IE Market Share Drops to Lowest Level in Years 386
Cultural Mosaic writes "Browser market share figures for September were released yesterday, and the numbers showed a big dip for Internet Explorer, as it dropped to just 82.10%, its lowest market share figure in years. Ars Technica notes that 'it's no surprise that Internet Explorer has been losing ground steadily over the past couple of years. There have been no significant innovations in the browser since XP SP2 was released over two years ago, and most of those were security tweaks.' Firefox grew from 10.77% in June to 12.46% while Safari jumped to its highest figure ever, 3.53%. I wonder how the release of Firefox 2.0 and IE 7 later this month will change the game?"
macs (Score:2, Interesting)
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Well, so far as these stats are able to measure OS market share. I'm not sure what's left out here. What sites are the measuring, and what about computers which aren't used to browse the web often enough to register here? I don't know which way this measurement would skew the results.
However, assuming that measuring people browsing the web is a good way to approximate OS market share, the number would probably be low due to the fact that a significant number of OSX users use Firefox. At least that's be
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Re:macs (Score:4, Funny)
Site stats (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Site stats (Score:5, Informative)
My college has IE on all of it's terminals, so I guess, at times, I am a dot in their corner, although I consider IE less than useless w/o tabs and with pop-ups.
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Some real world numbers (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Site stats (Score:5, Interesting)
Queue up the anecdotes (Score:2, Funny)
"92% on my Unbuntu users group blog"
etc
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No single one of us can give a complete picture of the browser situation, but it is interesting to see what kind of blogs and websites attract what kind of browser users. When I get a few hundred hits from Slashdot, not surprisingly Firefox is the majority browser for users from this site.
Firefox 2
Re:Queue up the anecdotes (Score:5, Interesting)
Firefox Nein 2001451 58.5 %
MS Internet Explorer Nein 1059985 31 %
Opera Nein 179838 5.2 %
Mozilla Nein 89402 2.6 %
Safari Nein 31450 0.9 %
This is October data. As you can see from the numbers (we're talking 3.5 mio hits here), this is not a tiny site. As you can see from the site itself [battlemaster.org], it's not a Linux, Free Software or Firefox site. I've got plenty of AOL users, hotmail users and other "dumb", average, random Internet users as players.
History: Firefox was at 50% in January, 46% in October last year, 34% December 2004 (my oldest data).
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Windows 3196755 93.5 %
Linux 81396 2.3 %
Macintosh 68457 2 %
Just to illustrate that this truly isn't a "geek site". 93% dumbs.
I'm confused (Score:4, Interesting)
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Today's special: Pi is 2 (Score:2)
These "studies" are hardly statistically valid and you can pick and choose studies to support any case you want to make.
How the new releases will affect market share (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think IE7 will introduce more 'joe-sixpack' types to the idea of tabbed browsing - all the better for Firefox to scoop them up when those poor saps find out that IE still blows.
Firefox memory use (Score:3, Interesting)
Other than that,
What memory problems? (Score:3, Informative)
I have 2 sessions of IE, that has a foot print of 46MB
Let me open 2 more of each one, pointing lets say, to Google and the BBC.
FF is now, 147MB
IE is now 75MB
So
FF is 147MB/22 sessions ~ 6MB/session
IE is 75MB/4 sessions ~ 18 MB/session
Now, feel free to throw your anecdotal evidence, but do not tell us that there is a generalized problem unless you can quote serious sources on this regard.
In
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Is it that it is Open Source... Probably not, Free (as in beer) Yes but OSS not.
Is it for its features... Probably not really, more technical people use tab browsing but others just seem to do the new windows thing.
Is it for Popup blocking... Yes. It is a lot less annoying then IE Popup Blocking. And many to configure IE to turn it on or off is not easy.
Is it For Security... Probably people want to feel a little s
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Why is IE so much faster? (Score:2)
But if I'm in a big hurry to find something, I still use that IE icon. I know most of the reasons that Firefox isn't as fast, but it still doesn't bode well for seeing IE getting knocked off its number 1 position in this lifetime.
I wish it would happen. I've tried just about every new browser that comes along because I really do want to break up MS hegemony over my desktop. I
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If there's a way I don't know about, please tell me.
