12% Use Netscape

[Brett_Tabke]

...14 million home Internet users, or 12.3% of home users, actively used Netscape in June 2002, compared with 76.6 million, or 67.1%, for Internet Explorer. The research firm said 84.4 million home users actively use browsers. Microsoft has said that AOL's subscribers account for one-third of the use of Internet Explorer.

[biz.yahoo.com...]

So if AOL goes Netscape, then instantly 35-45% of all net users will use Netscape.

source: Opera news groups [groups.google.com] - thanks Ford

Also, check the interesting stats on this page from heise.de [heise.de] - thanks laz.

[bobriggs]

I'm going to reply to this without having read the articles. Afterwards I'm going to read them.

My IE hits are way into the nineties, with netscape being below 3% or more. And the netscape users hitting my sites are mostly from Mac users. Win users account for less than 1% of the netscape hits. But the trend I'm seeing for the Mac is much more NN6 hits.

So if AOL goes Netscape, then instantly 35-45% of all net users will use Netscape.

I'd love to see it. Curious as to how it would be integrated into the AOL software. I know it's out there, but I haven't seen it.

Maybe my sites are just different. But the numbers mentioned don't reflect my stats at all.

[Birdman]

Very interesting article. One question...
>>from article

America Online is also expected to make Netscape the default browser for its 34 million users from Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

When is this going to happen?

[bobriggs]

Should have read more closely:

'home users'

How can they measure that?

I'm still not too sure of those numbers.

[mivox]

Well, AOL knows how many users they have, and I almost guarantee they have access to data about what version of their software each user logs in with, so...

I'd imagine many AOL users would be very much inclined to upgrade their software any time AOL said to... much like everyone who automatically clicked "yes" when their computer asked if they wanted to download the latest version of IE. It's a user sophistication thing... a lot of beginning users just upgrade everything whenever it's suggested because they think they have to.

If AOL wanted to, since they sort of trap users in their own little AOL universe, they could make the new Netscape version a required upgrade... you can't use AOL's services unless you're using the latest version (which would be a very bad move, IMO, but entirely do-able).

[keyplyr]

> 12% use Netscape

Interesting how these figures get published that are so very far from reality.

> My IE hits are way into the nineties, with netscape being below 3% or more.

That's more what I have seen for a long time now. Last year I was seeing NN around 5 to 6% but they have continued to decline so far this year. At my site, NN is neck'n neck with Opera, which continues to climb but I think that is due to hits from this group :)

[rewboss]

As has been demonstrated time and time again on this board, there is n one definitive figure for browser usage. Some of us are seeing 2% or less Netscape 4, others are seeing in excess of 20%, one or two as much as 40%.

It depends on: Who your site is aimed at, how it actually performs in NS4 (a page that is unusable in NN4 is bound to show fewer hits from that browser), whether you're talking user sessions or individual hits and so on and so on.

A couple of years ago, I was telling people off for not making their pages NN4 compatible. Their answer was that they're only getting 2% of their hits from that browser, so why should thery bother? My response was to say that that wasn't surprising, because NN4 users couldn't use their site, so they were going away to the competition. At the time I was getting about 20%.

It's hard to judge. All we can say for sure is that Netscape 4 is getting less popular, but has not yet reached the point where Netscape has discontinued support for it (the arrival of 4.8 is imminent).

[tedster]

I don't know about the validity of the actual stats, but something's wonky in the arithmetic in the Yahoo article.

According to comScore, 14 million home Internet users, or 12.3% of home users, actively used Netscape in June 2002, compared with 76.6 million, or 67.1%, for Internet Explorer. The research firm said 84.4 million home users actively use browsers.

NN usage:
14 million is 17% of 84.4 million (not 12.3%)

IE usage:
76.6 million is 91% of 84.4 million (not 67.1%)

It looks like some reporter garbled it. Stats can be misleading enough, even when they are accurately reported. I'm guessing that some numbers were "homes" and some were "home users" or something like that.

[starway]

As for me, all those stats don't worth a thing.
Over and over again I face the fact that every article represent it's own (made up?) numbers in order to justify the conclusions they make.
Anyway, "12% Use Netscape" seems to be a nonsense: if we take average stats combined from different sources, we won't get more than few percents.

America Online is also expected to make Netscape the default browser for its 34 million users from Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

This also seem to be a nonsence.
AOL cannot replace the browser for it's millions of users overnight. It is more correct to speak about new AOL clients that will get N7 by default. All the rest will still use IE with an option to move away from it (as will be probably suggested by AOL).
So it seems we can't expect to see any 35-45% or so using new N7 in near future.

Question:
What are the stats resources that you rely on, if we talk about internet trends worldwide? I think that The Counter [thecounter.com] is one of the most accurate and independent, but it's not enough.

[randomuser]

aol switching to netscape won't have that much of an immediate affect on market share. the hype might wake people up to make their sites compatable, but most (note that i said most, not all) aol users i know never upgrade their software so the majority would still be using ie for years to come. by that time, who knows if aol will even be popular anymore. i hope they act soon because they might not have the same power in the future.

my site is 84% ie and 14% netscape (unfortunately it's mostly nn4). opera is less than half a percent.

[Filipe]

most aol users i know never upgrade their software so the majority would still be using ie for years to come

I haven't used AOL in years, but when I did use it, I remember that on occassion there would be in-system upgrades. They are capable of suggesting software upgrades within AOL itself and having users change. I mean, there's no point in supporting two different browsers if you don't have to...

But then, I can't say for sure. But even if AOL doubles the current users of Netscape, that's enough to turn a lot of webmasters heads (and make them vomit with rage).

[gsx]

You obviously know nothing about compuserve. AOL gave all compuserve (UK) members four weeks to change to AOL or they would lose their access to the internet. Why would/could they not do the same with Netscape?

Branded again as an "essential change", I am sure that 34 million people will change if it is regarded as "essential".