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IE Market Share Drops to Lowest Level in Years 386

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the bruised-but-not-beaten dept.
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?"
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IE Market Share Drops to Lowest Level in Years More

IE Market Share Drops to Lowest Level in Years

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  • macs (Score:2, Interesting)

    by minus_273 ( 174041 )
    does that mean OSX has at least 3.57%..

    • 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

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nimey ( 114278 )
      Is that a question? Questions end with a question-mark: ?

  • Site stats (Score:4, Interesting)

    by From A Far Away Land ( 930780 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @05:57PM (#16400513) Homepage Journal
    I find that my site gets about 45% Firefox or Mozilla hits, not counting my own of course. At about 130 unique visitors a day, that's not a big enough sample to mean the numbers of 12% are wrong, but definitely demographics play a large role in browser type. As Taco has pointed out, nearly all Slashdot readers use a Mozilla/Firefox browser. Sorry Mac fans, Safari isn't that big yet.

    • Re:Site stats (Score:5, Informative)

      by rolfwind ( 528248 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @06:04PM (#16400635)
      I think IE would be even lower, but a lot of businesses and school have IE and "force" it on them.

      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.
      • My whole workplace uses IE. But the techs are smart guys. I used to be a tech before this job, it just pays better and I don't have listen to idiot users all day long, win-win for me. Anyway, I'm the only person in the office who runs Mozilla. Every month a tech runs through here and logs in admin for me so I can get any updates I need. Too bad I've been asked not to install iTunes.
    • I've been a daily Mac user for over two years (that is when my Linux workstation at work was replaced with a Mac), and I never use Safari. I don't think I've even launched it in over a year. I'm sure there are many Mac users who prefer Firefox as I do.
      • Agreed. I use Safari at work, where I have a fast Mac. At home, I've got a 1.25 GHz Powerbook G4, and Safari is just dog-slow on it, so I use Firefox.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by BlueStraggler ( 765543 )
          This is an amusing comment for me, because I run on a slower PPC Mac, and I avoid Firefox because it is so much slower than Safari. Just goes to show, I suppose, that impressions of "slowness" have many different causes.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by teg ( 97890 )
      FWIW, I'm sitting at a mac, using firefox. Safari just isn't as good as firefox(no real surprise for those who tries Konqueror every now and then, just to confirm that KDE is falling behind - Safari uses the same web engine, I believe).
    • I work at a municipality in FL and manage the web server for the main public website. Some months we are as low as 65% IE visits (that month had 23% firefox). I like looking at our stats because I think it's a pretty good mix. It's geared toward the general public and isn't a tech site, building site, music site, but a site for everyone. Mind you this is up to a million visits a month (somewhat large city).

    • Re:Site stats (Score:5, Interesting)

      by walt-sjc ( 145127 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @07:48PM (#16401845)
      A site I work with is not a slashdot / geek demographic. It's a combination of government use (primary), non-profits, education, and business (in that order of heaviest to least % of users.) This site gets on average a million page views / day. Looking at the month of September, 76% IE, 16.3% firefox, 1.9% safari, Opera 0.2%. Back in March, it was 81% IE, 6.3% FF, 2% safari, Opera 0.2%. From my viewpoint, FF has jumped HUGE in that time frame. (Yes, the numbers don't add up to 100% - unknown and other browsers are the remainder.)
  • "Firefox is 73% on my blog..the one about Firefox"

    "92% on my Unbuntu users group blog"

    etc

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by From A Far Away Land ( 930780 )
      If it weren't for anecdotes like mine [slashdot.org], then Slashdot would be a rather dull place, wouldn't it? And comedians predicting the kind of comments to come would have nothing to joke about if the anecdoters stayed away.

      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)

      by Tom ( 822 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @06:18PM (#16400809) Homepage Journal
      Since you asked for it:

              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).

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Tom ( 822 )
        should've posted this:
                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)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @05:57PM (#16400527)
    Just the other day you said IE's market share was up [slashdot.org], and now it's down? But... but... you both have statistics! I don't know what to believe.

  • How the new releases will affect market share (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rel4x ( 783238 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @05:58PM (#16400545)
    IMHO, the new releases could be very good or very bad for Firefox. It all depends on if they fixed the common complaints about it. If it's not such a memory hog, and doesnt lock up after being open too long, I'd say it could solidify Firefox's user base. However, a lot of people I know are really fed up with that. I think that's it's largely an addiction to tabs that keeps them loyal. Since IE7, at least outwardly, emulates a lot of the positives of Firefox, they might convert back if these glitches arent fixed.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Who235 ( 959706 )
      An addiction to tabs, yes, but there's also the extensibility of Firefox that makes it so appealing. Once you have a browser that can act in all the ways you want it to why would anyone go back?

      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)

      by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )
      Unless firefox drastically decreases it's memory use (or simply more effective management, so it doesn't interfere with user behavior), or at the very least keeps it fairly constant from a current release, I can't imagine Firefox 2.0 being much of an improvement, to be honest. That's got to be the biggest gripe about it (and only then at about 40 or so tabs). I've not compared it to IE, however, and I can't imagine MS would release a product of superior quality in regard to memory use, so...

