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Of Web browsers and operating systems: Where we're at today

Thanks to an email from Dennis Sunde, who was wondering about the lack of media coverage on the browser wars since the Microsoft trial began, I decided to check out the Browser Stats Web site to see where we stood. Their latest survey of over half a million users, conducted in January 1999, shows that Microsoft Internet Explorer has a commanding lead:

Microsoft IE (all versions): 55.25%
Netscape Navigator (all versions): 38.3%

After Microsoft and Netscape, WebTV comes in at 1.1% and the rest of the crowd gets 1% share or less, including Lynx, Opera, Be's NetPositive, HotJava, and others.

What is, perhaps, even more interesting is the results of operating system usage. This particular survey (also half a million users) shows that Windows is basically the only viable operating system out there:

Microsoft Windows 95 and 98: 76.53%
Microsoft Windows NT: 8.6% (Total Win32: 85.13%)
Macintosh PowerPC: 3.86%
Macintosh 68K: 0.64% (Total Macintosh: 4.5%)
Microsoft Windows 3.1 (Total, including Win16): 3.26%

And that's literally it. Linux comes in at a pathetic, but telling, 0.13%, whereas Sun Solaris (SunOS) gets three times the usage at 0.39%. Everything else is negligible. And the total marketshare for Windows is 88.39%. Are we sure this isn't a monopoly

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