IE Not Faring Well In the EU Ballot 325
unixcrab writes "Most PC users hit the web using Internet Explorer by default, simply because that's what came along with Windows. Now, after antitrust investigations, European users get a choice of browser to install via ballot screen, and initial reports are not good for 'ol IE. According to Statcounter, IE use in France has dropped 2.5 percent since last month's implementation of the ballot, 1.3 percent in Italy, and 1 percent in Britain. It's still early days, and it'll take more than this to chip away from IE's 62 percent lead in the browser war, but it's certainly not a good trend for Microsoft. With that in mind, we're going to have to ask you to place your bets now."
Choice?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe people choose randomly? (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess most people don't care, and select one of the browser at random, or click the first one. Of course, given that IE has the biggest market share, it is going to drop.
For the statistics to mean anything, they should tell what percentage of the people choose which browser on the ballot, otherwise it's meaningless.
Even if most people are choosing IE, it is still likely for IE to fall. So where are the stats about what the users choose on the ballot itself?
1% drop !? (Score:2, Insightful)
1% drop? That's all?
I'm sorry but this does not seem as 'good news' for fans of IEs demise. You are saying that out of 62 of the users who are getting the ballot box, in the past month 61 have chosen IE and one has chosen to switch?
Re:Maybe people choose randomly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Spot on. Most people do not even know what browser they are using or what a browser even is. They are given a choice, and they just choose without really knowing what it is that they are choosing from.
Re:Maybe people choose randomly? (Score:4, Insightful)
For the average person it probably doesn't really matter.
FireFox and Chrome are my favorites because of the plugins and because Chrome feels faster.
IE I keep just in case nothing else will work. Thankfully IE only sites seem to be getting very rare. Thanks Firefox and Safari.
I keep Opera and Safari around for testing on my PC.
I know people love Opera but it just doesn't fit me well.
The thing is that even IE doesn't really suck and they all work. If you are not into tweaking then any of them will probably work just fine for you.
My rule of thumb (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:My money is on Chrome (Score:1, Insightful)
Well Firefox is getting some heat in Europe too, as Germany is warning users not to use Firefox [theregister.co.uk].
Of course Opera is the true European browser as it's being developed in Norway.
Re:Maybe people choose randomly? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:why would I care? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not so much. (Score:5, Insightful)
Many people have no idea what any of these are.
"Oh. I search with Google. This must be what I use."
There's "internet" in "Internet Explorer". And they recognize the icon.
Re:why would I care? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because a browser with a majority market share gets to define de-facto standards. If MS goes its own way with web standards (not that they would ever do such a thing) then, a few years ago, you have two options. Either support IE and 80% of your target market, or support standards-compliant browsers and 20% of your market. What do you do? Go with the MS solution. Now they have 61%, so it's not such an easy decision.
If IE, FireFox, Opera, Chrome, and Safari all had 15-30% of the market, then it would not be worth the investment for most people to support features specific to any single browser. Once two support the same feature, it starts to become worthwhile. Once four do, it definitely is and the one that doesn't support the feature is left out.
Having no single dominant player in the web browser market is good for web standards. You shouldn't care which browser is the most popular, you should care that none of them is too popular.
Re:Damn than all that taxpayer money was worth it. (Score:3, Insightful)
All the bullshit from here in the US and over in Europe, and god only knows how much tax money went to suing M$ for its evil ways
I think the two billion dollar in fines Microsoft has received so far covers those expenses nicely.
Re:Choice?! (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure that the winner will be the one with the best icon. People are stupid.
Re:MSIE still on 100% of Windows machines (Score:4, Insightful)
Canonical doesn't have it's own browser, how can they do the same? And the default browser, Firefox, is available in all major desktop OSes.
In fact, Ubuntu (like any other distro) is basically a collection of software from other organizations, so they have almost zero software tied to them. You can use almost any other distro and get the same software, only packaged in a different way.
Re:why would I care? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you design or maintain websites, you might care a great deal. If IE's popularity drops low enough, you can justify dropping half of your workload. It's not at all uncommon for one thing to work great for Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, etc, etc but not IE. So then you have to add a bunch of workarounds for IE. If you own a business, you might appreciate the reduced cost of having your web presence designed and maintained. If you are the customer of a business with a web presence, you might hope some of the savings will show up in the prices you pay.
