Eng
1. What were the critical drivers of Netscape’s early success?
In the mid-to-late 1990s there was a consumer internet revolution and, when Netscape was
launched in 1994, it was well positioned to take advantage of it. This revolution combined with
the knowledge and vision of the founders, who believed that “browser would become a
universal interface for accessing and sharing information (...) and that in the future the ability to
communicate would be far more important than desktops and applications” transformed
Navigator into a significant software success. This vision conducted Netscape to develop a
complete client/server solution based in open standards in order to create an integrated world
network through browsers.
One of the most important success drivers was that Navigator was available for different
operating systems (Windows, Macintosh, Unix, etc.).
In 1994 Mosaic was on its way to becoming the world's standard interface, nevertheless
Navigator 1.0 was 10 times faster than Mosaic when downloading web pages and supported
multiple sessions simultaneously. When used together with Commerce Server it also supported
transmission encryption and server authentication.
Navigator’s second version launched after 9 months, supported Java applications, which
enabled some interactive applications to be installed over the software. It also allowed music
and video over the browser. Netscape developed also email, new server products and also
some features for commerce such as: internet publishing and service providers.
The pricing policy for Navigator was free for academic and non-profit users, making it a “free
but not free”1 browser, and at the end one year Netscape had more 10 million users. On the
other hand, despite the fact that everyone could get the software through the web it was also
distributed...
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