      Other than that,
      • I have a Firefox Window with 20 tabs opened (mostly /. postings I want to check today). That has a foot print of 146MB

        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

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 )
      Also, never underestimate the power of bundling. MSIE 7 will come with Vista. Many people will find it an adequate browser and not take the trouble to switch, even those who did switch from earlier MSIE versions. Version 7 is much, much better.
      • Also don't forget the XP users who upgrade. The real question is why are people using Firefox.
        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

  • Probably not much (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The vast majority of people who have switched away from IE probably won't switch back if they're already satisfied where they are. Not to mention the fact that the "Internet Explorer" brand has become synonymous with "security risk" to those people, regardless of how much better IE7 will be compared to previous versions.

    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

  • I feel IE is not working for me. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Maxo-Texas ( 864189 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @06:02PM (#16400607)
    I feel IE works for vendors, merchants, hackers, etc. against me.

    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.

    • 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.

      • Firefox for browsing
      • OpenOffice 2.0 for document/spreadsheet stuff (great office program - and you can export documents to PDF if you need a 3rd party to read them)
      • Gaim for IMing - although it looked like it would be a bit of a pain to get it going on Mac - so

  • Not These Jokers Again (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @06:04PM (#16400621)

    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.

  • Firefox probably won't increase (Score:3, Interesting)

    by baggins2001 ( 697667 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @06:05PM (#16400645)
    I already have users who want to try IE7. And I am already hearing some negative feadback about Firefox being slower than IE. So I'm beginning to think that the worm has turned and we are going to start seeing an increase in IE again. I'll have a hard time recommending Firefoz again unless they can find a way to decrease their memory footprint. Of course I'll still use it along with Opera, but I won't be recommending it to anyone for awhile.
    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)

      by rjstanford ( 69735 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @06:17PM (#16400775) Homepage Journal
      IE7 does a pretty good job of "just working," too. And despite all of the developer's comments to the contrary, most end-users switched to Firefox for a very few reasons:

      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).

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by mcrbids ( 148650 )
        As far as reasons to switch:


        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
    • ``Security wise I think there's still a benefit to Firefox''

      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.
  • I wonder how the release of Firefox 2.0 and IE 7 later this month will change the game?"

    Well, that depends on whether the automatic updates that install IE7 also reset the default browser.

    My bet is that they will -- any takers?

    • I installed IE7 RC1 yesterday, and it didn't change my default browser settings.

      It would be interesting to know if Automatic Updates has different behavior.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )
      Oh, I don't doubt in the least bit that they will.

      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 .url files sitting around - I don't even use them. And I rarely open something with a "web browser" defaulting extension otherwise - I just click the firefox icon and away I go.

      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)

    by lagfest ( 959022 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @06:10PM (#16400717)
    82.10% will think: "ooh, the Internet was upgraded"

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by vain gloria ( 831093 )
      82.10% will think: "ooh, the Internet was upgraded"
      "Dwayne, Dwayne, come quick! I think we're somehow pickin' up that Web 2.0 that Little Johhny talks about!"

  • We'll see after IE7 is released... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Frosty Piss ( 770223 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @06:17PM (#16400783)
    As the "code bloat" of Firefox approaches that of IE, and IE 7 is released with tabbed browsing, better security, and all the other whiz-bangs "stolen" from Firefox and Opera, we will see a slowing of growth in Firefox's market share. Public acceptance / perception of IE 7 will have a big influence over Firefox's continued market share growth.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ant P. ( 974313 )
      Remind me again, how big was the IE7 installer? 50, 60 megabytes?

      Yep, that 5MB firefox download sure is bloated.
  • Hmm, this is just conjecture, but I would suppose from the information provided that this indicates more people are getting rid of, or more accurately replacing, their aging Windows machines with Macs.

    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)

    by PurifyYourMind ( 776223 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @06:24PM (#16400861) Homepage
    ...this number may go back up when Vista is released and/or if/when Microsoft pushes out IE7 as a Windows Update.

  • IE7 is Windows-only. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kartoffel ( 30238 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @06:29PM (#16400911)
    IE7 is not a value-add for Vista. As a product bundled with Windows, IE7 only needs to be decent enough to keep ignorant consumers from seeking alternatives. How does Microsoft expect to make money with IE7?

    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)

    by Tarlus ( 1000874 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @06:29PM (#16400917)
    If somebody were to produce a large-scale statistic of people who use IE because they prefer it over Firefox (or other browsers), I think we'd see much larger numbers in favor of Firefox instead of IE. (Not to sound like flamebait, but this is true.)

