Firefox's Market Share Hits 28% in Europe 254
Mitchell's Boy Toy writes "Firefox's market share has hit 28.0% in Europe as of December 2007, according to a French web metrics firm. That's a 20.7% increase from the beginning of 2007. 'Finland currently has the highest Firefox market share in Europe with 45.4 percent, followed by Slovenia with 44.6 percent and Poland with 42.4 percent.' IE share fell to just 66.1% in December, a 0.9 point loss in just a month. It should also be noted that Firefox's success could spell trouble for Opera's antitrust complaint: 'Firefox's continued success in Europe may undermine some of the arguments made by Norwegian browser maker Opera in an antitrust complaint filed against Microsoft in December of last year. Opera accused Microsoft of abusing its dominant position in the web browser market by tying Internet Explorer to Windows.'"
shouldn't undermine Opera's case (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary suggests that Firefox's success could come at Opera's expense:
Isn't the issue with Microsoft more correctly framed that Microsoft is using its monopoly and dominance of its OS to stifle competition in other markets, in this case, specifically browsers? I believe that if Firefox is actually close to 30% market share, Microsoft's position in browsers wouldn't (or would barely) meet the threshold for monopoly. It's their position in their OS. Opera's case shouldn't be at risk.
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Even if Firefox had a 100% market share, the issue is the bundling of the browser, not the market share. All the other things that result from IE bundling are just results to that.
Where in contrast linux usually comes with a few browsers so people can pick what they want. MS is screwed because even if they included FF in addition to IE, you still can neither get rid of IE completely and also it would add more bloat to the size of windows i
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Additionally if I remember right early versions of opera had problems rendering things right as well, which would be resolved by IE taking a nosedive into some concrete
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Opera is selling a product? (Score:3, Informative)
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Windows Mobile is tiny compared to Symbian. Nokia's own browser and even Opera Mini have more users than Safari on iPhone.
It's funny that your article quotes Net Applications, since these people first showed Opera Mini completely dominating all other mobile browsers, but then they changed their stats completely overnight. No notification, no nothing. Everything just changed. That's how reliable Net Application is...
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Re:Opera is selling a product? (Score:4, Interesting)
WTF?
Where did that little bit of FUD come from? I'm using Firefox Mobile on my Nokia N800 right now, and it's very responsive. The Nokia only has a 330MHz OMAP processor, which is a slower than most Windows Mobile phones, let alone being "extremely high-end".
Re:Opera is selling a product? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:shouldn't undermine Opera's case (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:shouldn't undermine Opera's case (Score:5, Interesting)
The key here is they can't compete... not that they can't get some business. Yes, people may have shown they go out of their way to download a different browser, but if the market is still severely skewed (IMO it is) because of a monopoly abuse, there is a case for a remedy.
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Re:shouldn't undermine Opera's case (Score:4, Insightful)
And b.emile's point was that this has only ever been demonstrated when the dominant operating system didn't have a browser bundled with it. The historical fact you point out is irrelevant because of this. You are excusing bundling because the desired outcome was possible before bundling was put into practice — you are begging the question.
It's not about making Internet Explorer drop to a minority share, it's about making browsers compete based on their value rather than whether the dominant desktop OS vendor makes them.
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I'm not excusing bundling. I'm saying it's not severely skewing the market. If it were, the unbundling would mean IE's usage would definitely drop severely from 70-80% to under 50%.
My personal experience with indifferent home users would tend to disagree with you.
So far, Everyone I have installed Firefox for has not switched back to IE, and are very impressed with the plugins and themes, and the spell checker in text fields. And of those who have tried IE7, only one likes it.
If IE was unbundled, then I don't think many people would download it as an informed choice, if anything, people might keep it around for Windows updates, but not much else. There are a lot of IE users, but at a
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Its customers.
Between 2001 and 2007, IE6 was virtually the only game in town. Viruses targeting it cost companies fortunes.
In a competitive environment, there would have been a continuous improvement of products as companies leapfrogged each other with new and better features. In the monopoly environment though, with IE6 bundled, Mozilla had to produce a browser that was an order of magnitude better than IE to gain even a small market share.
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The point is that it's illegal to use a monopolistic position in one market to gain share in another. It doesn't matter how big the share in that other market is.
So ?
We can debate whether that should be illegal or not, but Opera is not trolling.
How is it different from using the patent system? To me they're both lame people who try to whine to the government to further their end instead of focusing on their product.
After all, are people really suggesting that IE is a much better browser than Firefox? Or would they say it's only more popular because it's bundled with Windows?
For most people IE is much better than firefox because you don't need to download it.
If we're talking trolls, it sounds more to me like people having an automatic anti-Opera reaction, which seems to always happen here on Slashdot for some unknown reason.
