Netscape Logo

About Netscape

Netscape was an American software company best known for the Netscape Navigator web browser. It was founded on 4 April 1994 by Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark as Mosaic Communications Corporation, and renamed Netscape on 14 November 1994 to avoid trademark problems with NCSA, where its early engineers had worked on the Mosaic browser.

Its first browser, released as Mosaic Netscape 0.9 on 13 October 1994, was later renamed Netscape Navigator and held more than 90 percent of the browser market in the mid-1990s. America Online announced its acquisition on 24 November 1998 and completed it on 17 March 1999. Netscape released its browser source code in 1998, which led to the Mozilla Organization; the Mozilla Foundation followed in July 2003.

The Netscape Logo: Design and Meaning

The logo on this page pairs a round emblem with the name. The emblem is a teal circle holding a white serif capital "N" above a curved horizon line, and beside it the word "Netscape" is set in bold black sans-serif type. The curved horizon and the "N" give the sense of a window onto a wider world, which fits a product for exploring the web (our reading of the design).

Netscape's best-known mascot was different: Mozilla, a green and purple, Godzilla-like cartoon lizard drawn by Dave Titus. The name "Mozilla" began as the browser's internal codename, meaning "Mosaic killer", and the mascot was later dropped as the company sought a more professional image.