It was a failure as he said because the goal was to rewrite it for the company to do better. They failed at that. More work was done including by Mozilla. That worked but was too bloated and all-in-one. Eventually, someone trimmed it up to make Firefox and added the customization features. That succeeded.<p>So, there was a failure, years of struggling changes, several new audiences, and another big change before it made it. Not seeing it as a counterexample as much as good luck for a project that seemed doomed to failure.