I'm sorry, I didn't mean to correct you as much as add color for other HN readers. So much happened in a very short period of time and I hope that people take away how much vision and strategy these people had at that time.
I think the point I'm really trying to make is that the Netscape team had a much richer vision of the web than what we use today. Before they built Netscape, Andreessen and Clark were considering building an online gaming platform. I'm sure you remember how big multimedia was back then.
If you look at the timeline, you can see where the were going. They started off with a focus on dominating the browser market, which they did in 4 months. In less than a year after their first release, they released the first version of an online platform. It added Java, JavaScript, and a plug-in architecture with standard plug-ins like Live3D so you could embed VRML into your HTML page. No one was even sure HTML wasn't going to be replaced by something better, so I have to imagine they were hedging their bets by adding three different ways to build on their platform.
If anything, I think your original comment reinforces that strategy. They knew there were a lot of C++ developers who wouldn't take to Java for whatever reason, so they offered a plug-in architecture for people who cared more about performance and experience than being cross-platform.
Had things gone differently (Microsoft not woken up), I can easily see Netscape creating a dominant internet platform that went beyond HTTP and viewing hyperlinked documents. They were already bundling email, website editors, conferencing, news clients, etc.
