July 2004 — Internet Explorer has held more than 95 percent of the browser market since June 2002. Over the last month, however, its market share has slowly dropped from 95.73 percent on June 4 to 94.73 percent on July 6.A loss of 1 percent of the market may not mean much to Microsoft, but it translates into a large growth, proportionately, in the number of users running Mozilla and Netscape-based browsers. Mozilla and Netscape’s combined market share has increased by 26 percent, rising from 3.21 percent of the market in June to 4.05 percent in July.—PC World, Mozilla Gains on IE.
June 2008 — Firefox 3 is almost here. The latest version is now at release candidate two and, in a word, it’s great.
It strikes me that we forget, even as many of us look forward to this great open-source browser just what hurdles Firefox had to overcome. Four years ago, Internet Explorer, thanks to Microsoft’s monopoly owned the Web browser market. Netscape, while still around, was already dead and buried for all practical purposes.