Eh, I was around in that time.

So was I.

Netscape communicator was bloated as fuck and people used IE not only because it was pre-installed, but also because it didn't take ~20 seconds to start up which is what using Netscape Communicator was like.

Netscape Communicator came out in mid 1997. By that time, Netscape was already doomed because of Microsoft's illegal bundling.

Netscape's IPO was in early August of 1995. It opened at $28 per share, and closed at $75 per share on that first day. The browser they were selling at that point was Netscape Navigator, and it was by far the best one available. 2 weeks later Microsoft introduced the first version of Internet Explorer. It was terrible, but it was free. Microsoft kept shoving IE in people's faces for years, making it the default, bundling it with Windows, and doing everything it could to sabotage Netscape's business.

Microsoft was able to do this because they were able to subsidize the massive losses for R&D on Internet Explorer and IIS by taking money from their monopoly on operating systems. Netscape didn't have another business, and it's very difficult to compete with "free", so they were doomed.

If you look at a graph of Netscape's share price, it peaked in late 1995 and by 1997 when it released Communicator it was already dying because of Microsoft's illegal tactics. 6 months after Communicator was released Netscape had to undergo a big round of layoffs. 1 year after that it was bought by AOL.

There's no way that this is a story of Netscape failing. It's quite obviously a story of Microsoft using its monopoly illegally to force a competitor in another area out of business. That was proven in the trial.

After a long time Mozilla finally got to 1.0

Netscape Communicator was the 4.0 version of the company's browser. 1.0 came out in December 1994. 2.0 came out in March 1996. 3.0 Came out in August 1996. This supposedly bloated version you're talking about was the 4.0 release and came out in June 1997. As evidence they were dying by the time they released communicator, they only managed one more release before they were acquired by AOL.

It wasn't until Phoenix Firebird Firefox project

You do understand the purpose of the Mozilla Corporation and the Firefox project right? They knew that the company was doomed because of what Microsoft had done, and created the Mozilla non-profit as a kind of life-raft so that the browser didn't simply die when the company was crushed.

In fact those names you crossed out just support what I'm saying: "Firefox was originally named "Phoenix", a name which implied that it would rise like a Phoenix after Netscape was killed off by Microsoft."

that IE had real competition.

You have that completely backwards. At first Netscape was the dominant browser, but as Microsoft used its illegal tactics the usage of Netscape declined until it disappeared. But, as they hoped, Firefox did rise from the ashes of the Netscape company and come to compete with Microsoft. But it was really Chrome that killed off Internet Explorer years after Netscape was driven out of business.

But don't you think a well managed Netscape could have recognized the problem with Communicator

The Mozilla organization was created before the release of Communicator. They already knew their company was doomed by the time Communicator was released.

and did the same thing as happened with Firefox, just a decade earlier?

A decade earlier? In the 1980s? Tim Berners-Lee didn't even describe the web until 1990, so I don't think selling a web browser was a viable business before that.

Netscape kinda just did nothing after the AOL takeover

Yes, because they were driven out of business by Microsoft. We covered that already. Most of the talented people just left. jwz bought a bar and left the technology business entirely.

Yeah we all know IE sucks, but Netscape Communicator

Why are you so focused on Communicator instead of Navigator?

Sure MS stopped improving IE and over time

The problems with IE were never that it "wasn't improved over time", it was that it trampled all over standards and intentionally broke things as part of Microsoft's Embrace, Extend, Extinguish strategy.

people tend to do revisionist history

You seem to be a revisionist historian who doesn't know the basics of what they're talking about.

P.S. As an experiment, take a look at that graph of browser share and see if you can spot when the US government sued Microsoft for abusing its monopoly.