On 2 June 1996, Netscape released its Navio Navigator browser and announced that it would focus on the non-PC world (mainly game consoles, Nintendo products, set-top boxes, and televisions). Navio was the product of Navio Communications, a subsidiary of Netscape, which was subsequently acquired by Oracle.

The author of an article published in the Washington Post at the time stated that Netscape would become a serious rival to Microsoft sooner or later.

"Inside Netscape: the software start-up is growing so fast it may one day post a threat to Microsoft," the author envisaged.

Two years later the two companies entered into a legal dispute. The Justice Department of the United States conducted an investigation whether Microsoft had violated the anti-trust law by bundling its Internet Explorer programme with its Windows operating system. Netscape's browsers, Navigator and Communicator were the main rivals to Internet Explorer in the second half of the 1990s, and the two companies competed relentlessly for the web.

Source: www.computerhistory.org/tdih/June/2