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Re:FF 2 doesn't seem to have fixed the memory leak (Score:4, Informative)
Google's plugin for FireFox is the worst offender, but others do it as well.
This add-on [mozilla.org] detects a lot of leaks, but only of one particular type. It can give you a good idea if you have a plugin that is leaking emmensly though (as the Google plugin does...)
I *love* the Google plugin's features, but it leaks memory so fast... It does a damn good job of giving FF a bad name though!
Probably not much (Score:2, Insightful)
The thing that _will_ change is the adoption rate of alternate browsers, but this largely depends on how well IE7 deals with the many issues of IE6. Part of this we'll see right away (ie. in
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If Firefox is getting slower and crashing more often, you probably have some strange extensions installed. Uninstall them. There's nothing IE7 has that Firefox (Well, Firefox 2 at least) doesn't come with.
I feel IE is not working for me. (Score:4, Insightful)
I feel other browsers are my tool.
That's why I use firefox.
Microsoft really has gotten in bed with other merchants so much that I just don't trust them.
Oh.. and there is also the relative lack of virus's and attacks on firefox.
Plus... it will work still when I switch to linux finally.
I have a long term goal of switching all my applications to ones that work anywhere so I won't be tied to windows.
Obviously- Everquest isn't on that list but it's really the only thing keeping me on windows now.
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I have a long term goal of switching all my applications to ones that work anywhere so I won't be tied to windows.
I undertook a similar effort, if you're interested. I've now got an XP machine, a Mac, and a couple of Linux boxes running at home.
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Wine will work fine.. and then not work fine.
The game will play well... and then run at 15fps or at double speed.
Every patch and upgrade is a crapshoot on whether it somehow broke wine.
Nope- not ready for prime time as of earlier this year.
WISH IT WAS tho!
And thanks for the suggestion! I'll probably give it another look next march.
Not These Jokers Again (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't this data from the same "Net Applications" company that never publishes their source data or even methodologies and was demonstrated to have factual errors and contradictions in the summaries of their reports? I mean I'm happy with a trend towards less IE use, but I'm not about to just take these people's word for it, especially from a marketing firm. Give us real data or shut the hell up guys.
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Re:Not These Jokers Again (Score:5, Funny)
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Sure! Take your pick.
Firefox probably won't increase (Score:3, Interesting)
Used to be there was a clear performance difference, now I don't see it as much.
Security wise I think there's still a benefit to Firefox, but most users don't see security as that big of an issue. They think we're just making shit up when it comes to security differences between the browsers.
Re:Firefox probably won't increase (Score:4, Insightful)
1) it was the "cool", "edgy" thing to do
2) it has tabbed browsing
3) it was faster than IE.
Well, IE7 takes care of 2 and 3. And time basically takes care of 1. I'm a web developer so I have most of the major players installed on most platforms. You know what? On my Windows box I end up using IE7. On OSX I use Safari. On Linux I use Firefox, but I don't do casual Linux work that much any more (even though it used to be my primary workstation). For actually using the web, I prefer Safari hands-down. Second place honestly on Windows would go to IE7 at this point. Its fast, does everything I want it to, and it "just works," whereas Firefox seems slower and has slightly more issues on the websites I personally happen to visit.
Is this proof of anything? Not even close. But it does mean that, for most people, Firefox isn't the slam-dunk it used to be. Even when it comes to security, as long as you're comparing it to IE7 (although to be honest even with IE6 I never came across a security issue - but I don't go downloading HappySmileyFunPack(tm) either).
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1) it was the "cool", "edgy" thing to do
2) it has tabbed browsing
3) it was faster than IE.
There's one more: the "Back Button".
Let's say you're typing some big-assed form with 37 textarea fields. You spend 20 minutes typing meaningful stuff into those 37 textarea fields, and press submit.
And let's say you did a stupid somewhere on the form, and the website rejected your form, and you decide to go back and fix it. So you press the back button.
