After 100M IE7 Downloads, Firefox Still Gaining

Kelson writes "Internet Explorer 7 hit the 100 million download mark last week. Yet in the three months it's been available, Firefox's market share has continued to grow. InformationWeek reports that nearly all of IE7's growth has been upgrades from IE6. People don't seem to be switching back to IE in significant numbers, prompting analysts to wonder: has Microsoft finally met its match?"

If you're like me

You upgrade IE6 with the assumption that MS will require it for one thing or another. We don't actually use it but we install it just in case.

Re:If you're like me

True. Or you just want to check to see for yourself whether it really fixes some of those nasty CSS problems. There are plenty of reasons for installing IE7, but none of them imply that you will also be actually using it. Site statistics will have to assess whether IE7 is really being used a lot, not the amount of downloads.

For me....

It's been there in the "Software Update" for weeks. Or better said, I always log in as "Restricted User" (as does my wife) and I then don't get notifications about that particular "Software Update". It's only when I have to login as "Administrator" that I get the notification. Logging in as "Administrator" doesn't happen often, and when I do, it's usually to fix something and I don't have time nor motivation to launch the IE7 update.

So my machines all still have IE6, but nobody uses it... They all use Firefox. The rest of the family all have their machines setup to be used in "Restricted User" configuration and that way IE7 doesn't install. Why, I do not know, because other updates do install. So people doing the "right thing" (running non-admin) don't get it automatically. Funny, isn't it?

Re:For me....

Ditto. I think that I am one of those "downloads", but when they are roughly automatic and I don't care at all about installing it, should you really get to count raw download? If so, am I making a mistake by downloading Firefox once and using that single little install to spread it around the network at home? If raw numbers count, my house systems have about 4 "copies" of IE7 and 1 copy of Firefox, even though nobody in the house uses IE.

Re:If you're like me

Vast majority of distrobution of FireFox for Linux users is update systems of their distro. I never downloaded FireFox from www.mozilla.org, but I use it. So non-downloader is not a non-user anyways.

Re:If you're like me

I run two different sites, both of which are far from being tech-oriented - one is a music site [musicmademe.com], and the other is a movie review site [moviesmademe.com]. The stats on both sites consistently show an increase in FF usage from month to month. I know I don't bring in a fraction of the hits that Google and the other "major" sites do, but if this is any indication...

Thus far this month, we're looking at the following:
MMMDI [musicmademe.com]
1,867,564 hits
64.1% IE / 29.6% FF / 1.9% Safari (the big three)

MvMMDI [moviesmademe.com]
186,191 hits (yes, this site is still relatively new and unestablished)
59.9% IE / 34.5% FF / 2.1% Safari (the big three)

Bad Metrics

Or, if you're any type of web designer you use both to check your sites work. Simply quoting download numbers is a completly bogus way of proving popularity. You'd think something like InformationWeek would know better than to report this pointless bit dick waving.

Re:Bad Metrics

And since 92% of the population in the western hemsiphere are now "web designers", that would actually account for all downloads made so far.

Stupid meaningless statistics

Let's consider the following facts:

- IE7's requirements say it will only run on XP or Windows Server 2003. Hence you'd expect that (most) people who downloaded IE7 are indeed on XP or Win 2003 machines.

- all XP and Windows Server 2003 computers came with IE6

I'm sure you can fill in the blanks there, because it's a simple case of "X => Y, Y => Z". If X="you upgraded to IE7", Y="you're on XP or Win 2003", Z="you had IE6". Did anyone really need a statistic or study to tell them that, surprisingly, unexpectedly, those who upgraded to IE7 had IE6 on their machine before?

Pretty much the only mildly interesting word in there is: "most". Did some people actually go through the trouble of making IE7 install on a system that doesn't run it? E.g., on Win 2000? I can only hope there weren't too many.

So basically this is such a useless revelation, that I can only hope that it was some attempt at manipulation. Because the depressing to think that someone was genuinely stupid enough to think they're onto some brilliant discovery and market trend.

So the one-word wisdom there is: duh.

Re:Stupid meaningless statistics

Did some people actually go through the trouble of making IE7 install on a system that doesn't run it? E.g., on Win 2000? I can only hope there weren't too many.

I did - on Linux. It's extraordinarily handy for quickly testing sites I am developing without having to dig out Windows. In fact, I'm running 4 versions of IE (5.0 to 7), Iceweasel, Opera and Konqueror all on one desktop.

Simple instructions for anyone interested are here [tatanka.com.br].

Re:Stupid meaningless statistics

Errrrm, not quite.

The article shows that, yes, people who use IE6 are now upgrading to IE7. However, it also shows that the Firefox adoption trend hasn't wavered.

In other words, people are switching from IE6 to IE7, but not from Firefox to IE7.

The story isn't that people are upgrading from IE6 to IE7 - as you point out, that's pretty much a given.

The story is that people aren't "upgrading" from Firefox 2 to IE7.

In other words, MS's attempt at a Firefox-killer is provably failing miserably in its aim, and Firefox continues to go from strength to strength.

