Browser wars: Netscape gains as Firefox wanes?

Computerworld - A key feature in version 8.0 of Netscape Communication Corp.'s Web browser may have deflated the Netscape browser's market share by as much as half earlier this year -- while artificially boosting the market share of rivals Firefox and Internet Explorer, a Web tracking firm said today.
Launched in March, Netscape 8.0 lets users switch back and forth between two different modes of displaying Web pages -- one based on Firefox's open-source code and another based on Internet Explorer code. That ensures that Web pages built to display correctly on Internet Explorer also load fully on Firefox.
The switching feature led Web sites and Web tracking tools to misregister Netscape 8.0 users as either Firefox or Internet Explorer users, according to Vince Vizzacarro, executive vice president of marketing at NetApplications.com, an Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based maker of Web traffic monitoring tools.
Rather than boosting its user base, Netscape's launch of Netscape 8.0 led to a drop in the browser's total market share, from 1.8% in March to 1.5% in July, putting it in fourth place behind Apple Computer Inc.'s Safari browser, which had 1.7%, according to NetApplications. Meanwhile, Firefox's share grew from 6.7% to 8.7% between March and June 2005, according to NetApplications.com.
"We discovered the flaw in June and fixed the issue in our 8.02 update in July," said Netscape spokesman Andrew Weinstein. "Hopefully, this will bring our market share up to where it should be."
Vizzacarro estimates that Netscape might have gained "a couple of percentage points" if not for the fact that Web analystics companies were misregistering Netscape users.
Indeed, from July to September, the America Online Inc. unit's browser gained 44% more users, ending August with 2.2% of the total market. Vizzacarro expects Netscape to continue gaining users, especially next year, when Hewlett-Packard Co., the second-largest seller of PCs in the U.S., begins installing Netscape on all of its new computers as an alternative to Internet Explorer (see "Netscape to ship on HP PCs in 2006").
"It could result in a huge jump in Netscape's market share," said Vizzacarro.
Firefox, which is supported by the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, has lost share since Netscape fixed its bug, falling to 7.6% in September. A Firefox representative said the browser has been downloaded nearly 100 million times but otherwise declined to comment.
Internet Explorer, which had been losing share to Firefox through the middle of 2005, has slowed its decline in recent months. It still holds a commanding 87% of the market.
The Web browser market was a key battleground