Using IE: You get to type everything in
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I'm not too sure about that. Microsoft has clearly worked very hard on security for MSIE 7. I don't know how good it is, but the first impressions are encouraging. On the other hand, I am not too convinced about the security of Firefox; it's obviously big (I'd say bloated) and definitely has its share of issues (memory leaks, anyone?); that doesn't bode well for the security.
Impact: Release (Score:2)
Well, that depends on whether the automatic updates that install IE7 also reset the default browser.
My bet is that they will -- any takers?
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It would be interesting to know if Automatic Updates has different behavior.
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However, at least from where I sit, I don't think it'll matter much at all. I very well may be the exception, but I don't keep
In fact, I recently found out that somehow IE was made my default browser. I don't use IE, at all, so I'm not sure it happened, but I can only imagine how lon
when IE7 comes out (Score:5, Funny)
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We'll see after IE7 is released... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yep, that 5MB firefox download sure is bloated.
equipment exchange (Score:2)
I also suppose part of it has to do with the upcoming licensing scheme of Vista, as more companies attempt to phase out Windows in favor of "something else" - whatever that something is, provided it gets the job done and doesn't have the intrusive licensing schemes of Vista and all future MS products.
It's a shame that... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:My question is... (Score:2)
IE7 is Windows-only. (Score:5, Insightful)
The marketshare for web browsing from a Windows PC is shrinking. I'm not just talking about Mac OS X and Linux. Realize that this is the year 2006. We snipe eBay auctions via mobile phone. We get RSS feeds on our PDAs. The people using the web these days are doing it less and less with desktops running Windows. I can't buy IE7 for Windows Mobile or Symbian. IE7 doesn't just fail to add value, it fails to compete at all.
It would be interesting to see... (Score:3, Informative)
It should be noted that IE's share is still as high as it is because it's the default. A large number of PC users aren't even aware that there are alternatives to IE out there, or even what the advantages/disadvantages of different browsers would be, so of course the slice of the pie for IE will be the largest.
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Market share vs actual usage... (Score:2, Insightful)
IE vs. FF (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:IE vs. FF (Score:5, Interesting)
Don't hammer nails. (Score:3, Informative)
Click here to crash Firefox (Score:3, Informative)
Try this:
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Your web log stats (Score:2, Insightful)
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Who Measured It? (Score:2)
On my site, I get, depending on the day, between 60 and 100 percent of my visits from Gecko-based browsers, and usually no MSIE users. But I know these figures aren't very representative.
No IE7 for me (Score:2, Interesting)
Submitter Name (Score:5, Funny)
Usage stats for hotels.com (Score:3, Informative)
These numbers match what we are seeing at hotels.com. Needless to say we get a bit of traffic:
(For 9/1 - 10/11)
Safari and FF usage goes up every month, and has been for at least the past two years.
Using both browsers right now (Score:2)
Firefox is a memory hog, both on my mac and my windows laptop. IE7 does suffer from some UI glitches and clutter, plus with IE7 I feel like the UI works against me. But the IE7 UI as I said is refined, once i've messed with it more and gotten used to it I may very well like it better.
Oh one more thing about IE7, the wa
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Firefox memory usage... (Score:5, Informative)
I have a browser open on my laptop 24x7.... I've never had firefox crash, and I've never seen it use more than 100MB of ram... just now for kicks I did a small test, I've only got 3 tabs open, my email, slashdot, and msnbc... firefox is using 52MB of ram, so I opened IE opened up the same 3 sites, and wow look at that 47MB of ram...
MS can probably get away with 5MB of savings because they are using already loaded system libraries for a bunch of stuff, that's the advantage they get by integrating the browser into the OS... Now, if people are really going to switch browsers for 5MB of RAM then Firefox is doomed.
Large Midwestern Credit Union stats... (Score:2)
Broswers:
In related news... (Score:2, Funny)
Microsoft's Stock tumbles 50%, panic in Redmond, protests in the street, millions of users alarmed
Oh wait.. nevermind that's all untrue.
In related news...
Who cares? Do I need to see an update everytime someone uses IE, Firefox, or Opera? Maybe we can get this tally added to census.gov!!
