yeah, perhaps I worded that I bit strangely. I was just commenting on how Microsoft's monopolistic behavior caused Netscape to open-source and eventually get bought out by AOL, thus forming Mozilla through the open-source release.
AOL open-sourced Netscape because it lost, for a wide range of different reasons. They included trying to charge for browsers while giving away free betas, not letting PC magazines distribute the code, not letting ISPs customize the branding, discontinuing Netscape and replacing it with Commander (? this is all from memory), buying a whole bunch of server companies (thinking it could use its client to sell server software), behaving with extreme arrogance to the rest of the web industry, using Netscape to feed users ads on its home page, various bits of really crap marketing and a lot of crap code. I could go on.
Netscape was really badly run.
Apart from all that, Microsoft just outsmarted them by rewriting IE in parallel (ie two project teams) to componentize the code, and by making IE more standards compliant than Netscape, and by some really good marketing.
Did you know that AOL continued to distribute IE even after it bought Netscape?
In fact, Microsoft had more and better programmers and just out-iterated and out-distributed Netscape in a fast-moving market. Netscape didn't have a clue until it was too late.
When Netscape was the best browser, it had an 80% market share even while Microsoft was bundling IE. It really wasn't the bundling that killed it.
