Does Netscape Matter Anymore?

by David Wall

June 25, 2002 —

A lot has changed since the days when Netscape dominated the browser
market and Microsoft's inferior products played catch-up. Though
accurate browser usage figures are hard to estimate authoritatively,
Netscape Navigator's installed base certainly seems to represent a
minority of the browser universe (a third, at most) -- much of that
installed base consisting of older versions of Navigator running on
older computers.

What's more, Microsoft Internet Explorer seems to have momentum on its
side. Netscape has not come out with a major release in 18 months, while
Microsoft just released version 6 of its browser in conjunction with the
Windows XP operating system. At least one source estimates that Internet
Explorer 6 -- alone, ignoring other versions -- holds a third of the
browser market.

Netscape has two things going for it: the Mozilla project and America
Online. A volunteer development team is working to build a better
browser with the Mozilla project and appears to be doing great work.
With Mozilla reaching version 1.0, Netscape will use it as the base for
a significant new release of Navigator.

Whether or not Mozilla 1.0 and its Navigator derivative will
significantly affect the browser market share picture is hard to
predict. No doubt, the product is of high technical quality and very
slick, but one can say that about the latest commercial distributions
of Linux, as well. They're great all around, and measurably better than
the leading operating systems in scores of quantitative ways but they
remain, however, niche products. Without a brilliantly successful
marketing effort or a terrain-shifting stroke of luck (such as a very
favorable legal ruling), Netscape Navigator probably also remains a
niche product.

Netscape Navigator's strongest hope appears to be America Online. If
that family of companies holds together (something that's not at all
certain), then Netscape's status as a member of the AOL-Time Warner
conglomerate may get a version of Netscape Navigator packaged with AOL's
user software kits (the company now uses a customized version of
Internet Explorer). If millions of AOL users begin using Navigator --
which could happen if existing subscribers are strongly "encouraged" to
upgrade -- Navigator would see a significant increase in its market
share. It would remain a minority player, though.

As JavaScript programmers, it's perhaps best to code to standards, not
browsers. If we write for the ECMA-262 specification and the W3C-defined
DOMs, then we'll encourage participation in the community process on the
part of Microsoft -- the dominant browser maker.

ITworld