Brendan Eich invented JavaScript. He used to work at Netscape. Netscape was going to call it "LiveScript" but then changed the name to JavaScript at the last minute. It was a ploy to profit from the hype surrounding the up-and-coming Java programming language, which of course has nothing in common with JavaScript except perhaps a shallow syntactic resemblance. AOL inherited the name "JavaScript" along with "Netscape" when they bought it out. Microsoft has their own language they call "JScript" that for all practical purposes is the same as JavaScript. Microsoft would have liked everybody to use "VBScript", but thankfully that never happened and we now have just one client-side language to worry about. For correctness buffs, "ECMAScript" is the official name for JavaScript. The syntax was standardized by the European Computer Manufacturers Association, further solidifying JavaScript's dominance as the one true client-side web scripting language. Brendan Eich has since moved on to other things, including working in a key role on the Mozilla browser project.