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While earlier browsers had been developed, Netscape's Navigator brought the Web into everyday use. As the dominant product of Netscape, the browser was often called "Netscape", obscuring other products of the company.
Close to the time when Time Warner bought AOL, AOL bought Netscape. Shortly thereafter, AOL terminated further development of Navigator, turning all rights over to the non-profit Mozilla Foundation.
Navigator continued to be released by AOL's Netscape, but it was then merely a rebranded repackaging of Mozilla products, initially the browser from Mozilla Suite and then Firefox. In 2008, Netscape announced that it was discontinuing further releases of Navigator.
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Contrary to popular belief and publicity from Micro$oft, Internet Explorer (IE) is not the only browser available. While Micro$oft does indeed dominate the market for desktop computer operating systems and other applications, the user base held by IE has steadily dropped since 2003. During the same period, the user base held by Gecko browsers such as Firefox has surged. Some surveys even indicate that Gecko browsers now hold a greater user base than IE.
Besides IE and Firefox (the principal browser product of the Mozilla organization), browsers currently available for various platforms include the following (indicating that Micro$oft was not successful in destroying the competition):
Both users and browser developers would really like to know what user bases are held by different browsers. Since most browsers are distributed as freeware, however, there are no sales figures. Comparing download counts might indicate the size of user bases except for the fact that many downloaded software files are never installed while many other are often downloaded once and then installed on more than one computer.
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While many discuss market share, browsers are generally freeware and are not marketed. Thus, I use the term user base here.*** End Left Sidebar ***
To many, the only measure of user base is how frequent various browsers are used to access Web sites (the statistics presented below). This too is not quite accurate since it is skewed by individuals who are avid Web surfers.
Most of estimates of user base are derived by logging Web sites to determine which browsers are used to view their pages. These will vary widely (and wildly) depending on the audience for the logged Web sites. Thus, statistics on browser user base — and operating systems too — are biased according to which users are logged.
In Tables 1-3, "Gecko" represents Mozilla browsers such as Firefox, SeaMonkey, and others. Internet Explorer, Gecko, and Opera include versions for hand-held devices when such data are available. "Others" includes browsers no one of which has at least 0.5% of the user base.
Table 1 is based on logging the W3Schools Web site operated by Refnes Data of Norway. This site is of primary interest to Webmasters. Thus, the statistics in this table browser usage by those with high technical interest in browsers.
| Browser Family | User Base | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Mar '03 | Dec '11 | Change | |
| Internet Explorer | 88.0% | 20.2% | -67.8% |
| Gecko (Mozilla) | 7.6% | 37.7% | +30.1% |
| Chrome | n/a | 34.6% | n/a |
| Opera | 1.2% | 2.5% | +1.3% |
| Safari | 3.2% | 4.2% | +1.7% |
| others | 0.8% | ||
Internet Explorer includes versions of PC AOL.
Chrome was first released in 2008.
Safari was not separately reported in 2003 but was instead included in "others".
In the same period covered by Table 1, W3Schools reports the overall share of the operating systems market held by all Windows versions dropped from 93.2% to 86.1%. Both Mac and Linux gained market shares in that period.
Table 2 contains data reported by StatCounter. While data may have been available earlier, the earliest I could obtain when I started reporting StatCounter data was September 2008. This table is based on logging many different, unrelated sites around the world whose owners agree to allow StatCounter to collect logging data.
| Browser Family | User Base | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep '08 | Dec '11 | Change | |
| Internet Explorer | 67.2% | 38.7% | -28.5% |
| Gecko (Mozilla) | 25.8% | 25.3% | -0.5% |
| Chrome | 1.0% | 27.3% | +26.2% |
| Safari | 3.0% | 6.1% | +3.1% |
| Opera | 2.9% | 2% | -0.9% |
| others | 0.2% | 0.8% | +0.6% |
Over the same period covered by Table 2, StatCounter reports that the overall share of the operating systems market held by all Windows versions decreased from 91.8% to 90.0%. While Windows 7 is now the dominant version, its user share remains less than the combined user share of the other Windows versions.
