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Web browser market share of all times visualized

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Re: Web browser market share of all times visualized

#21

Post by mtgx »

MojoJolo wrote: post #15

Can someone enlighten me. What happened in 1995 that let Netscape to grab the majority of the market share that Mozaic has in the past year (1994)? I was still a child at that time and I'm curious what happen.

I assume because there were few PC's at first, and then a PC explosion happened with Windows 95, and Netscape signed a deal with most of the new ones to include their browser (which made their share grow much faster than Mosaic's).

Then Microsoft introduced Windows 98 with IE in it, and killed that Netscape market.

Re: Web browser market share of all times visualized

#22

Post by hammondos »

cinfinity wrote: post #20

This is not a "visualization". It would be far better to do line plots of each browser's market share as a function of time, distinguishing different browsers by color.

Agreed - a bunch of pie charts (not great communicating info at the best of times) could hardly be called a "visualization" in the modern sense of creating a graphic that makes data easily understandable, visually appealing & useful

Re: Web browser market share of all times visualized

#23

Post by melling »

ghshephard wrote: post #6
btipling wrote: post #3

What happened between 1998 and 1999 that flipped the percentage so dramatically in favor of IE? Was it all the new people joining the internet for the first time who simply clicked the blue e instead of installing netscape or did people abandon netscape in droves?

Microsoft included it for free with their (at that time monopoly market share) operating system. Entire Divisions of Netscape were terminated when that happened. It may be hard for people to imagine now, but back in 1996/1997, selling browser software was like selling spreadsheet or word processing software. People paid $50+/copy for their browser. It was a threat to Microsoft (potential alternative application platf…

"At that time monopoly market share (operating system)"

What do you think Microsoft has now? Microsoft isn't quite as lethal at this time, but in all honesty, they still dominate. It's funny to see people complain about Google's 70% search monopoly and Apple's 20-25% iOS walled garden, but 9/10 of the people in the world buy PC's with Microsoft Windows.

Re: Web browser market share of all times visualized

#25

Post by kschua »

btipling wrote: post #3

What happened between 1998 and 1999 that flipped the percentage so dramatically in favor of IE? Was it all the new people joining the internet for the first time who simply clicked the blue e instead of installing netscape or did people abandon netscape in droves?

I was one of those who flipped from using Netscape to IE. I was using Netscape since 2.0 days. Comparing Netscape 3.0 to IE 3.0, Netscape won handsdown. It had far more features than IE 3.0 and was fast, responsive and easy to use.

Then came Netscape 4.0 and IE 4.0. This was were Netscape failed horribly.

Netscape 4.0 Communicator was slow and buggy and crashed often. When Netscape 4.0 Navigator crashed, it brought down the entire suite (Email client, Web Composer) along with it.

IE 4.0 on the other hand was really slick, stable and cool. It loaded up faster and rendered the pages faster (bear in mind those were the days of dialup).

It didn't matter that IE 4.0 was bundled into the OS. I was using Win 95 and I downloaded and installed IE 4.0 because I loved it.

To me, it wasn't the bundling of IE 4.0 into the OS that killed Netscape, it was just that Netscape 4.0 sucked compared to IE 4.0

After IE 4.0, I discovered Opera and have been using it since.

Re: Web browser market share of all times visualized

#26

Post by ghshephard »

melling wrote: post #23
ghshephard wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft included it for free with their (at that time monopoly market share) operating system. Entire Divisions of Netscape were terminated when that happened. It may be hard for people to imagine now, but back in 1996/1997, selling browser software was like selling spreadsheet or word processing software. People paid $50+/copy for their browser. It was a threat to Microsoft (potential alternative application platf…

"At that time monopoly market share (operating system)" What do you think Microsoft has now? Microsoft isn't quite as lethal at this time, but in all honesty, they still dominate. It's funny to see people complain about Google's 70% search monopoly and Apple's 20-25% iOS walled garden, but 9/10 of the people in the world buy PC's with Microsoft Windows.

Agreed that most people still have a Windows OS in front of them. But the wild card on the upswing now is mobile - which Microsoft has very little strength in.

Also, web applications provide real diversity of application experience beyond the Windows OS. For a lot of people, applications like email, twitter, photo-sharing, game playing, social networking etc.. are no longer tied to a particular desktop client operating system. Indeed, Social Networking, where people spend enormous amounts of time, is an example where I would say the Desktop OS is as irrelevant as your BIOS.

Re: Web browser market share of all times visualized

#27

Post by moreati »

melling wrote: post #23
ghshephard wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft included it for free with their (at that time monopoly market share) operating system. Entire Divisions of Netscape were terminated when that happened. It may be hard for people to imagine now, but back in 1996/1997, selling browser software was like selling spreadsheet or word processing software. People paid $50+/copy for their browser. It was a threat to Microsoft (potential alternative application platf…

"At that time monopoly market share (operating system)" What do you think Microsoft has now? Microsoft isn't quite as lethal at this time, but in all honesty, they still dominate. It's funny to see people complain about Google's 70% search monopoly and Apple's 20-25% iOS walled garden, but 9/10 of the people in the world buy PC's with Microsoft Windows.

At the time the web-browsing market was a subset of the PC/laptop market - that's no longer the case with smartphones and tablets selling so fast.

Re: Web browser market share of all times visualized

#28

Post by ghshephard »

MojoJolo wrote: post #15

Can someone enlighten me. What happened in 1995 that let Netscape to grab the majority of the market share that Mozaic has in the past year (1994)? I was still a child at that time and I'm curious what happen.

Marc Andreessen, headed out west. Brought most of the Urbana-Champaign (key) Mosaic Brain Share with him (or recruited people like Eric Bina to work on the project). Jim Clark sunk a ton of dough into the project - and they worked hard at making it successful. Mosaic was then Licensed to Microsoft (and some other companies, but Microsoft made the most of it) and became the heart of IE.

There was no "Mosaic" left to be Mosaic after that.

Re: Web browser market share of all times visualized

#30

Post by jah »

MojoJolo wrote: post #15

Can someone enlighten me. What happened in 1995 that let Netscape to grab the majority of the market share that Mozaic has in the past year (1994)? I was still a child at that time and I'm curious what happen.

Threaded page loading. Mosaic needed to download all text and graphics before displaying any part of a web page. This was painfully slow over modems. Netscape's huge innovation was to partially render pages while resources (mainly images) were downloading, giving the appearance of a faster web.
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