Internet Explorer Grabs Market Share from Netscape

The business information firm Zona Research released a study yesterday stating that among people surfing the Web at work, 59 percent now use Microsoft's Internet Explorer, while just 41 percent use a browser made by Netscape. Not only does this announcement come as a shock -- a year ago Netscape had the lead, and by 20 percentage points -- but it comes amid a flurry of other browser-related news, all of which reminds us that web browsers may be free, but they're still big business, and the browser wars are far from over.

A few more numbers from the Zona browser report: 69 percent of companies "encourage or require" the use of one particular browser by their employees, and 62 percent of those companies "encourage or require" their workers to use IE. A Zona Research analyst speculates that such corporate policies are probably driving IE's market share gains -- as opposed to, for example, personal choice. Forty percent of companies surveyed encourage workers to set their browsers to a particular home page. Ninety-seven of the companies surveyed filter their employees' access to Internet content through a list of "approved sites," while 200 don't. MORE >>