Table 3 contains data reported by Net Applications. While data may have been available earlier, the earliest I could obtain when I started reporting StatCounter data was June 2009. This table is based on logging visits to the Web sites of Net Applications' customers (generally businesses) and visits to Web search services.
| Browser Family | User Base | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 4th Qtr '04 | Dec '11 | Change | |
| Internet Explorer | 91.4% | 51.9% | -39.5% |
| Gecko (Mozilla) | 6.6% | 21.9% | +15.4% |
| Chrome | n/a | 19.1% | n/a |
| Safari | 1.5% | 5.0% | +3.5% |
| Opera | 0.5% | 1.7% | +1.2% |
| others | 0.1% | 0.5% | +0.4% |
Data for the fourth quarter of 2004 was obtained from Wikipedia.
Chrome was first released in 2008.
From June 2009 to the end of the period covered by Table 3, Net Applications reports that the overall share of the operating systems market held by all Windows versions decreased from 93.4% to 92.2%.
Table 4 contains data reported by the Wikimedia Foundation from logs of visits to all the Wikimedia Foundation projects, such as Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wiktionary, Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikinews, and Wikiversity.
| Browser Family | User Base | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Apr '09 | Oct '11 | Change | |
| Internet Explorer | 57.4% | 34.2% | -23.2% |
| Gecko (Mozilla) | 31.4% | 23.6% | -7.8% |
| Chrome | 1.9% | 20.6% | +18.7% |
| Safari | 3.9% | 11.2% | +7.4% |
| Opera | 2.6% | 5.0% | +2.4% |
| Others | 2.9% | 5.5% | +2.6% |
I did a two-week collection of data during 9-22 October 2011 across 20 of my Web pages that contain visible visitor counters, repeating what I have done before. The audience in this case is far more eclectic than the audience for W3Schools but not necessarily as broad and varied as — and definitely a smaller sample than — the audience used by StatCounter. The "hits" were distributed across pages dealing with gardening, political commentary, encryption, literate writing, cooking, investing, and other topics. ("Hits" from the FreeFind Web crawler were excluded since I subscribe to this for the search tool I installed on this Web site and thus force "hits" by that crawler.)
| Type of "Hit" | May '06 | Oct '08 | Oct '09 | Apr '10 | Oct '10 | Apr '11 | Oct '11 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total "Hits" | 3,307 | 2,057 | 1,876 | 1,682 | 1,620 | 1,686 | 1,748 |
| Browsers | 62.0% | 61.9% | 48.8% | 45.5% | 60.5% | 48.4% | 52.5% |
| Search crawlers | 37.2% | 37.4% | 50.8% | 54.2% | 38.3% | 50.4% | 46.6% |
| Other | 0.8% | 0.7% | 0.4% | 0.3% | 1.2% | 1.2% | 0.9% |
Table 6 details which browsers were involved in the "hits" indicated in the "Browser" row of Table 5.
| Browsers | May '06 | Oct '08 | Oct '09 | Apr '10 | Oct '10 | Apr '11 | Oct '11 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Internet Explorer (IE) | 78.2% | 57.0% | 50.5% | 48.2% | 40.2% | 40.4% | 32.8% |
| AOL for PCs (included in IE) | 2.6% | 1.2% | 0.8% | 1.2% | 1.3% | 0.4% | 0.5% |
| Gecko-based | 17.6% | 33.0% | 36.7% | 35.8% | 37.5% | 28.0% | 30.1% |
| Firefox (included in Gecko) | 15.1% | 29.9% | 34.9% | 34.3% | 36.3% | 27.5% | 29.2% |
| SeaMonkey (included in Gecko) | n/a | 0.2% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.8% | 0.5% | 0.3% |
| Chrome | n/a | 1.4% | 0.9% | 6.4% | 10.3% | 13.4% | 19.9% |
| Safari | 3.0% | 6.0% | 7.4% | 8.4% | 10.6% | 14.8% | 14.1% |
| Opera | 0.8% | 1.7% | 1.7% | 0.9% | 1.0% | 1.6% | 2.2% |
| Others | 0.4% | 0.3% | 0.3% | 0.4% | 0.3% | 1.8% | 1.0% |
In my latest survey, more than 67% of all browser "hits" were not from Internet Explorer. The small user base for Safari (an Apple product installed on all Mac computers) seems to have reached a plateau. Google's new Chrome browser has gained user base, replacing Safari in third place, well ahead of the Opera browser from Norway.
