August 9, 1995: The Netscape Communications IPO floats shares of the company behind Netscape Navigator, the Macintosh’s default browser, on the stock market.
While not totally an Apple-centric moment, this was big news for Mac fans in 1995. The success of Nestcape’s $2.9 billion IPO also sweetened Wall Street on technology companies. Plus, the experience of using Netscape Navigator to surf the internet on a Macintosh is something many older Apple users will still remember fondly.
Netscape Communications IPO
Netscape launched its flagship Navigator software in October 1994. A bit like Mac versus Windows, Netscape Navigator hit a snag when Microsoft came in with a rival product shortly after it debuted. (In this case, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser arrived just weeks after Netscape’s IPO.)
An August 1997 deal between Apple and Microsoft hit Netscape hard when — in return for Microsoft investing $150 million in Apple in the form of non-voting stock — Apple agreed to install Internet Explorer as the Mac’s default web browser in place of Navigator.
That deal stood until the 2000s, when Apple debuted its Safari web browser and Microsoft stopped developing Internet Explorer for Mac.
Wall Street develops a taste for tech
Netscape’s August 1995 IPO affected big tech players in one other profound way. When Netscape Communications went public with a valuation of $2.9 billion, it persuaded investment banks that underwriting other promising tech companies with no immediately obvious way of making money was a good idea. (Whether it turned out to be, given the subsequent dot-com crash, is up for debate.)
Nonetheless, as noted in the book Becoming Steve Jobs, one of the companies that benefited in the immediate aftermath was Pixar Animation Studios. At the time, Pixar was still in the process of producing its first feature-length movie, Toy Story.
Based on the success of Netscape’s IPO, San Francisco investment bank Robertson Stephens agreed to underwrite a Pixar IPO, which it filed with the SEC a few months later in October. The eventual November 29, 1995, Pixar public offering made Apple co-founder Steve Jobs a billionaire. The Pixar IPO kicked off a prolonged “hot streak” that made up the big third-act comeback of Jobs’ career.
Do you remember using Netscape Navigator back in the 1990s or the Netscape Communications IPO in 1995? Leave your early memories of surfing the internet on your Mac (or other computer) below.
