The Browser Wars !!

No matter how much my good friends GA and PDV hate it, tech posts will always be a part of this blog. So here's another one on a topic that I have always been meaning to write and have finally been able to do so with some concrete conclusive bit of supporting evidence too - The Browser Wars (more aptly titled "Firefox v/s IE", given that the rest of them have barely been able to capture any market).

We all know how Microsoft virtually monopolized the internet browser market by shipping Internet Explorer (IE) free-of-cost with Windows. Netscape made a hue and cry over the "unfair" competition but finally lost out to Microsoft's might.


With a company whose revenues were lesser than what Microsoft earned in interest on its cash, Netscape was indeed vulnerable. It depended only on a single product - Netscape Navigator while Microsoft had 90% of the OS market captured with Windows. IE research and development was funded through Microsoft's Windows revenues and hence MS could afford to ship IE free of cost. By 2002, when IE gained almost 92% of the market share, Netscape was destined to be washed out !

But peace was not in sight for Microsoft yet. 2001 saw the launch of what I personally regard as one of the most robust and extensive pieces of software - Firefox !


Launched in 2001, and growing by leaps and bounds ever since, Firefox is undoubtedly one of the greatest contributions of the open source community to the home PC user. It is easy to use, customizable, powerful, secure and FREE - fits everyone's requirement like a glove ! With a huge repository of Firefox add-is and themes that enable customization of the browser look and feel, Firefox has been eating into IE's share slowly and steadily. Here are statistics from the World Wide Web Consortium (http://www.w3c.org)


The official statistics show an approx 54% of share with IE variants while 36% share with Firefox variants. However, I have a different story to tell. I maintain some basic statistics of the visitors to my blog, including their browser information and out of 200 odd visits, here is the information that I've collated:


I agree that the sample of people visiting my blog is not exactly representative of the entire population of web surfers but the point that I'm trying to make here is that probably the scene is changing faster than MS can imagine. The message for Microsoft ?

"Beware! Open source giant on the loose!!"

Till next time.. cheers !