The company, whose premium product was the Navigator web browser (originally called Mosaic Netscape 0.9), saw its stock shoot up to $75 per share on the first day of trading, a near-record at the time for any stock's opener.

Netscape Communications, founded by Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark, took wing and at one time held 88 percent of the browser market. And, in fact, Netscape made it clear that it intended to make its browsers available across all computer platforms, a declaration that got Microsoft's attention, because it represented a direct threat to Redmond.

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