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Ask HN: Why did Marc Andreessen's alma mater make efforts to see Netscape fail?

1 points by varrock ↗ HN
I have been reading about the history of the World Wide Web and am at a point where I am reading about the browser wars. What astonished me was that Marc Andreessen's alma mater essentially did all they could to take down their alumnus's revolutionary Netscape browser. From lawsuits to licensing the Mosaic browser with Spyglass Inc., which then enabled Microsoft to overtake the browser landscape, it was very clear they were seeking Netscape's extinction.

4 comments

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pinewurst
They weren't seeking Netscape's extinction, they were seeking their cut of the innovation gains that they'd originally funded.
varrock
From my understanding, though, the Netscape project was started from scratch as a result of trying to avoid any complications with the Mosaic browser.
pinewurst
For better or worse, the university IP lawyers considered it related enough to sue. (No endorsement implied!)
wmf
If people quit NCSA on Friday and start coding Navigator on Monday, you could call it "from scratch" or you could call it inevitable disclosure. (I don't know the exact timeline.) NCSA had nothing to lose so I don't really blame them for trying every tactic they could to make money from Mosaic once the Web became the next big thing.