For what it's worth, I think Opera is a better browser than Firefox.
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You can't compete (Score:2)
Not really, since lots of sites still require IE. Also, the UA switching thing for IE8 shows that Microsoft continues to undermine open standards, which was part of Opera's complaint. How silly of Microsoft to do that even after the complaint was made public.
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No it doesn't. Just because it's obvious that Microsoft hasn't totally eradicated all competition, it doesn't mean that the market hasn't been harmed or that Opera hasn't had an undue burden placed upon it via illegal practices.
To draw an analogy, this is like arguing that the fact somebody can still walk means that they haven't been assaulted. Just because you can show that the harm hasn't
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That is the basis of Opera's claim. If you can accept that is true in spite of this article, then you cannot believe the article undermines Opera's case. They are mutually exclusive opinions.
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MS killed the browser market. (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsofties will go all wobbly on their knees reminding us that IE was better than Netscape, but when your knees are wobbling you are most likely to miss the point: MS killed the incentive to produce a browser, the only way to "compete" was to give the browser away for free, the cost of producing such software was swallowed by MS, making it impossible for anybody e
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continued success (Score:2)
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Re:shouldn't undermine Opera's case (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, it was Microsoft's interference in business contracts that prevented OEM computer manufacturers from bundling alternate web browsers on computers that had Windows installed.
The fact that I can download and install Firefox isn't the issue. The issue is that Microsoft illegally used its monopoly in the operating system market to interfere with the web browser market.
Keep in mind that FF is a freebie. (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because free software which comes from outside the market exists and is starting to penetrate doesn't imply that the market isn't being dominated. MSIE is effectively destroying any attempts to create and SELL a competing web browser. Even Opera is free now. It didn't used to be.
Bundling is bundling. The real question is.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsft's bundling definitely killed off the competition. That the competition has come back is proof of how shoddy IE really is, and that it should have been completely unable to compete with Netscape in a fair market.
What market? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What market? (Score:5, Funny)
Windows is free... (Score:2)
Only a mug would pay for it!
Fell to just 66.1% in December (Score:2)
Quick Question . . . (Score:2)
AT&T, Comcast and other ISPs (Score:2)
So, I say HOORAY to Europeans and others who are helping put a SERING and serious dent into ms' ie on that side of the pond. I am quite irritated that AT&T and others code for the unfairly dominant browser and not for one that follows W3C standards. I can't help but imagine that deliberately programming the Java to permit Konqueror, Flock, Firefox, et al can only be trivial.
My tidbi
Opera (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Opera (Score:5, Interesting)
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If they aren't bundling openoffice, why would they bundle firefox vs. IE?
People pay for office software (Score:2)
That issue doesn't exist with browsers, because it's not something the OEMs make money selling, so they wouldn't lose any profits by bundling Firefox or Opera, since web browsers are free.
Re:Opera (Score:2)
Microsoft can't and shouldn't in my opinion. If they bundle it they are somehow indicating that they should support it.
So now if I'm IBM or Dell should I bundle Firefox and then support it myself. Lets think, I can just bundle Internet Explorer and Ms will support it or at least help me support it.
IBM and Dell could easily remove all the shortcuts. I imagine if you renamed iexplorer.exe things would probably break.
Firefox offers f
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Who said anything about adware?
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Quite apart from the OEM example already provided, just because you think it's necessary to have some easy way of installing other browsers, it doesn't follow that Microsoft should have bundled a full-fledged web browser. There was nothing stopping Microsoft from bundling a bare-bones browser intended only as a last resort. They did that with their FTP and telnet clients.
You don't need half the features presen
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"...First, it requests the Commission to obligate Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows and/or carry alternative browsers pre-installed on the desktop. Second, it asks the European Commission to require Microsoft to follow fundamental and open Web standards accepted by the Web-authoring communities. The complaint calls on Microsoft to adhere to its own public pronouncements to support these standards, instead of stifling them with its not
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They have a tiny chance of any traction on second point. Standards are really just yo
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Coke comparison (Score:2)
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Ever heard of FTP?
Yeah, But That's 28% in *Metric* (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yeah, But That's 28% in *Metric* (Score:4, Funny)
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50% Flamebait
50% Funny
What kind of retard could be inflamed by that innocuous joke?
Percent is a dimensionless ratio (Score:2)
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But still, what is the dimension of the Library of Congress? It's not just a quantity of books. It's multidimensional. The real joke is reducing the Library of Congress to a quantity of bytes, which is itself inappropriate to a (largely) analog, complex physical object.
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How many LoC would you need to gain a sense of humor? 110%?
