Mike Homer

Michael J. Homer (February 24, 1958 – February 1, 2009) was an American electronics and computer industry executive who played major roles in the development of the personal computer, mobile devices and the Internet.

Homer was born in San Francisco on February 24, 1958 and was awarded a bachelor's degree at the University of California, Berkeley.

He was hired by Apple Computer in 1982, where he served as the technology adviser to the firm's chief executive, John Sculley. He followed with a position as marketing vice president at GO Corp., an early pioneer in creating software for mobile computers and personal digital assistants that did early work in pen-based computing.

After Go closed in 1994, John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Go's main venture capital backer, made the connection for Homer at Marc Andreessen's Netscape Communications Corporation. Homer was a vice president at the Netscape in the 1990s at the dawn of the World Wide Web. There, Homer developed the company's initial business plan and played a pivotal role in obtaining the private financing necessary to allow the company to progress to its 1995 initial public offering. He developed marketing plans for Netscape in 1994 at a time when few people had ever heard of the Internet. During the period where Microsoft challenged Netscape's early browser dominance with its Internet Explorer product, Homer headed the firm's marketing department as it faced bitter competition from Microsoft, a challenge that ultimately resulted in an antitrust suit. Homer helped argue that Microsoft had abused its monopoly power in the operating system market to push out Netscape's browser in favor of its own.

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