100M IE7 downloads

Based on my experience with corporate networks and home machines, about 85% of those were pushed via Automatic Updates. I expect a maximum of about 20% of those downloads to be intentional or wanted.

A fair test?

Is it fair to compare these stats? Most IE users don't choose to upgrade, it's simply foisted on them by Windows' Auto Update. When I returned home this Christmas both my mum and sister asked me to "fix the internet" because IE7 had been installed and its new layout confused them. They certainly didn't choose in the way that someone chooses to download and install Firefox does, so the victory is even more in FF's favour.

Please note that this isn't a Firefox fanboy post (despite my love for it), merely pointing out the facts.

Re:A fair test?

both my mum and sister asked me to "fix the internet"

Well, did you? A lot of other people would appreciate it too you know!

How well would FF do if *it* forced itself out?

Internet Explorer 7 hit the 100 million download mark last week.

Gee, perhaps that has something to do with Microsoft marking it a high-priority update, so everyone with automatic updates turned on will unwittingly get it?

Not much of a claim to success to say that 100 million people, running an OS that has automatic updates turned on by default, have wasted bandwidth on a program they didn't even choose to download.

Upgrades

I installed IE7 on my Windows box. I use Firefox exclusively. The only reason that I installed it was because the automatic update manager wanted to, and since IE is a deeply embedded component of Windows, a security update for IE is a security update for Windows. Otherwise, I wouldn't have bothered.

I switched (mostly) to Linux to get away from IE. But I still installed IE7. So no, I don't consider this news to be surprising in the slightest.

Well being that it is part of windows upgrade....

So we can assume out of all the windows users out there only 100 million out of all the people who have Windows PCs are actually upgrading their system. Is it just me or is that kida scary.

So lets assume that 2/3 of the people in the US have windows computers that means half of the people in the US has been updating their windows systems and the the other half and the rest of the world hasn't.

I know most companies are waiting for a SP release of IE 7 before upgrading. Even though a person uses firefox it really shouldnt exclude them from using getting IE 7 because of the integration between windows and IE can still be a security problem. I am not saing IE 7 is more Secure then firefox or even IE 6 but IE 7 will be updated longer into the future then IE 6 and IE 7 Problems will be fixed faster then IE 6's

Re:Well being that it is part of windows upgrade..

Don't forget that a lot of companies don't just install Windows upgrades because MS releases them. They undergo rigid inhouse testing and then later are deployed from their own update servers, so they would not be counted as donwloads from Microsoft anyway.

Also, IE7 is (at the moment, fix upcoming in SAPGui release 20 IIRC) incompatible with SAP software, so any admin worth his salt will block this update if the company also uses SAP software (which I bet are quite a lot of desktops). And this problem is AFAIK a blunder by SAP, saying things like "uh, nobody gave us IE7 early enough, how were we supposed to fix our code".

Re:Mozilla is NOT Microsoft's match...

Open Source is always superior to proprietary (long term), for the simple fact that Open Source gets fixed faster, and by a bigger pool of coding talent.

That has to be ignoring half a kazillion markeds where the leading product is a commercial product which is vastly superior to any OSS equivalent (but usually with a price tag to match). If I wanted to point out where OSS has usually succeeded, I would say that OSS thrives in markets that have stagnated and have little or no competition. Linux, Firefox and OpenOffice are all good examples of that. It seems that in these markets OSS products can improve and live where commercial products would fail to sell and die.

Re:Mozilla is NOT Microsoft's match...

Firefox has pushed all the innovation in web browsers (unless you count Opera, other FOSS browsers).

Of course! Let's not count Opera because it doesn't match with our precious open source theory! Ignore tabs! Mouse gestures! All these 'innovations' that Firefox pushed! Yay puppies and kittens!

Re:Mozilla is NOT Microsoft's match...

The original poster was discounting the innovations that Opera brought for the mere fact that it isn't open source. He kept on touting the horn of open source software, how it is always vastly superior (in terms of code, efficiency, fixes, features), ignoring the fact that Opera is still a faster, more optimized browser than Firefox, has introduced many of the 'innovations' that Firefox claims as its own, and ignores the fact that Firefox has had a memory leak bug for ages that has yet to be fixed (while claiming that Firefox gets fixed faster because it's open source).

It's fugly for one thing.

Now I'm not usually one to get all up in arms about the appearance of a program, but IE7 looks well and truly ugly to my eyes, and for the 5 minutes or so that I bothered buggering around with it I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to move the toolbar icons and the addressbar in any useful way. Contrast that with Firefox, which handles the toolbar UI configuration very well and MS looks immediately to be onto a loser.

While people might argue about all manner of things like standards support, security, and rendering speed; the initial ugliness and apparent difficulty/impossibility to configure the UI to my liking is probably going to put more people off IE7 within 5 minutes than anything else.

I presume there is a way to change the UI (hell, even IE6 could do that) and maybe it's actually quite obvious if you take the time to look, but quite frankly why should I when Firefox can do it right off the bat in an intuitive manner? I think that's the way a lot of casual users see it too.

