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by techrat 1761 days ago
Netscape was the dominant browser from at least 1995 to the end of 1998. It overtook Mosaic to become #1 with Mosaic being a very, very distant #2.

At its peak it had 90+% of the market share.

Firefox nearly overtook IE until Chrome was released. If Firefox had not been consistently a dumpster fire, I think it could have maintained at least 50/50 with Chrome.

I switched to Chrome not because Google had good advertising but simply because it was _better._ Firefox has always had issues and Mozilla can't seem to make a browser that doesn't shit itself every now and then.

1 comments

> If Firefox had not been consistently a dumpster fire, I think it could have maintained at least 50/50 with Chrome.

It took 6 years for Chrome to gain 50% market share. In 6 years, firefox had barely taken 25% from IE.

If you're arguing that this difference in success is explained by the technological gap between chrome and firefox being much larger than the technological gap between firefox and IE, you need a reality check.

Otherwise, you need to acknowledge the fact that Chrome had something firefox didn't have, and it was not a technological advantage.

Firefox made it to about 32%.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/internet-browser-market-sha...

Chrome took more away from IE initially than it did from Firefox.

And yes, I'm arguing a technical difference. I've used every version of every browser when it was still new, all the way back to Mosaic.

Chrome introduced per-tab instancing which was a HUGE leap ahead of everything else and Firefox took years to catch up to that one feature alone. Firefox was bloated, slow and unstable.

It still is.