mountain View, California
Room: The Gold Rush ↗

Description

Netscape Navigator is a graphical web browser from Mosaic Communications, the company that Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark founded in April 1994. The disk shown installed version 1.1 of the browser on a Macintosh.

Importance

Navigator helped the web spread to ordinary people and businesses, and Netscape sold its stock to the public in August 1995. Microsoft then gave away Internet Explorer free with Windows. AOL announced a $4.2 billion stock deal for Netscape in November 1998, and it completed the purchase in March 1999.

Interesting fact

Approximately half of the Mosaic browser team at the University of Illinois left in early 1994 to form Netscape with Clark.

Acquisition

America Online · 1999 · $4,200,000,000

Sources

This Day in History: Marc Andreessen Founds Netscape with Jim Clark ↗Computer History Museum · 1994-04-04
Netscape Communications annual report on Form 10-K ↗U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission · 1997-03-28
1995 | Timeline of Computer History ↗Computer History Museum
This Day in History: AOL Buys Netscape ↗Computer History Museum · 1998-11-24
America Online annual report on Form 10-K for fiscal 1999 ↗U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission · 1999