eWeek predicts Mozilla's ascendancy

[St Leo]

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1205138,00.asp

An interesting if rather non-technical article.

We have to keep in mind that Microsoft isn't in the monopoly business for monopoly's sake. If they think that Explorer isn't making them any money, they will stopping developing it for free.

Among other things, they leveraged it to kill off the Netscape server products and to handhold Frontpage. Those uses are no longer relevant.

[Skanky Burns]

Pretty sad article. Their whole premise is that if Microsoft doesn't react to challenges from other browser developers, then they will lose the browser war.

Well, duh.

[reds4ever]

it'd take a MAJOR f#$k up by MicroSoft

[Imran Siddiqui]

Yeah, because even though MS said they won't make any more IE's, who says they can't reverse themselves and make an IE 7.0 if their position starts to go South? Like the article said, MS has turned on a dime before.

[Giancarlo]

Where is Asher?

[reds4ever]

Anyone see the docu on Netscape on Discovery a while back? The people who held onto the shares through the hard times sure did well when AOL came along!

[Asher]

Submitted without comment

http://www.itnews.com.au/storycontent.cfm?ID=17&Art_ID=12504

IE's domination of the web grows
July 29th, 2003

It hasn't been significantly updated since 1998, but Microsoft's Internet Explorer continues to dominate the Web, garnering a record market share of 95.4 percent, according to real-time Web analytics firm OneStat.com.
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What's more, IE has garnered its highest usage level ever at a time when other browsers, such as Mozilla Firebird and Apple Safari, have earned record amounts of publicity for adding crucial features IE lacks, including pop-up ad blocking and a tabbed user interface that optionally negates the need for opening multiple browser windows.

The number one browser overall, Internet Explorer 6.0, controls 66.3 percent of the market, compared to 14.5 percent for IE 5.5 and 12.7 for IE 5.0. Mozilla is in fourth place with 1.6 percent of the market, but the total market share for browsers based on Mozilla technology is about 4.1 percent.

Alternative browsers such as Opera and Safari barely register on the chart, with 0.6 and 0.25 percent of the market, respectively; both are used less frequently than the legacy Netscape Navigator 4.x browser, which also hails from the late 1990's.

In recent months, Microsoft has sharply altered its Web browser strategy, largely because IE is so dominate and there is little pressure to provide users with constant updates.

The next major IE revision will come with IE 7.0, part of the Windows Longhorn release, now due in 2005. However, Microsoft will release a pop-up ad blocking feature as part of its upcoming MSN 9 software, a subscriber-fee browser product that is based on IE technology. MSN users today are enjoying the sort of rapid product updates that IE users once enjoyed; Microsoft released MSN 8 in October 2002 and followed that up with a version 8.5 release last month. MSN 9 will ship by the end of the year, Microsoft says.

[St Leo]

Alternative browsers such as Opera and Safari barely register on the chart, with 0.6 and 0.25 percent of the market, respectively; both are used less frequently than the legacy Netscape Navigator 4.x browser, which also hails from the late 1990's.

Yes, let's not mention growth patterns.

[Urban Ranger]

Let me duly note that MSFT isn't doing exactly well on NASDAQ these days.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by St Leo
Alternative browsers such as Opera and Safari barely register on the chart, with 0.6 and 0.25 percent of the market, respectively; both are used less frequently than the legacy Netscape Navigator 4.x browser, which also hails from the late 1990's.

Give me a break. Safari only runs on one version of OS X. The various versions of OS X that have been released account for about 20% of Apple's installed base and Jaguar (upon which Safari runs) for a fraction of that.

People just have to face the fact that IE is a very ****ty browser. No popup blocking and no tabs are enough to disqualify it for me.

[optimus2861]

^ Not to mention that with so much comingled code, a security hole in IE often exposes the underlying Windows to attack. Hacking into Opera doesn't get you anywhere with the rest of the OS.

As unbelievable as the concept of security holes in IE is, it's still a possibility .