Technology History: Netscape

Hoping to reverse a market slide, Netscape announced (in January, 1998) that its web browser would thereafter be free. They also announced that the development of the browser would move to an open-source process.
Later in 1998, AOL purchased Netscape with a $4.5 billion stock transaction. The longer than expected merger process slowed new browser releases -- and Netscape never recaptured its momentum. The good news is that the Mozilla Firefox browser was born out of the open source Netscape project.