You forgot .... (Score:2, Funny)
NOTE: Here is the actual report (Score:5, Informative)
Relaunch of Mozilla Firefox's visit share in the European countries at the end of 2007 [xitimonitor.com]
For more information about XiTi in general, visit their corp. homepage. [xiti.com]
- Jesper
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But I still think posting the actual source/report was relevant for the debate
- Jesper
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Accents (Score:3, Informative)
firefox globally around 15% (Score:2)
My question is this, why is European adoption so much higher than global adoption? The article doesn't really explain this. Is windows available unbundled in Europe? Does firefox get more press there?
In the US, colleges tend to use firefox, and a lot of more technically oriented people; however IE is still the default for most institutions and home users.
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firefox is used in europe because of the iraq war. by waging this war in iraq, america has lost a lot of goodwill, and a lot of people in europe have been trying to avoid supporting american companies.
So you're saying that IE is seen as an "American" browser? I actually think there may be some truth to that (but there's a rivalry between the US and Europe that extends deeper than the Iraq issue). But I don't think that's a good (big) enough explanation; there has to be more to it.
And Oceania at 31% (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.news.com.au/technology/story/0,25642,23136815-5014239,00.html [news.com.au]
Phhht (Score:3, Insightful)
Twenty eight percent.
Firefox is as popular in Europe as GW Bush is in the US.
And they both think that gives them some kind of mandate...
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Pointless Pissing contest (Score:2)
Back in the IE vs Netscape days all the rage was about how "Portals" and "browsers" were the big cash cows of the web. Popularity of your browser or portal was a yardstick of how successful you will become in the new
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Re:Incorrect summary (Score:5, Informative)
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28 23.2 - 23.2 /
I had a programmable calculator that you had to program in RPN. eg:
3 2 - 'A' STORE
is
A = 3 - 2
Anything vaguely complex became a horrific mess, especially as it compacted the program by removing all new lines and replacing them with spaces when you saved...
On the other hand that same calculator could integrate and differentiate algebraic expressions ('y=x*x' becoming 'dy/dx=2x'), and solve simultaneous equations, among other things.
You misinterpreted that. (Score:2)
It's total market share 20.7% in the last year.
Yeah talking about percent increases of something already measured in percent is confusing.
Re:"French web metrics firm," eh? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:IE preventing users to get other browsers? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Second, an OEM can indeed of course bundle their choice of browser with a system. Note, however, that it always includes IE as well. It would be laughably stupid to remove IE anyway since it provides something of a "standard browser" that users can always assume is available on a Windows system.
All in a
"standard browser"? pfeh! (Score:2)
You're obviously not a web developer. I would love it if instead of IE, windows computers came bundled with Opera or Firefox. That would be the best thing ever! Though IE is a browser you can always bet a PC user will have on-hand, it is NOT a standard browser in the real sense of the word, and the need to know it's always available is only there because a lot of web developers are jackasses who don't bother testing in a real browser before deploying. I have to test on IE6, IE7, Safari, and Firefox all the
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Yeah. The OEM should be able to bundle a different web browser if they want to. And a different media player too.
And a different text editor. And a different memory manager. And a different window manager. And a different kernel.
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How could a user download a browser not having one already installed?
Are you kidding?
- Using an FTP client
- Using a P2P/torrent application
- Using another computer with a browser
- Already having the software in question on a portable media, say a USB memory key or a CD?
- Buying the browser at a computer store, just like many people do with tons of other software?
If it were impossible to install new software on a computer without a working browser and an internet connection, hos would an operating system ever be installed? How would Linux be installed on a computer t
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- Buying a computer magazine from a nearby newsstand or store?
- Jesper
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- Using a P2P/torrent application"
But couldn't those application be seem as abuse of monopoly power towards those in the market of programming those applications. Really, bundling a web browser with an operating system doesn't look as such a dumb idea, considering that web browsing is one of the things that most computer users do.
There is one place where I would consider it abuse of monopoly power, and that is if they prevent/make it difficult for OEM manufacturers to include o
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ftp> cd
250 Directory successfully changed.
ftp> dir
200 PORT command successful. Consider using PASV.
150 Here comes the directory listing.
-rw-r--r-- 1 ftp ftp 6026816 Nov 29 20:49 Firefox Setup 2.0.0.11.exe
-rw-r--r-- 1 ftp ftp 186 Nov 29 20:53 Firefox Setup 2.0.0.11.exe.asc
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Okay for all the complainers out there, consider this. If Windows didn't come with a web browser at all, how would you go to the site to download Firefox or Opera?
You are joking, right?
The presence of a working browser and a working internet connection is *NOT* a requirement for installing software.
I have a ton of software (including an FF installer) on my USB key, I have a CD with the typical software I need when I visit friends and family who require help with their computers, and if all else fails I buy a computer magazine from the closest newsstand or store. No problem at all.
If you could not get software (or a browser) at all without internet+browser, w