Re:Maybe people choose randomly? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the solution is available soon - the iPad. It's not a full OS (at least, presented to the user) but ought to be easy and powerful enough to get online and do the stuff they need to do (email/web/etc).
As much as we pan it, perhaps realizing that the iPad probably does 99% of what these people need to do and giving them one may save support headaches in the future.
Re:Choice?! (Score:3, Insightful)
When Windows doesn't work there's about +1 trillion places to go for help.
And most of them will say "have you tried reinstalling windows yet?".
Re:why would I care? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because if you ever do web development, you are required to hate Internet Explorer.
It's not so much a requirement as it is a natural consequence, in my experience.
Why Netscape lost. Re:My money is on Chrome (Score:2, Insightful)
>>>Why is Mozilla waiting
.
I always knew the reason Internet Explorer won the 1990s browser war was because it was the default install. NOT because it was superior (it wasn't - IE was shit compared to Netscape), but because newbies equated IE to internet without realizing alternatives like Mozilla or Netscape or Opera existed.
NOW that Explorer is not the default, it's losing ground as consumers are finally being told, "You have a choice". I expect within 3-4 years IE will drop below 50% in the EU. Although I'm currently using Opera for its Dialup Turbo compression, I've always preferred the "Mosaic" way of doing things:
- Mosaic (on my Amiga 500 and Quadra Mac)
- Netscape (developed by the Mosaic programmers) (on Quadra and PC)
- Mozilla
- Firefox or seaMonkey
Re:MSIE still on 100% of Windows machines (Score:3, Insightful)
You'd download a browser using the system package manager... Most linux distros work this way, with a single command or selection in a gui you can choose a browser and have it downloaded and installed for you.
Re:My money is on Chrome (Score:1, Insightful)
It's called a "strawman argument". He's not really debating with you. He's debating an imaginary scarecrow that only exists in his imagination.
And to address the point:
There's a difference between a two week delay for FOSS to make the necessary upgrades/testing, and a two year delay as Microsoft often does. (Or worse, keeps the flaw secret so you don't even know you're vulnerable, because it makes MS look bad to have flaws.)
Re:Why Netscape lost. Re:My money is on Chrome (Score:5, Insightful)
I always knew the reason Internet Explorer won the 1990s browser war was because it was the default install. NOT because it was superior (it wasn't - IE was shit compared to Netscape), but because newbies equated IE to internet without realizing alternatives like Mozilla or Netscape or Opera existed.
Yeah, except for the fact that Netscape 6 was a buggy piece of shit and almost universally panned. It's not at all amazing that it was at around it's release that IE surpassed it. So basically you're making up bullshit and reinventing history.
Re:why would I care? (Score:3, Insightful)
it would be best to be standards compliant and shoot for that standard
When there is no dominant player, it is in the interests of both site designers and browser makes to aim for the standards. If you write a site for the standards, it will work for most people, if you design a browser to the standards then it will work with most sites. This is only the case, however, when there is no dominant player. When one browser controls most of the market, it is in the interests of the site designers to make sure everything works with that browser (irrespective of standards compliance) and it is in the interests of that browser to provide nonstandard behaviour so that you have a choice between supporting it, or supporting everything else (and choose it, because that alienates fewer of your customers).
Re:Why Netscape lost. Re:My money is on Chrome (Score:4, Insightful)
Netscape 6.0 was based on Mozilla 0.6 (I remember it was starting to be usable by then, but definitely not for the faint of heart), Netscape 6.1 was based on Mozilla 0.9, so it is hardly surprising that is was buggy.
Mozilla 1.0 (June 2002) better than IE6 (August 2001). By the time Mozilla 1.4 came out (June 2003), there was no comparison.
Of course, that doesn't matter much, since the Browser Wars (round 1) where really lost in the Netscape 4.x/IE5.x era, due to a combination of "default browser" and IE 5.x being pretty good for the time.
in other news... (Score:2, Insightful)
That's the news article *I* want to see.