Computing
Goodbye Netscape,
and Thanks for All the Fish By
Soumya Sarkar
Many
moons ago, when the world was younger and an infant World
Wide Web was tentatively weaving its virtual strands,
Netscape Navigator redefined browsing and forever changed
the way we looked at the world.
With its owner America Online switching off its life support
Feb 1 after a 13-year run, it's time to thank Netscape for
all the "fish" we caught on the brave new world of the
Internet.
Before Netscape hit the scene, we browsed or leafed through
books, and cattle browsed through grass and foliage.
Ask any youngster today what browsing stands for and you
would see how Netscape, and later other browsers, provided
new meanings to old words.
When Internet access went public in India in August 1995,
Netscape showed us the way the virtual world was unfolding.
We started understanding how knowledge drove development and
civilization in the western world.
We realized fast that the Internet - by making information
and knowledge universally accessible, and giving us virtual
pathways to reach out globally - provided us an opportunity
for the first time ever to sharpen our own development.
How can we ever forget that Netscape led us by the hand to
this new age?
Much water has flowed under the bridge since Netscape was
launched in 1994. Its story is in a way how the Internet
culture developed.
When the consumer Internet revolution arrived in the
mid-1990s, Netscape was well placed to take advantage of it.
With a good mix of features and attractive licensing that
allowed free use for non-commercial purposes, Netscape soon
became the de-facto standard.
Through the late 1990s, Netscape made sure it remained the
technical leader among web browsers. Important new features
included cookies, frames, and JavaScript. These and other
innovations eventually became open standards and were
emulated by other browsers.
America Online originally acquired Netscape for $4.2 billion
in November 1998, a landmark event in the first Web boom.
The meteoric rise of Netscape drew the attention of
Microsoft, which purchased the source code of Mosaic, the
precursor to Netscape, and developed Internet Explorer,
which was initially thought to be a vastly inferior product
than Netscape.
It, however, was successful in weaning away Netscape users
by giving away its Internet Explorer browser for free with
its flagship Windows 95 operating system.
This bundling prompted a charge of monopolistic practice
against Microsoft and earned it the name Big Satan by
Internet evangelists, who believed the World Wide Web should
come with no strings attached.
Microsoft settled the lawsuit and Internet Explorer became
king, with a market share of 95 percent in 2002.
Netscape, however, spawned an open-source project called
Mozilla, in which developers from around the world freely
contribute to writing and testing the software.
Mozilla released its stand-alone browser Firefox in November
2004, which currently has a market share of more than 15
percent in the browser market, mostly at the cost of
Internet Explorer.
For admirers of Netscape, it is a vindication of sorts.
Netscape will always have its place in history, especially
for those that first found their way on to the Web in the
1990s.
Thank you Netscape for being such an able navigator.
(Soumya Sarkar can be contacted at soumya.sarkar@ians.in)
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Many
moons ago, when the world was younger and an infant World
Wide Web was tentatively weaving its virtual strands,
Netscape Navigator redefined browsing and forever changed
the way we looked at the world.