Microsoft Loses 15.6% of the Browser Market in the Last 12 Months

Park City, UT - Microsoft Loses 15.6% of the Browser Market in the Last 12 Months - In an interview today, M. Victor Janulaitis, the CEO of Janco Associates, Inc. , released the results of an extensive ongoing study of Internet Browser War. In that study, PSR found that Microsoft's browsers (versions 3, 4 and 5) were used in 47.6% of all internet sessions versus Netscape's browsers (versions 3, 4 and 5) which garnered 28.9%. AOL continues to show a marked increase in penetration with 15.8% of the market. These results are as of January 31, 2002.

Mr. Janulaitis said, “AOL and Netscape are continuing to get more users as users now how more and better options that Microsoft. ” … Microsoft lost almost 16% of the browser market while AOL and Netscape picked up those users.

Mr. Janulaitis also said, “WebTV is a dismal failure and looks like a loss leader of another bad idea that cost too much and will go the way of the dot com's. ”

The data in the study covers a period from September 9, 1997 through January 31, 2002 with and average of over 50,000 data points per time period.

The data for the last twelve (12) months shows a decrease in Microsoft's usage market share from 63.4% to 47.6%, Netscape with an increase from 16.4% to 28.9%, and AOL with an increase from 14.8 to 15.8% in that period. Mr. Janulaitis said, “Based on analysis of the data, it is clear that Netscape and AOL are taking the market back from Microsoft.

Summary graphs from the study are available at https://e-janco.com/browser.htm .

(Added July 2018)

The traditional browser wars are over. Now the main activity is how the browser interact with Mobile devices and search engines. With Goggle and Amazon expanding the business models of how they provide results to their users and use captive browsers the next set of browser wars will be in the courts of the U.S. and EU.

There currently are and soon will be more mandated requirements for what can be done with users' information. Most notable are the EU's GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018. Every type of organization that has information and data on third parties must be aware of how that data is accessed, stored, distributed, shared, sold, and archived.

When people talked about browsers back in the 1990's they had no idea about the level of complexity they mandated requirements would add to the process.

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