We recall going to the first-ever Netscape Developer Conference in early 1996 and seeing, hearing and feeling the sense of the attendees that Netscape was something new, something different, something worth developing for. It was the era of the brand-new Internet commercial phase when Netscape seemed invincible. And for a good 10 months that was true. That was then, this is now. Despite selling off its traffic to the search engines for almost four years now, Netscape Netcenter managed to rise from the software-centric entity and maintain its top 10 Web site usage ranking.
Internet time does indeed move faster, but Internet timing is more important.
Netscape spawned the Internet phenom and maybe it was its time to find a partner for the future. Even at 50 percent browser share, Netscape is still a platform for launching anything Internet. These firms missed a huge chance to take their futures front and center on the Web. Losses, however, are steep. Barry Diller's USA Networks owns majority of Ticketmaster-Citysearch and controls the voting stock.