I’ve written a lot of “Netscape is dead” posts before, but just as I thought the venerable Netscape couldn’t die again…it did.

Granted the news is old–all of what I’m about to describe happened earlier this year. But the passage of a few months still doesn’t make this story any less interesting for someone who lived through the browser wars of the late 90s and early 2000s, and saw Netscape slowly fizzle and die back in 2003 (granted, only to have the Netscape browser come back to life twice more before dying a final death in 2008).

For those unfamiliar with the story of Netscape, here’s a quick background. Netscape Communications was founded in 1994 by Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen. Andreessen was one of the original creators of the NCSA Mosaic browser, which was released the previous year as the the world’s first web browser capable of displaying graphics, and when Andreeson came over, he brought over several of Mosaic’s developers.

Netscape quickly overtook NCSA Mosaic to become the most popular web browser in the world. On August 9th, 1995, Netscape had its IPO, with its stock offered at $28 per share. By the first day of trading, its stock had soared to $75 per share. The company’s revenue doubled every quarter in 1995. Netscape developed many new technologies that formed the foundation of the web as we know it. We still use many of these technologies today: SSL (Secure Sockets Layer, which sets up an encrypted communication channel between browsers and servers and is commonly used in Internet financial transactions), Internet cookies, JavaScript (one of the major bases of the dynamic web), and so much more. Netscape even previewed new technology that would allow users to access and edit their files anywhere across a network, no matter what operating system. Netscape seemed unstoppable–without a doubt, the Google of its day.

Netscape Navigator browser, version 2.02, courtesy Anetode on Wikipedia

All of this got the attention of Microsoft, which began to view Netscape as a threat to their Windows operating system, the mainstay of their business. To undermine Netscape, Microsoft began to offer their own web browser, Internet Explorer, for free, bundling the browser with its Windows operating system. Consumers began to use the free Internet Explorer instead of paying for Netscape. This dried up Netscape’s revenue stream and put the company in dire straits.

At around this time the Justice Department began to investigate Microsoft for violating anti-m.onopoly law, namely the Sherman Antitrust Act. A judge in 2000 would ruled that Microsoft had illegally used anti-competitive means to “thwart” the Netscape browser–an appellate court would, in June 2001, affirm the judge’s findings. Although the Justice Department determined that Microsoft had broken the law, it was too late for Netscape. In 1998, Netscape, which was in a gloomy financial situation, was bought out by AOL for $4.2 billion. There were thoughts at the time that AOL would start to bundle its online internet service with the Netscape browser, but this was never done on the Windows platform.

As an AOL subsidiary, Netscape continued to develop the Netscape browser for several more years, but Netscape continued to lose market share to Internet Explorer. AOL did sue Microsoft on behalf of Netscape for civil damages due to Microsoft’s violations of anti-trust law. Microsoft would later settle the case for $750 million in May 2003. Just two months later, AOL laid off its remaining Netscape developers and ended development of the Netscape browser and essentially killed off Netscape as an operating subsidiary. AOL would later resurrect the browser twice, as I noted above, before ending development for good in 2008.

Despite the end of Netscape development, the Netscape brand itself continued to live. For many years, Netscape.com continued to run as a relatively popular web portal. AOL later used the Netscape brand to launch social news media portal (since discontinued) and, later, turned the brand into a discount internet service provider. Netscape Communications Corporation, as a legal entity, continued to exist as a non-operating subsidiary of AOL (as shown in AOL’s 10-K filing for last year). Most importantly, the corporation continued to hold key assets, including a huge number of patents that were developed by the company while it was still an active technology firm.

Well, no more. In April of this year, AOL announced that it was selling a huge number of patents to Microsoft. It soon became clear that the patents that were sold were the patents that were developed by and assigned to AOL’s Netscape subsidiary. So, ironically, Microsoft, the company that for all intents and purposes, killed Netscape, ended up purchasing Netscape’s underlying technologies.

But it gets even more bizarre. The SEC filing that AOL filed to disclose the sale shows that AOL was structuring this sale, “as a purchase of all of the outstanding shares of a wholly-owned non-operating subsidiary of the Company and the direct acquisition of those patents in the portfolio not held by the subsidiary. ” The Wall Street Journal later reported that the non-operating subsidiary that was being sold to Microsoft was Netscape Communications Corporation. That’s right. AOL bought Netscape (though the WSJ clarified that although the Netscape company was sold to Microsoft, AOL retained the rights to Netscape’s brand name and trademarks).

Snooping around the remaining vestiges of Netscape that exist online, the evidence suggests that the WSJ was correct and that Netscape Communications Corporation, as a company, no longer belongs to AOL (though AOL still owns the Netscape brand). First, the Netscape ISP website is now copyrighted to AOL. This is important because the Compuserve ISP website that AOL also operates (and is an exact clone of the Netscape ISP website) is not copyrighted directly to AOL–it is copyrighted to “CompuServe Interactive Services, Inc.,” which is an AOL subsidiary. It is also worth noting that only a year ago, Netscape’s website was copyrighted to Netscape, not AOL. Finally, Netscape ISP used to use a Terms of Service and Privacy Policy that was had the user enter into a contract directly to Netscape Communications Corporation. This Terms of Service and Privacy Policy were swapped out for new policies that created contracts with AOL, Inc. only a few days before the AOL-Microsoft patent deal was announced. Definitely not just a coincidence.

So, Netscape Communications Corporation, as a legal entity, now belongs to Microsoft. Who could have seen this coming in 1993, or even in 1998?

The story doesn’t end there, though. Two weeks after the AOL-Microsoft patent deal was announced, Microsoft announced it was selling these same patents to Facebook.

This is where the irony gets even better: Marc Andreessen, one of the founders of Microsoft, sits on Facebook’s board of directors. So, in a way, at least part of Netscape ended up in the hands of one of the major players who helped create it, bringing the heart and soul of Netscape–its technology–in a full circle.