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Welcome to the CyberAtlas newsletter, your guide to what's new at the
CyberAtlas site, the Reference Desk for Web Marketers,
http://cyberatlas.internet.com, part of internet.com, The Internet & IT
Network, http://internet.com.

Casualties in the Browser War
By Robyn Greenspan

Netscape, once a formidable competitor in the browser market, has hit a record
low in the number of users. StatMarket (http://www.statmarket.com) reports that
Netscape's global usage share has dwindled from August 2001's figure of 13
percent to a mere 3.39 percent, and since early 1999, Netscape's global usage
share has dropped from about 32 percent worldwide.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer, meanwhile, continues to climb, and now has a
global usage share of almost 96 percent, up from about 87 percent a year ago.
Less than 1 percent accounts for browsers in the "other" category.

"The browser war is in fact a massacre," said Geoff Johnston, vice president of
product marketing for StatMarket. "The newest versions of Netscape have failed
to win over users so far. There are pockets of resistance in certain countries,
but unless AOL makes a move soon, Netscape may find itself battling Opera for
the last 1 to 2 percent of the market."

Despite its struggle to maintain usage share worldwide, Netscape still holds
its own in some countries. For example, Switzerland's usage share more than
doubles the global average. Other countries where Netscape is stronger than the
global average include Germany, Canada and the United States. Global usage share
is the percentage of people worldwide that are using a particular browser.

Browser News (http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/index.htm), ranks the major
browsers, in order of popularity:
- Internet Explorer 5.x: -- 49 percent of page accesses, down from 81
percent a year ago. Usage peaked at 82 percent in Aug 2001, then tumbled with
the advent of Internet Explorer 6.x.
- Internet Explorer 6.x: -- 41 percent of page accesses.
- Netscape 4.x: -- 3 percent of page accesses, down from 6 percent a year
ago.
- Internet Explorer 4.x: -- 2.6 percent of page accesses, down from 7
percent a year ago, due mostly to upgrades. These figures likely include many
MSN-TV users as sloppy browser-detection code can misidentify MSN-TV as Internet
Explorer.
- AOL: -- 5-6 percent of page accesses. These accesses are also included
in the percentages for Internet Explorer, since AOL's browser uses Internet
Explorer. This percentage should remain about the same in the near term.
- Gecko-based Browsers (Mozilla, Netscape 7.x, etc.): -- 1.3 percent of
page accesses.
- Opera: -- Almost 1 percent of page accesses. The Opera percentage listed
may be too low: sloppy browser-detection code can misidentify Opera as either
Internet Explorer, Mozilla, or Netscape.
- Netscape 3.x, Internet Explorer 3.x, and Internet Explorer 2.x: -- each
of the outdated browsers represent one-half percent of page accesses.
- MSN-TV (WebTV): no page accesses are reported for MSN-TV users, but this
is likely due to poor browser-detection code: sloppy code can identify old MSN-
TV browsers as IE2, and newer versions as IE4. There is good evidence that this
happened: when newer versions of MSN-TV came out, the reported number of IE2
users dropped precipitously; the drop suggests that about .8 percent of page
accesses might be MSN-TV users. Note: since MSN-TV is available only in certain
regions, the percentage will be much higher for sites attracting visitors from
these regions.
- Older Browsers: very few use older versions of Internet Explorer, Opera,
or Netscape; Web designers can generally disregard them.

The 6th annual Webby Awards, an Oscar style event presented by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, was held last night, June18, 2002, in a scaled down venue, the 300 seat San Francisco's Palace of the Legion of Honor. Last years event was held at the 3,100 seat San Francisco War Memorial Opera House.
http://www.webbyawards.com/main/