In 1995 the only web browser you heard about was Netscape, there were one or two others around but nothing had the market presence of Netscape, well over 90% of the market in the early days. There was all sort of talk that Netscape was the next Microsoft and that Netscape would dominate the PC browser for years to come. At the time many people believed this to be the case but how many times have you heard it said that someone was going to dislodge Microsoft, even in those days?

It was perhaps more believable because at the time Bill Gates took the view that the Internet was just a toy and wasn’t something that was serious to take into account, instead people would use his own proprietary network. However all that changes in late 1995 when Microsoft did an incredible U turn and release Internet Explorer version 1.0 and declared it’s support for the Internet.

Now if Netscape had kept it’s head it could well have been a serious threat to Microsoft, but unfortunately it became an incredibly arrogant company and thought it was the best. As a result it very quickly lost its focus, took its eye off the ball and making the wrong decisions.

In 1996 I was a conference in the US where one of the heads of Netscape was presenting. Cant remember his name unfortunately, but the one thing that I remembered was just how arrogant he was when starting out on the stage, about their position. At the time Netscape was free to use and they were looking at how to really make money and they decided they were going to hit the corporate market, put their focus there and leave the consumer market to chug along on it’s own. At the time what is clear that they didn’t understand was the importance of that consumer market and how it would grow over the next few years and help shape the direction of the Internet. Just chasing the corporate market for the money was the wrong move, it was clear that the consumer would push things in the right direction, even at that early stage.

Ok Microsoft started bundling IE with Windows so yes had an advantage, but look at Firefox it has still been able to make inroads, you have to look at the user and what will make their life easier, what’s simple to use etc.

This past week it was announced that support for Netscape will officially finish, AOL have decided to call it a day. To be honest I thought this moment would have come a few years ago, but it is often to let something go. In the meantime we continue to have IE and Firefox in the field but also out there is Flock, which has been around for a while but they are targeting a specific audience. Will be interesting to see how Firefox performs over the next couple of years.