100 million IE downloads = 50 million IE users

That's one download because it's a 'critical update', and another download to get a second copy of the installer to actually complete the installation when you realise the first one is broken.

Seriously, the number of borked IE installations I've seen recently is stupid. Perhaps they should measure satisfied customers instead?

I've actually increased the number of Firefox users thanks to IE7 - it was the quickest way to get the laptop back on the net to get the newer build of IE7.

IE7 on Linux: get it while it's hot

At least one of those downloads was by my humble self and now graces my humble Ubuntu desktop, thanks to the excellent IEs 4 Linux [tatanka.com.br] package.

(Disclaimer: I do web dev work and need it for testing purposes. And I feel all dirty and sordid with every time I fire it up).

Re:Yay, I'm one of those 100 million

The same can be said for many people that downloaded Firefox. They tried it out, didn't like it, and switched back to IE.

tagged 'cheerleading'

Article summary: Here's a vague statistic! Does this mean that we've finally slayed the ancient beast, bringing forth an unprecedented era of free software, good will, unshowered nerds, and 'view source' buttons?

Go team!! Gimme a 0x46! Gimme a 0x49! Gimme a 0x52! Gimme a 0x45! Gimme a cheer[0]! Gimme a 0x4F! Gimme a 0x58! What's that spell? VICTORY! Gooo team! Push the stack, pop the stack, saaaaaame stack!

the killer extension

The longer that firefox maintains its current user base, the closer the time comes when a killer extension is released by someone (maybe you!). This killer extension would be something that so dramatically improves the browsing experience that pretty much everyone has to get it to be "really on the internet". By the time Microsoft rips off whatever it is, it will be too late. That is the best reason to support firefox, its extensibility means that at any moment, it could become develop a (albeit temporarily) insurmountable competitive advantage.

Not the right time for comparisons

This is not the right time for comparing IE7 effect on Firefox. The time will be when Vista comes out and new PCs come preloaded with Vista and IE7. At that time, people will get rid of the old PCs and we'll see whether they're sufficiently satisfied with IE7 that they won't bother with downloading Firefox. At the same time we'll also see if people used to IE6, when presented with IE7's new interface, might switch to Firefox. Whichever way the pendulum swings, that's when we should watch it.

Met its match?

"has Microsoft finally met its match?"

Um, no. There will always be some microsoft tool that requires their browser causing some form of lock-in. Heck, using microsoft's action pack subscription web page to purchase software requires IE. What the numbers mean is that web designers are finally paying attention and making their sites support firefox and a few other standards based browsers or risk loosing a good chunk of their customers. And now that everyone's favorite web pages work in firefox, they can start making a piecemeal migration away from vendor lock-in. However, just because they can use firefox for most things, you can be sure that microsoft will ensure there is lock-in someone and default to their browser giving them a 75% chunk of the market for life. The next chunk of the monopoly to fragment will be office with various online tools and openoffice making advances. But, I expect that will be another 2-4 years before we see anything like firefox's progress.

Re:ie tabbed browsing

Why did they mod you funny?
      While using an antivirus and a spyware program is good (along with a firewall and so on), you should take into account that antivirus programs offer their security with delays. Between the start of an attack until the moment all the updates are on the system, usually more than a day occurs.
      And you should take into account that IE has open holes (Firefox probably has some too) that can be attacked by any totally new virus

Both IE *AND* Firefox upgrade automatically

Most IE users don't choose to upgrade, it's simply foisted on them by Windows' Auto Update

To the 50% of posters who said things like the above. True, but Firefox does the same thing whenever a new version comes out. So what's your point?

Re:Both IE *AND* Firefox upgrade automatically

Firefox updates are only pushed to active Firefox users.
IE7 is pushed to most XP users (that is probably most computer users) regardless of whether they use or ever chose to install Internet Explorer originally.

So basically, they are *totally* different since windows update uses Microsofts monopoly position in the Operating System market to push new web browser products.
If McAfee antivirus was deployed in a windows update then the number of McAfee antivirus installs would shoot up regardless of whether Symantec Antivirus has it's own auto-update system or not.

Matt.

bogus downloads

I myself downloaded IE7 because I just missed checkbox in the custom download options while getting security updates. That doesn't mean I'm actually using it.

Met its match?

Now that's a bit of a stretch, don't you think? I use and love Firefox. It's what I'm typing this in right now. But I use both browsers on a daily basis. There are some sites that only look right in IE7 (due to web developers optimizing for IE at the expense of standards), and there are some sites that don't like IE7 yet (and thus work better in IE6 or -- since that isn't available if you have IE7 -- in FF). And then there's sites using ActiveX (such as Microsoft's Outlook Web Access) which only work at full capacity in IE.

Sure, FF is making inroads. It's my browser of choice (almost exclusively because of extensions, though, and not due to any other groundbreaking feature in FF). But to construe that "abandoning" IE is ridiculous. Both are useful.