Chrome’s share of the browser market is fading as users who abandoned Internet Explorer and Firefox start to return, an Internet measurement company said today.
At the end of its third week of availability, Google Inc.’s Chrome accounted for 0.77% of the browsers that visited the 40,000 sites tracked by Net Applications, down from a 0.85% share the week before.
“The trend line on Chrome still has a slight downward angle, and these weekly numbers reflect that,” said Vince Vizzaccaro, Net Applications’ executive vice president of marketing. Although Chrome popped above 1% within hours of its release, the new browser now reaches that mark only in the middle of the night, U.S. time, Vizzaccaro added.
Chrome’s numbers, like those of Mozilla Corp.’s Firefox and Apple Inc.’s Safari, typically climb after work hours and then fall as work resumes the next day. Many businesses standardize on Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer (IE) and don’t allow employees to use alternate browsers.
IE and Firefox still showed share erosion compared to the period immediately before Chrome’s Sept. 2 debut, but both browsers regained users last week, Vizzaccaro said. IE picked up 0.24 percentage points last week, while Firefox regained 0.06 points. Both, however, remained down for the month, as was Opera Software ASA’s Opera and AOL LLC’s now-defunct Netscape.
Safari, the only browser to escape Chrome’s impact, was still on the plus side for September, ending last week up 0.45 percentage points before Chrome, although that was down from the prior week’s 0.68-point net gain.
Last week, Vizzaccaro said Safari’s immunity could be traced to the lack of Chrome competition. Although Google has promised a native Mac OS X edition, its browser is currently only available for Windows XP and Windows Vista.
Computerworld’s site metrics echoed Net Applications’ trend for Chrome. The percentage of visitors to Computerworld.com who used Google’s browser dropped to 4.01 points last week, down from 4.96 points.
Chrome’s slow slide may be because of Google’s low-key promotion, Vizzaccaro said. “The only marketing effort I’ve seen from Google is in sponsored links on search results for ‘browser’ or ‘browsers’ search terms,” he said. “On Google, Chrome is naturally the top sponsored link. On Yahoo, it was second. And on Windows Live, I couldn’t even find it in the first five pages of organic results.”
| Week starting |
Aug. 24 |
Aug. 31 |
Sept. 7 |
Sept. 15 |
Net Change |
| IE |
72.39% |
71.03% |
71.24% |
71.48% |
-0.91% |
| Firefox |
19.54% |
19.78% |
19.35% |
19.42% |
-0.13% |
| Safari |
6.27% |
6.67% |
6.95% |
6.73% |
0.45% |
| Chrome |
—– |
0.67% |
0.85% |
0.77% |
0.77% |
| Opera |
0.74% |
0.75% |
0.70% |
0.68% |
-0.06% |
| Netscape |
0.77% |
0.83% |
0.67% |
0.66% |
-0.11% |
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A web browser that gave many people their first experience of the web is set to disappear.
Netscape Navigator, now owned by AOL, will no longer be supported after 1 March 2008, the company has said.
In the mid-1990s, as the commercial web began to take off, the browser was used by more than 90% of people online.
Its market share has since slipped to just 0.6% as other browsers such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) and Firefox have eroded its user base.
The company recommends that users upgrade their browser to either Firefox or Flock, which are both built on the same underlying technologies as Navigator.
“I think we represent the hope that was of Netscape,” Mitchell Baker, chair of the Mozilla Foundation which coordinates development of Firefox, told BBC News.
“We have picked up many of the things that Netscape launched but we’ve taken them further in terms of openness and public participation.”
Ms Baker was one of the first employees at Netscape in 1994.
Web window
Netscape was created by Marc Andreessen who as a student had co-authored Mosaic, the first popular web browser.
His company Netscape Communications Corporation released the first version in 1994.
According to Shawn Hardin, President and CEO of Flock, Netscape played an important role in making the internet “a relevant mass market phenomenon”.
“Netscape had a critical role in taking all of these zeros and ones – this very academic and technical environment – and giving it a graphical user interface where an average person could come online and consume information,” he told BBC News.
“During its halcyon days it really felt like the internet and Netscape were really the same thing,” he said.
Other companies capitalised on Netscape’s success, notably Microsoft, which began to bundle IE with its Windows operating systems.
Although this led to legal wrangles over anti-competitive behaviour, IE now dominates the browser landscape with an 80% market share.
As a result, Netscape became unviable.
“While internal groups within AOL have invested a great deal of time and energy in attempting to revive Netscape Navigator, these efforts have not been successful in gaining market share from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer,” said Tom Drapeau on the Netscape blog last year, when the demise of the browser was first announced.
Future return?
For the past week Netscape users have been shown a message alerting them to the end of support for the browser.
“Given AOL’s current business focus, support for Netscape browsers will be discontinued as of March 1st, 2008,” the message reads.
It then suggests users upgrade to either Flock or Firefox.
Firefox is the main competitor to IE, particularly in Europe where it has a 28% market share, according to some statistics.
The open source browser’s development is coordinated by the Mozilla foundation, set up by Netscape staff made redundant in 2003.
It has had more than 500 million downloads worldwide and in countries such as Finland it is the most popular browser.
“Competition is what brings quality,” said Ms Baker.
Flock describes itself as “the social web browser” and allows people to see feeds from community websites, such as Flickr and Facebook, and post to blogs without having to navigate to the page.
“There are lots of ways that people are engaging in having a conversation and Flock is very focused on making that as effortless and convenient as possible,” said Mr Hardin.
However, not all Netscape users are happy about having to change browser.
“I’m sad. Flock still needs improvement and I am not happy with Firefox’s interface. I’m [an] orphan!” read one post on the Netscape blog.
Others who posted comments on the blog predicted the browser will make a return.
“Netscape is a wonderful browser, and it will be so in the future,” read one.
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