Still using IE and don't intend to change (Score:4, Interesting)
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The problem is not users with a clue. If you can manage to use IE6 and not get infested with malware it's because you know what you are doing and you know what not to click. The average user does not. Keeping a system clean using IE6 requires a knowledgable user actively guarding against getting crap on your system.
The problem is that most users do not possess the knowledge required to use IE6 cleanly. That is why FF is good.
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Well if you don't care about tabs and the huge number of extensions available, and you have no intention of ever doing anything under a non-MS OS, and you don't care about the Internet improving faster than the pace its improving now, then yeah I guess IE is fine.
But you are missing out on a lot of stuff. And installing firefox is insanely simply (I just installed it on a system today, it took less than 2 minutes) and it will keep itself up to date, so no worries there. And if you ever find yourself usin
You're Not Crazy (Score:2)
You did, and you'll find that oftentimes, analysts can make the numbers do whatever they want. If they want to spin it like IE is doing well, they will. If they want to root for the underdog, I'm sure there's some way to spin the numbers.
You'll also find that accurately measuring the use of browsers is not an easy task. I mean, how can you maintain that you have an unbiased sample of users? Well, you
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In any case using browser information isn't a reliable method of measuring OS share and not because Firefox, Opera and IE (once upon a time) are available on multiple platforms. Browser information also indicates the how much each browser is being used to access the internet. If one OS is used more for browsing (i.e. is online
Re:I could have sworn... (Score:5, Funny)
Kent: Mr Simpson, how do you respond to the charges that petty vandalism such as graffiti is down eighty percent, while heavy sack-beatings are up a shocking nine hundred percent?
Homer: Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forty percent of all people know that.
Re:But this article from yesterday contradicts tha (Score:5, Funny)
I do believe it's time to stop looking for a girlfriend.
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I won't be celebrating until Firefox takes over IE, but seriously, what are the chances of that *ever* happening?
Furthermore, the article points out that IE has not had any really big improvements in ages. It is likely that has had a big effect on the uptake of other browsers. From the average users perspective, the only thing they get out of switc
Re:I'd like to say ... (Score:5, Funny)
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If we all sit around and hope Firefox will magically continue to gain market share, that glass is ultimately going to evaporate. Unless Firefox actively competes, they are going to get trampled.
Re:I'd like to say ... (Score:4, Insightful)
The difference is that the dork that used to claim he didn't have to code to w3c standards used to spout that he covered 90% of the market doing things specificly for IE.
It sounds pretty stupid now to say that your website is good enough if it works for only 82% of the public.
Critical mass of coverage by someone to lazy to test on browsers other than IE always seemed to be around 90-95%
We've already seen a huge change in how popular sites are designed in the last 2 years or so. My guess is that if IE were to drop down into the 70s, even the dumbest website desingers would have no choice but to test against multiple browsers.
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So, folks, remember, the only thing you really need to do with IE is to go to Microsoft's web site and download patches for IE!
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But how do you compete in the browser market? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well that's easy to say, but how do you compete in the browser market? It seems like every new feature we see in Opera or Firefox is quickly copied by Microsoft in their IE betas, and also copied in the newest Opera and Firefox releases. How do you compete with that?
Since competition is often equated with innovation, I might as well bring this up: On a somewhat related note, are new features even what people want in a browser? I mean, Oper
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Firefox is gaining, IE is losing.
What's your point again?
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The critical way to read it is that a browser that hasn't been touched in 2 years still has an 80-odd% share. And that browser has a big, BIG update coming which includes the one feature in FF that most people consider the "killer app".
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I guess time will tell.
"I refuse to use Firefox due to its ridiculous memory usage."
The only place I hear this complaint is on
You can of course refuse to use it for whatever reason you want but that does not change the overall trend.
"This is something that people would be mocking IE for, but it's Firefox, so it's given a pass."
If you provided a specific,
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Security. I have friends (non-geeks) converting to Firefox because of the security issues in IE. They didn't even know about tabbed browsing until I pointed it out to them.
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That statement raises an interesting point. Given that Vista isn't exactly receiving stunning press at the moment, are there any reasons for Joe User to upgrade? And given that most installs of Vista (initially) will come from people buying new machines, will FF's marketshare actually change.
I'm under the impression that most FF users (outside of the geek commu
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