- Before graphics-enabled browsing and the explosion of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s, going online essentially consisted of dialing into a bulletin-board system through a modem, leaving or reading posts and logging off. When online services such as CompuServe appeared, they were text-based--the user typed in a series of commands to navigate the system.
- A University of Illinois student, Marc Andreessen, developed the code for a browser in 1992 with fellow student Eric Bina. Their work was based on an original concept of hypertext markup protocol invented at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland. The students' fledgling browser was called Mosaic, and the program represented a departure from text-only Internet access. Mosaic could present text and pictures, and the user only had to type in a site's server address to view it--no master list of commands was needed.
- In 1994, Andreessen formed Mosaic Communications with California entrepreneur Jim Clark and began work on a browser product. As the Mosaic browser was developed into a commercial offering, the University of Illinois filed a lawsuit for copyright infringement, saying it owned the code because it was created on its campus. Andreessen and Clark settled the lawsuit, renamed their company Netscape and planned a December release of their Netscape Navigator. The university sold its code license to Microsoft, who began work on its own browser.
- Navigator was offered to users with a no-charge trial period, after which the customer was require to pay for the program. This business model lasted a few years as Microsoft and Netscape fought for browser market share. Microsoft launched a free version of Internet Explorer in 1995, and Netscape answered by making Navigator a free product in 1998. By then, nearly all Web pages were designed to take advantage of the graphical user interface supported by both browsers.
- Rapidly losing market share to Microsoft in what was known as the Browser War, the formerly dominant Netscape merged with America Online in 1999. Netscape Navigator was transformed from a proprietary offering to an open-source program--developers around the world could help improve the code. This new approach was supported by the creation of the Mozilla Foundation, which went on to develop open-source programs such as the Firefox browser. As other browsers crowded the market, Navigator faded away. AOL stopped supporting the product in 2008.
