FWIW, Netscape got bought out by AOL, but not before it spun off Mozilla. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape

It may be hard to believe, but the first iteration of Internet Explorer on Macintosh (back on System 8) was __solid__. IE, at least on PowerMacs, was way faster and more reliable than either NCSA Mosaic or Navigator.

Microsoft had FrontPage create pages that crashed Netscape.

Netscape was not selling their browser so that did not matter. I worked at a startup that used their server. We wanted to pay for it but they would not invoice us. Just sending money without an invoice would have been a donation. I sat for hours on their customer support line trying to get an invoice but they never sent one until they went out of business.

Yup, I can clearly remember Netscape crashing very very often. It was definitely the worse browser.

Hmm, I worked at a large company in 1995 as a web dev, and they were paying a license fee "per copy" of Netscape Navigator. I distinctly remember this, because we had 10,000 licenses. But we did get phone support with that, and I talked to Netscape's help desk a few times with various issues I faced as a developer.

Commercial users were paying for Netscape in 1995. It was only free for personal use. Even articles from 1996 mention the cost of Netscape as $49. [1]

So at least part of the reason IE displaced Netscape was that it was free for enterprises. And Netscape was not, until it was too late.

[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/27743/nothing-netscape

Explorer also launched a lot faster than especially the late versions of netscape.

Yep. Netscape crashed at least every 30 minutes.