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A complete walkthrough getting historical browsers running in a modern environment — through emulation, virtual machines, and preserved installers — to see the actual software behind the browser wars firsthand.
Less than three years after its landmark IPO, Netscape agreed to be acquired by AOL in an all-stock deal — a merger meant to counter Microsoft that critics immediately doubted, given the two companies' very different cultures.
Facing a losing battle against Internet Explorer, Netscape made an unprecedented move for a major commercial software company: giving away the source code to its flagship product, and creating Mozilla to steward it.
In the mid-1990s, which browser you used determined how much of the web actually worked for you. Here's how a startup's early dominance collapsed against a bundled competitor in under four years.
A company with no profit went public at $28 a share and closed its first day at $58.25, more than doubling in value in hours. Many historians point to this single afternoon as the moment internet mania actually began.