Firefox beats IE
Posted by unbrand on 29 January 2006 | 2 Comments
In 1995 or so I interviewed for a job at Netscape. At that time, they were going through a big growth stage and had recently grown to 200 people. They had just leased their second building in Mountain View and there was a lot of excitement in the air at Netscape HQ. At the time Netscape had something like 80% market share for web browsers. Microsoft had yet to “discover” the web and so IE wasn’t really on anybody’s radar. Except for employees of Netscape, that is.
During my interviews (I didn’t get the job), I could sense the excitement in the air, but there was also a sense of fear of Microsoft. Maybe fear isn’t the right word. Maybe “abject terror” is more accurate. They knew where the real competition was going to be coming from. And they were right because they knew that whatever Microsoft would produce would not be technically superior, but that Microsoft would put their massive marketing machine behind whatever browser Microsoft produced.
So it’s January 29, 2006 and I’m glancing at my blog traffic statistics for the month of January. And I see Internet Explorer in the #2 position at 33.5%. Firefox is on top with 33.9%. The last time I remember Internet Explorer not being the most popular browser was in, what, 1997?
It’s nice to see the spirit of Netscape, and maybe some code, live on in Firefox. Here’s to not giving up on your dreams.
:-)