With this survey, Internet Explorer resumed its downward trend in user base. Gecko browsers reversed their prior decline.
While my data do not show the same percentages as the data from W3Schools, StatCounter, Net Applications, or Wikimedia, all show similar trends. The differences merely affirm my earlier assertion that different Web page topics attract audiences with different computer configurations. In any case, my own surveys clearly confirm the trend seen in the other data: The user base for IE browsers is shrinking significantly (but not necessarily consistently).
Note that my statistics for the Safari browser might be inflated because my daughter (frequently visiting my Web site while living about 2,000 miles away) uses a Mac with that browser. On the other hand, a number of Web-capable mobile phones also use versions of Safari, including the iPhone; in Table 6, "hits" from such Safari versions were counted for that browser and not with "Others".
(During the latest two-week survey, my A Shipment to My Daughter received 500 "hits", 29% of the total.)
While collecting data for Tables 3 and 4, I also collected statistics about "hits" from search engine crawlers (sometimes called bots). These accounted for slightly more than half of the "hits" logged during my most recent survey.
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Some ISPs assert that video and music downloads consume too much band-width and cause Internet congestion. They want to charge users extra for such activities. Perhaps they should instead look at the band-width used by bots and crawlers. They should also look at the band-width used by spam.*** End Right Sidebar ***
Among search engine crawlers, the most frequent visitors to my Web site — accounting for more than 75% of all crawler "hits" — were:
Visits by 21 different crawlers were logged during the two-week survey. Apparently, a number of individuals and organizations would like to earn the fortunes made by the founders of Yahoo and Google. Not all succeed. For example, Discobot placed in the top 77% in my April 2011 survey; in this October 2011 survey, not one "hit" was recorded for this experimental crawler. Interestingly, ScoutJet was in the top 70% in my October 2010 survey and disappeared in my April 2011 survey; but it had the most "hits" in this October 2011 survey. Also, Micro$soft's Bing completely replaced that company's MSN crawler with this latest survey.
Besides analyzing which crawlers visited my Web site, I also was able to analyze from where browser "hits" originated. Almost 78% of the "hits" by actual browsers left information as to where a link to my own Web page was found. While ScoutJet had the most crawler visits to my Web site, no visits from that search service were detectable. Google was by far the most common source of "hits" by browsers.
Search requests originating in Micro$oft's Bing accounted only slightly more browser "hits" on my site than Yahoo. In the meantime, Google — with fewer crawler "hits" than either Bing or Yahoo — accounted for well more than half the total number of "hits" by actual browsers.
Of course, these statistics reflect upon the popularity of the search services, not upon how well they index my pages. Yahoo's very low result — down from 2.5% just six months ago — correlates with the company's recent severe decline in market value.
Noteworthy is the lack of any detectable browser visits through the Baidu search service in China. This is not an experimental search service or a service under development. This is a quite mature search service. While its crawler accounted for 5.3% of all "hits", however, Baidu accounted for none of the detected browser "hits". I suspect my site might be banned by China's "great firewall" because of a few negative comments I made about the governance of Hong Kong. There were also no detectable "hits" from either of the experimental search service using the Majestic-12, which is really not surprising since the service is still under development.
Updated 8 January 2012
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