The very concept of the web browser began with a humble piece of software called NCSA Mosaic, all the way back in 1993. It was soon eclipsed by Netscape Navigator, and later Internet Explorer, which became the titans of the 1990s browser market. In turn, they too would falter. Navigator’s dying corpse ended up feeding what would become Mozilla Firefox, and Internet Explorer later morphed into the unexceptional browser known as Edge.

Few of us have had any reason to think about Netscape Navigator since its demise in 2008. And yet, the name lingers on. A zombie from a forgotten age, risen again to haunt us today.

The Bigger They Are, The Harder They Fall

Netscape Navigator was once the browser to use, dominating its rivals with a 90% market share. Unfortunately, that reign of glory only lasted until the last few years of the 1990s, when Internet Explorer began to embrace, extend, and extinguish. Explorer was included with every copy of Windows sold, it was distributed by AOL and minor ISPs alike, and it was better at keeping up with, or outright creating, new standards at a time when Netscape’s developers became stuck in the quagmire of an an increasingly aging codebase.

Netscape was great right through the 4.0s, but Netscape 5 was cancelled, and Netscape 6 was a mess. The company was bought out by AOL, and the product limped on into the early 2000s, but it was eventually declared dead on March 1, 2008. With almost no user base to speak of at that point, it simply did not make sense to continue.

You might think, then, that the Netscape name died with the browser and that it would never be seen or heard again. Unfortunately, that’s almost never the case when it comes to recognizable names in the tech world. Somebody always seems to hang on to the rights to do something with them, even if it’s usually unsuccessful. Sometimes it goes well, but more often than not, it amounts to little more than a hackneyed old logo slapped on a product that nobody really cares about.

*Connect to the Internet by dialing up the Netscape ISP! Ironically founded several years after the browser ceased to be relevant at all. Credit: Netscape ISP via Web Archive*

In the case of Netscape, the branding rights became AOL’s when it first purchased the business in 1998. It would go on to use the name to start a dial-up ISP in 2004, called Netscape Internet Service. It’s unclear precisely why this was done, given that AOL already was an ISP in its own right, which ran dial-up service all the way up until September 2025.

But for whatever reason, Netscape ISP kicked off operations on January 8, 2004, initially offering unlimited use for just $9.95 a month. Notably, it seems the name was the point—with the barebones site noting that you were getting a “reliable Internet connection from a name you trust.” It was also somewhat different from the contemporary AOL offering, in that you didn’t need a CD full of bloatware to access the service. The signup site went so far as to explain that you didn’t need to use a Netscape Navigator browser to access the service; any would do. As a cool bonus, you got a sweet “@netscape.com” email address when you signed up.

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