This Day In Market History: AOL Buys Netscape For $4.2B

Each day, Benzinga takes a look back at a notable market-related moment that occurred on this date.

What Happened? On Nov. 23, 1998, America Online acquired Netscape Communications for $4.2 billion.

Where The Market Was: The Dow Jones Industrial Average traded at 9,301.15 and the S&P 500 traded at 1,182.99.

What Else Was Going On In The World? In 1998, Microsoft Corporation MSFT became the most valuable public company in the world with a market cap of $261 billion. Japan completed construction of the world’s longest suspension bridge in Akashi. The average American income was $38,100.

Netscape Buyout: Netscape Communications was founded in 1994 and created one of the world’s first dominant web browsers, Netscape Navigator.

Netscape went public in 1995 and was acquitted by AOL for $4.2 billion in 1998. At the time AOL was the dominant market provider of dial-up internet service in the U.S. and had 14 million subscribers. Netscape’s Netcenter was one of the 10 most-visited sites on the internet.

Netscape Navigator’s peak market share in the 1990s was above 90%, but it ultimately lost the web browser market to Internet Explorer. By 2006, Netscape had lost all but about 1% market share. In December 2007, AOL announced it would stop supporting Netscape.

AOL’s popularity plummeted as well. The company’s peak dot com bubble market cap was $200 billion, but it was acquired by Verizon Communications Inc. VZ for just $4.4 billion in 2015. In 2021, Verizon sold Yahoo and AOL to private equity firm Apollo Global Management Inc APO for $5 billion.