Netscape Aims to Be the Great Communicator

Trying to maintain its dominance in software to browse the Internet, Netscape Communications Corp. on Tuesday unveiled several products aimed at the business market and said it will embrace technologies created by rival Microsoft Corp.

Netscape executives announced a software package called Netscape Communicator that incorporates a new version of their popular browser software along with tools that allow users to send graphics-intensive electronic mail, talk to colleagues over the Internet and collaborate on projects.

The company hopes the tools will give its products an advantage over both Microsoft’s Internet-browsing software and Lotus Notes, a worker-collaboration product sold by International Business Machines Corp.

Although Netscape’s Navigator software is currently the most popular product for browsing the Internet’s World Wide Web--some estimates have the company holding as much as 80% of the market--Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has recently been gaining ground, in part because it is free.

Netscape, based in Mountain View, Calif., brings in about 80% of its revenue from corporate sales. “For Round 2 here, the business market is the strategic market,” Mike Homer, Netscape’s senior vice president for marketing, said in an interview Tuesday. The new products include several for business “server” computers, powerful machines that run corporate networks.

Mark Andreesen, Netscape’s senior vice president, also said future versions of their software will “embrace and integrate” technology created by Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash.

For instance, they will work with popular corporate Microsoft products, including Office and BackOffice, so users can easily add information from spreadsheets and text documents onto Web pages, Andreesen said.

In a major concession to Microsoft, Netscape will also let software developers use Microsoft’s home-grown “ActiveX” language in Netscape products. Netscape has long backed the rival “Java” language.

Homer said the company’s decision to accept Microsoft’s language doesn’t signal a shift away from Java. “We’re not advocating customers write applications with [Microsoft] technologies,” he said. “We’re telling our customers that if they’ve already integrated applications using it, we will accept them.”

The new version of the Navigator browser will include several new features to make Web pages snazzier, including real-time audio that will not have to be downloaded separately, multilayer graphics and more sophisticated animation. The Communicator package, which will include the browser, will retail for $49 and will be available in early 1997, the firm said.