Marc Andreessen: The Co-Founder of Netscape Who Sparked The Browser Revolution

Marc Andreessen: The Co-Founder of Netscape Who Sparked The Browser Revolution

In 1994, the world was introduced to the the web browser, Netscape Navigator. Only a few years after its launch, Netscape had become the world's most popular web browser, providing access 26 million people worldwide--and it all began with the pioneering and innovative genius of Marc Andreessen. So who exactly is the man behind the most used browser of the nineties?

Marc Andreessen was born on July 9th,71 and grew up in Cedar Falls, Iowa. At an early age, his parents recognized his potential and moved to California so that he could attend Hopkins Junior High School and later the prestigious Leland High School. Here, his interests were discovered, and Marc was able to develop a passion for computers, starting with Nintendo and video games. In 1992, he then went on to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he studied Computer Science, and his life was changed forever.

It was here that Marc and his friend, Eric Bina, first created Mosaic--a program which was considered revolutionary as it was the first to display graphics on a page as well as text. This browser then later became Netscape. Andreessen and Bina worked as a part of a development team at NCSA, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, who were aware of the potential and revolutionary power of the new browser. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/thumb.php?f=Marc Andreessen-9.jpg&w=1000 from wikimedia

However, Andreessen and Bina had the ambition to develop Netscape further, and after joining forces with James H. Clark they founded the Netscape Communications Corporation on April 1995. With funds from Clark, the trio were able to expand the capabilities of the web browser and soon it was released to the public to great acclaim. From here, Netscape's popularity only continued to rise and Netscape Communications Corporation flourished as a public company.

Netscape was revolutionary for the time, and its popularity was a significant factor in the development of the internet. It provided the world with a user-friendly platform, unobtruded with advertisement, through which the World Wide Web could be accessed. It was incredibly successful and popular for several years, until the rise of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which later came to dominate the market.

Andreessen, however, did not stay at Netscape for long, and he left the company to join a new one he had founded with Clark--Opsware. Here he focused more on business software and professional services, and the company was eventually acquired by Hewlett Packard at the cost of $1.6 billion. Andreessen then went on to become a venture capitalist, investing in startups, like Skype and Facebook. He has now been credited with creating the single most influential piece of software ever--Netscape.

So, how did it all start for Marc Andreessen? As a child growing up in midwest America with a passion for video games and Nintendo as his first foray into the world of computing. Andreessen was a man of ambition and potential, and with the launch of Netscape he changed the world of computing, and thus the world itself, forever. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/thumb.php?f=Marc_Andreessen-9.jpg&w=1000 from wikimedia

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