The company was founded as Mosaic Communications Corporation on April 4, 1994 by Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark. It released a web browser called "Mosaic Netscape 0.9" on October 13, 1994. This browser subsequently was renamed Netscape Navigator, which became part of the Netscape Communicator suite.
The company had a successful IPO on August 9, 1995. In January 1998, facing strong competition from Microsoft's Internet Explorer, it started the open source Mozilla project.
In October 1998, Netscape acquired Newhoo for the sum of $1 million, renamed it the Open Directory Project, and released its database under an open content license.
America Online on November 24, 1998 announced it would acquire Netscape Communications in a stock-for-stock transaction worth US$4.2 billion. Netscape was acquired by AOL and subsequently became part of Time Warner Inc.
On 15 July, 2003, Time Warner disbanded Netscape. Most of the programmers were fired, and the Netscape logo was removed from the building. Netscape's sole existence is now as a brand name. In particular, AOL plans to release a low cost ISP under the Netscape brand.