Netscape® Name Story

 

 

Name Awards Blog

 

When Marc Andreesen agreed to leave the confines of University in the Midwest, and start anew with a commercial product, the one thing he fought passionately for was to name the company Mosaic. In any engineer's mind, this was the perfect name for a browser that cast a cover over the world wide web.

But, not only was this a mess with the University, where that had been the product name, it was also a name in use with other software companies - in particular in California where they wanted to incorporate. They tried to argue that they were doing a different kind of software product, but the original Mosaic fought back to protect their name. In fact, they had already forced a successful database company from Berkeley to rid itself of the Mosaic moniker. There was also a big multimedia project at Stanford called Mosaic. Even today, there are more than one Mosaic Systems or similar named companies in California. Sure Mosaic is a great name, but that doesn't mean you can be Johnny come lately and own it as business or brand name.

In the end, Jim Clark and the rest of management persuaded Marc that he should concentrate on development instead, though we are sure he had a big say in the acceptance of the Netscape name they came up with. And how couldn't he? This name has often been used as an example of a perfect name. Easily understood. Descriptive but not restrictive. Pure English. Good alliteration with a sharp central consonant to help with recall. No spelling ambiguities. A unique new word for the world, and therefore almost by definition, clear in all trademark categories worldwide.

The only minor complaint we have heard from people who worked there is that they could not use the name as a verb. For example, you couldn't say "netscape me" like you could say "hotmail me".

Motto: Any common name is probably already taken and can lead to legal problems......though Price Waterhouse Coopers was going to spin off their consultants under the name Monday - until IBM stepped in and bought them!