NETSCAPE WITH A BULLET

The company has never shown a profit, and revenues for the first half of this year were a tiny $16.6 million. But theinitial public offering of Netscape Communicationsstock today sent Wall Street traders into a frenzy. Almost 13.8 million shares changed hands (twice the amount of available stock), as Netscape shot from an opening price of $28 to as high as $75 before closing at $58.25 a share. After one day of trading, the company's value had more than doubled, to over $2.9 billion. "What's going on is thatWall St. is voting in a big way for the internet," says TIME's Joshua Quittner. "The stocks have doubled for every internet-related company over the past year." Butis Netscape, as many investors hope, the next Microsoft? Much like Microsoft did with its Windows operating system, Quittner notes, "Netscape is like this big blob that just absorbs everything -- Real Audio and Adobe Acrobat are two examples -- into its system. And Netscape has had a pretty big start on every one else in the browser business."