What Were the Critical Drivers of Netscape's Early Success?

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