RIP Netscape

Netscape Navigator was my first Web browser, so I’m sad to see AOL kill it this February. Netscape was developed in 1994 by Marc Andreesen. Marc previously co-authored the world’s first popular Web browser, Mosaic.

Netscape Communications’ successful IPO in 1995 kicked off the dot-com boom. AOL bought Netscape for a whopping $4.2 billion in 1998. Too bad they were unable to withstand Microsoft’s monopolistic bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows.

I’ll miss the Netscape throbber. A huge meteor impact was the perfect metaphor for the dinosaur-killing implications of the Web.

Damn Internet Explorer. Part of the reason Microsoft was able to tie apps to the desktop for so long was because they didn’t update Internet Explorer for so long. With apps now moving off the desktop and onto the Web, Netscape will be avenged — by its Google-backed descendant, Firefox.

January 1 TCP/IP

On January 1, 1983, 400 computers on ARPANET, the predecessor of the Internet, hooked up to each other using Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP).

Twenty-five years later, TCP/IP powers the modern Internet. Google marks this important anniversary with a very special Google Doodle.

The confetti at the bottom forms the words SYN SYN/ACK ACK — synchronize, synchronize/acknowledge, acknowledge — the three-way handshake of a TCP/IP connection.

Twenty-five years after that first historic handshake, the world is connected. May 2008 bring you even more heartfelt handshakes and meaningful connections.