The company many like to paint as the internet's David finally got its slingshot working again last week. Netscape, once synonymous with the web and the internet boom, unveiled its latest web browser a day after Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson delivered his damning findings of law against the internet's Goliath - Microsoft.

The new software, Netscape 6, got a mixed welcome: while its speed and small download size won praise, it was criticised for being buggy - although this was only a "preview" release ahead of the final version to be launched in the second half of this year. However, Steve Case, AOL's chief executive, proudly announced that the old Netscape magic was back.

The greater significance was that this was Netscape's first major release in almost two years, during which time the company's market share was overtaken by Microsoft's Internet Explorer, and Netscape was subsumed into AOL. Microsoft's conduct towards Netscape was at the centre of the case against the Redmond company.

Officially, Netscape denies the timing of the release had anything to do with the court findings being published but was always intended to coincide with a large trade show in Los Angeles. Its defence is supported by the problems in managing the "open-source" collaboration between voluntary programmers who wrote a large portion of the new browser.

But as a former Netscape executive said last week to the Wall Street Journal: "It wouldn't help AOL to come out with a revolutionary new browser right as the trial is considering how the Netscape browser is being defeated by Microsoft's anti-competitive practices."

Jim Hammerly, vice president of AOL's Netscape Browser division, says the court case did have some bearing on the new launch, but only in terms of the practicalities of getting the product to consumers, rather than courtroom tactics.

"One of the reasons Netscape has been quiet for a long time is because we had been prohibited from participating with many of our partners in distribution," he says, referring to contracts which bound PC makers to using both Microsoft's Windows and the company's Internet Explorer. "Over the last few months we have announced major new partnerships with manufacturers to embed Netscape 6 on new machines. So that will give consumers the choice of which browser to use. We see ourselves re-emerging in that market."

But can the company really compete against Microsoft, even when it is hamstrung by its ongoing legal battle? Hammerly says that Netscape has no targets for attempting to claw back market share in the desktop PC arena. Instead, the emerging new markets of internet devices such as TV set-top boxes and internet-enabled mobile devices will provide the greatest opportunities for Netscape - and AOL.

"Looking forward, there is the new class of internet appliances for the home and busi ness. Many of these devices are Linux based, and Netscape 6 has 100% performance on that operating system, as it does on Windows and Macintosh.

"We have a lot of partners who are porting this technology to additional platforms and many of these smaller devices, and wireless devices, are major growth areas."

But while it has been proved that Netscape was crunched by the might of Microsoft, this is no longer the David versus Goliath battle that net old timers - and Microsoft's many enemies - like to pretend.

Netscape's parent company, AOL, sees its browser agreement with Microsoft expire later this year, shortly after the final version of Netscape 6 is due to ship. AOL is being coy about its relationship with Microsoft, saying only that it would like to maintain its prominent position on the out-of-the-box Windows screen, given in return for making Internet Explorer the exclusive AOL browser.

But Microsoft's once iron rule over its desktop may wane after the US courts findings against it, and AOL has been busy forming its own partnerships with large PC makers like Gateway which could make it less dependent on its Redmond rival. At the very least, should it decide to, AOL could then put Netscape on the desktops of its 16 million users worldwide, almost overnight. That kind of power makes this battle very much Goliath versus Goliath.