Web browser market share of all times visualized • Hacker News Board

Re: Web browser market share of all times visualized

#41

Post by Drakim » Wed, Dec 19, 2012, 11:48 AM UTC

brazzy wrote: post #17

franze wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as someone who went to more than one browser war i have to say: as long as there is still some blue in that chart, it's not over. and yes, i'm strongly biased. i would be years younger if ms would give me back the time i wasted with IE bugs/features/rendering/special-needs or whatever they call it.

> as long as there is still some blue in that chart, it's not over. And that's a good thing. It would be best if it's never "over", because the only way for that to happen would be complete and unchangeable dominance of one browser, which would cause exactly the problems we don't want.

One browser should not dominate if the market is to stay healthly. I wish Opera would grow some in share, perhaps even Safari. But that blue needs to be GONE.

Re: Web browser market share of all times visualized

#42

Post by lkozma » Wed, Dec 19, 2012, 11:54 AM UTC

pkorzeniewski wrote: post #33

I can't decide if it's a success that Opera is still on the market, or a failure that after 10 years they still have so minor share. Sure, 1.71% is a lot of users given the size of market, but if you look at the charts they had 0.78% in 2002 so they gained 1% in 10 years.. I don't get it, couldn't they find a way to interest more people in such long time?

The market itself grew enormously in the same time.

Re: Web browser market share of all times visualized

#43

Post by rimantas » Wed, Dec 19, 2012, 1:18 PM UTC

franze wrote: post #16

rimantas wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the first half, but regarding Mozilla… IIRC I switched to version 0.6 (then called Phoenix, iirc) as my default browser in 2003, and I don't remember it sucking. I remember still coding for IE5 compatibility in 2006, but it was not a problem. For me IE7 was more annoying, strangely enough.

IE 7 was annoying as you had to deal with IE 6 and IE 7 now. so instead of one problem, you now had 2 * the problem variations due to the different rendering-modes...

Yeah, IE6 was a known enemy and not really surprising, IE7 bugs seemed weird and erratic in comparison.

Re: Web browser market share of all times visualized

#44

Post by ghshephard » Wed, Dec 19, 2012, 7:13 PM UTC

recoiledsnake wrote: post #38

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…

>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 platform) - so they eliminated it (Cut off Netscape's Air supply) - by giving the browser away for free with their operating system - and, because everyone (for most…

Google has competition in Search. I don't think anyone claims they are a monopoly in search. Powerful position, yes. Monopoly, no.

Also, the issue wasn't, "Free", or "Leveraging profits", it was "Tying", which, in certain cases when you are a monopoly, turns out to be problematic when one is trying to maintain the appearance of a competitive marketplace.

The US Government wasn't there to protect the companies, it was there to protect customers. I, for one, am happy that Microsoft wasn't given free reign to do anything it wanted after it had established a monopoly position on the desktop.

Likewise, if Apple is ever able to achieve 90%+ market share on mobile, many of their practices today (such as giving their own developers preferential access to private APIs, or being able to run outside of a sandbox) should be reigned in.