OT: Netscape et al gaining on MSIE

[Herb Richter]

I think this is good news.

For a few years now I've been watching the web browser usage in the web
site statistics for my site.  Over the past year or so I'm seeing the
steady growth of Netscape and compatibles use over MSIE <big smiley here>

About a year ago visitors used MSIE about 9:1 over Netscape etc.  For a
few months it has been about 3:1 ...this last week, about 1:1 !

Based on pages served, last week: (most of the rest were bots)

	MSIE:				46.8%

	Netscape (compatible)	34.97%
	Mozilla			 5.62%
	Netscape		 1.41%
				------	42.0%


For some time now I've said that MS's biggest strength (after money and
power) is it's critical mass.  In web page design when 90% of visitors are
using one browser, web authors will design first for that browser (and
maybe not at all for others!) which will keep visitors using that browser.

But now designers *better* make sure their pages render well in more than
one browser allowing us to chose other browsers without being excluded
from many sites.

Losing the critical mass means that their (MS's) lock-in is broken.  Even
if they now start to make IE work as well as say Firefox - its too late -
people don't *have to* use IE any more.


Sooooo, how does this translate to OS and office-app critical mass?

...I bet that this is *huge* for MS.  I bet that they don't really pursue
people that use un-licensed copies of Windows and Office because they
need to, at all cost, keep usage at about 90% of all desktops.  My guess
would be that critical mass for Windows would be about 60% - for Office
80+% ...below CM; people won't need to use Windows / Office just because
"all their friends and business contacts do".

Lets hope that OpenOffice+SO+Sun+Google will do to Office what
Firefox+Opera++ is doing to IE.

SUNW is starting to look really good - I think I'll buy some this week.

-- 

        Herb Richter  <hgr-FjoMob2a1F7QT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org>
        Toronto, Ontario
        http://PartsAndService.com
        http://PartsAndService.ca




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