Microsoft Corp duly launched Internet Explorer 4.0 a few months later than planned yesterday in San Francisco. It’s free to download now, or is available on compact disk for a $5 processing fee. Along with the product release, USA Today Online says that it has been named one of the 34 premier gold channels on IE 4.0 and will be pushing content through the browser interface. Although it’s hard to pin down any exact figures, those in the know figure that Microsoft has grabbed about a 30% share of the browser market – up from 5% at the end of 1995 – although Netscape Communications Corp’s Navigator still has a healthy lead with 60%.
