I would be curious to see how well browser brand names have associated/resonated with the average computer users over time. I know my mom uses chrome because I made it her default web browser and hid explorer. However she doesn't refer to it as chrome, just "the web".
About 4 years ago (note: not 14 years ago) my boss at the time told me "AOL" when I asked him that question. Immediately I thought he was joking, then I thought he must be mistaken and was telling me what his homepage was by accident. But then, to my horror, he showed it to me, and I realized he was completely correct. He was using some ugly purple "modern" version of an AOL browser that I didn't even know existed.
The thought back then was that there would be a "Mozilla" brand working on the core browser tech as open source code that was strictly for developers, while AOL would take Mozilla tech and use it to periodically release consumer-facing browsers under the brand "Netscape." This turned out not to work in practice, since the main contributions AOL would make in turning Mozilla into Netscape revolved taking a perfectly useful browser and making it less useful. (An example: Mozilla included a pop-up blocker, but AOL disabled it in their "Netscape" builds. Yes.)
AOL/Netscape ought to be a business school case study in how to completely demolish the value of a brand after paying out the nose for it.
