Microsoft Just Bought Netscape, the Hottest Browser of the 90s!

[froggyboy604]

As AOL, in the equivalent of selling sperm to pay the cable bill, offloaded a billion dollar's worth of patents to Microsoft, something strange happened: the latter became the owner of Netscape. Remember Netscape? The browser. From 1994. A steal!

AllThingsD's Peter Kafka was clued in to the acquisition, which is particularly fun given that Microsoft's Internet Explorer absolutely slaughtered Netscape long ago, but then began to bleed market share to Firefox, Netscape's distant progeny. Anyway! Funny how things turn out.

So what will MS do with a bunch of crusty patents from 20 years ago? Beats us. Internet Explorer is finally a damn decent browser on its own, so it's hard to imagine how it could improve with Netscape's dried out mummy bones. Maybe some sort of mid-90s filter, to make your favorite sites aged and ugly for nostalgia purposes? [AllThingsD]

http://gizmodo.com/5900436/microsoft-just-bought-netscape-the-hottest-browser-of-the-90s

Isn't Firefox and Mozilla based on Netscape. I wonder what this means for Firefox, and would IE finally change and start using the Netscape browser or parts of it in IE instead of the default IE browser.

I like Netscape in the 90s since it was fast, easy to use, and free.

 

[hissae2]

I never got to use netscape because I wasn't born until 1996.

 

[Black Angel]

Whoa Netscape, is still around? I haven't heard that name since 2001.

In other news, Chrysler just bought the Yugo..

 

[Demon_Skeith]

I've herd of netscape, thought they went under years ago though.

 

[froggyboy604]

Netscape still lives on inside Firefox and other Firefox based browsers like SeaMonkey since FireFox and Mozilla uses most of the code from Netscape which is owned by AOL. AOL Netscape started/funded the Mozilla foundation for many years since 2003.

If AOL still develop Netscape then Firefox might not be as popular or exist at all since it was AOL which funded Mozilla with millions of dollars.

On July 15, 2003, AOL announced that it would close down its browser division, which was in essence Netscape's Mozilla. AOL laid off most of Netscape's employees and hackers, except for some who were transferred to other divisions. Netscape signs were seen being pulled off its building, confirming what many took as the end of Netscape. AOL will be keeping the Netscape brand for its portal, but the company will no longer pay anyone to develop the Mozilla codebase.
On the same day, the Mozilla Foundation was created.[sup][6][/sup] The Foundation is a non-profit organization composed primarily of developers and staff from Mozilla Organization and owns the Mozilla trademark (but not the copyright to the source code, which is retained by the individual and corporate contributors, but licensed under the GPL, MPL and LGPL). It received initial $2 million donations from AOL, IBM, Sun Microsystems, and Red Hat, and $300,000 from Mitch Kapor.
Many people had been expecting this after AOL reached a settlement with competitor, Microsoft, with a deal for the AOL software to use Internet Explorer for the next 7 years. Netscape had always been seen as a bargaining chip for AOL against Microsoft.

http://en.wikipedia....ndence_from_AOL

 

[tetutato]

Lolz... I can't imagine anyone still using that antique.

 

[froggyboy604]

Actually, SeaMonkey http://www.seamonkey-project.org/ is the modern open source Firefox version of Netscape which still use the same theme as Netscape. It looks like Netscape, but it use the Firefox code which is based on Netscape's Mozilla open source code.

Seamonkey still has a pretty big user based for people who like the Netscape theme over the Firefox theme which is too modern, and weird for some.

 

[Demon_Skeith]

I forgot I used it back in HS, it was a piece of crap.

 

[froggyboy604]

I liked Netscape. I found it better then Internet Explorer back in the day since Netscape crashed less. I used Netscape in Elementary, and High School as well. I still think Netscape was the best browser in the 90s because Firefox, Chrome, Mozilla did not exist till the early 2000s.

 

[tetutato]

Well I guess it comes down to how much they paid for this... And exactly how much is that?

 

[froggyboy604]

AOL offloaded a billion dollar's worth of patents to Microsoft

Microsoft just paid a billion dollars for a lot of AOL internet patents which included Netscape's patents. Now Microsoft owns its biggest web browser competition in the 90s.

 

[Demon_Skeith]

well now it's 20 years later and both are fail.

 

[froggyboy604]

Internet Explorer is actually making a comeback because more Firefox and Chrome users are using a different browser according to http://news.yahoo.co...-091541630.html

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) is rapidly growing its market share at the expense of Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome after close to a year of decline, says internet tracker Net Applications.

Net Applications states that IE gained 0.99% in March to reach a total of 53.83% of the global market while rival browsers Firefox and Chrome saw a slight drop of 0.37% and 0.33% over the past month respectively.

My guest are more people are switching to Apple Mac, iPad, iPhone, and other Mac device which uses Apple Safari as its main browser, and Apple Safari is like Google Chrome since they both use the open source Webkit Web browser as its browser's code.

Linux users are probably switching to Chromium web browser which is one of the fastest open source browser in the world.

 

[Demon_Skeith]

Well firefox is going to crap, so I can somewhat believe that.