Thoughts

I am sure there are many of you who started accessing the internet with Netscape Navigator which owned the majority of market-share in the mid-1990’s. I still recall using it on my Macintosh (and later a PC) with dial-up access, not the quickest option but with less embedded media in webpages it did suffice. Netscape was not the first browser I used, those were the text based Lynx and Mosiac in some of the computer labs at the University of Arizona.

Over the years other options sprung up and soon Internet Explorer started taking market share from Netscape until passing it in the late 90’s with a better product. Netscape was bought by AOL and the downfall of the browser continued, finally leading to the demise of it as of March 1, 2008 when support will no longer be provided for Netscape Navigator.

Right now as you read this post, I would guess you are using one of three browsers: Internet Explorer, Safari or Firefox. The majority of users do use Internet Explorer, however Firefox is continuing to grow in usage with now 15% of internet users. This is significant for the browser wars as one which competes directly with IE forces innovations to be developed resulting in the users of the product benefiting, which is something we didn’t have for a while. It should be noted the underlying basis of Firefox is based on technology from the Mozilla Corporation which came from the Mozilla Foundation and before that the Mozilla Organization created by Netscape. So while Netscape Navigator is no longer an option when viewing the web, Firefox continues to grow and who knows someday we could be reading a post like this regarding Internet Explorer… you may laugh but anything is possible.

If you haven’t given Firefox a try you can find more information by clicking below.