    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.
    • There are also people like me who (out of 4 computers at home) only have Windows on one computer. My other 3 (laptop included) are Linux only...and the one Windows machine is really only used to play WOW these days. The Windows computer has IE "removed" (to the extent that it can be) from the system...this really only deletes the IE executable and shortcuts, but it's sufficient to keep people like my GF from bringing up IE. It has Firefox and that's all that's used on it. However, at work is a different
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • There is a big difference between market share (number of people using a particular browser) and web usage (how many hits by a particular browser). When someone says that market share of IE is 82%, it should IMHO mean that 82% of users are using IE. But IE users tend to use the web a lot less than Firefox users. Why ? Huge amounts of pop-ups, no tabs (lots of Windows saturating the task-bar, security holes). IE users are, from my point of view, mostly occasional users of the Web. They simply use what

  • IE vs. FF (Score:4, Interesting)

    by delirium of disorder ( 701392 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @06:31PM (#16400949) Homepage Journal
    For those complaining about firefox's memory footprint, I suggest you read this [mozillazine.org]. In general firefox will use more RAM only if you have more RAM available; you WANT more of your memory to be used for caching to speed things up (as long as it doesn't result in swapping). That said, there are a few real bugs in plugins, and probably the main codebase too. They are hopefully being worked on. By the way, here are my referer browser stats [no-ip.org] for October so far, for anyone interested.

    • Re:IE vs. FF (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Ant P. ( 974313 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @07:06PM (#16401349)
      Why does FF have its own gigantic memory cache in the first place, instead of letting the OS's disk cache do its job properly?

      • Don't hammer nails. (Score:3, Informative)

        by eddy ( 18759 )
        Presumably, they're not [only] caching files, they're caching already processed data structures (parsed documentss). You disk cache only knows files. If you want to be fast when going to the previous page for instance, that is what you have to do.

  • Click here to crash Firefox (Score:3, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @06:31PM (#16400953) Homepage

    Try this:

    • Go to Entrust [entrust.com].
    • Click on "Login".
    Firefox goes to 100% CPU utilization, hangs, then crashes if you close the window. That's with the latest Firefox and the previous one. (Some really wierd stuff happened with the previous version of Firefox, including typing going into right-to-left mode for English.)

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Animats ( 122034 )
      (Apparently it's a Java bug. If you disable Java, the page loads, and complains you have Java disabled.)
    • I can't name any version of any browser which I wasn't able to crash. Well, I guess I never got Lynx to crash. We can even crash IE with very simple HTML. My experience is that no full-featured browser is extremely stable.

  • Your web log stats (Score:2, Insightful)

    by IflyRC ( 956454 )
    All of these people posting "My site gets XX percentage of browser A" need to take into consideration what their site is about. Now, I would guess that the majority of /. users are not running anything that remotely may interest IE users specifically. Many are Linux web sites or Firefox web sites. OF COURSE these are going to be skewed toward a non-MS web browser. If I was running IE4U.com or something that attracted windows users explicity I would bet that my server logs would show a majority of IE browser
    • MSNBC neutral? Who the hell reads that? I'd take Google, if anything.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by IflyRC ( 956454 )
        FYI, MS no longer has a stake in MSNBC. What YOU would do and what the majority of people in this country do may vastly differ as well. The world doesn't revolve around you, my apologies.
  • Who measured this and how did they do it? Are these figures for Ars readers?

    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)

    by SniperClops ( 776236 )
    I'll be using firefox as IE7 won't be released for windows 2000 [com.com].

  • Submitter Name (Score:5, Funny)

    by LordHatrus ( 763508 ) <slashdot@clockf[ ].com ['ort' in gap]> on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @06:45PM (#16401115) Homepage
    So wait, we're trusting a guy named "Mosaic" to give us unbiased browser statistics?

  • Usage stats for hotels.com (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @06:46PM (#16401129)

    These numbers match what we are seeing at hotels.com. Needless to say we get a bit of traffic:

    (For 9/1 - 10/11)

    • IE: 79.56
    • FF/Win: 8.64
    • Safari: 3.77
    • FF/Mac: 0.84

    Safari and FF usage goes up every month, and has been for at least the past two years.

  • I have to say that I stick with firefox simply because of adblock. There is no other reason. IE7 is a very refined browser but don't count on a good adblocking addon for it in the near future.

    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
    • Admuncher. Quite simply the single, absolute, best ad blocking software for Windows. And no, I'm not selling it -- I'm just an incredibly happy customer. Free trial, possibly forever but I paid for it after just a day or two. Its that good, and I totally wish that I could get it for OSX as well. And I've tried many an option.

  • Firefox memory usage... (Score:5, Informative)

    by pavera ( 320634 ) on Wednesday October 11, 2006 @06:56PM (#16401241) Homepage Journal
    Ok, I've seen so many posts on this article about firefox using an inordinant amount of RAM... I've been using firefox exclusively since like .9 or something...
    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.
  • I'm a webmaster at a large midwestern Credit Union, and we see only about 8% or so Firefox. It's a solidly rural area, but our territory does cover several cities with populations of >100,000; I'd consider it a med techno-savvy market. Here are our stats for the last month or so:

    Broswers:
    1. Internet Explorer 427,504 89.03%
    2. Firefox 39,253 8.17%
    3. Safari 6,876 1.43%
    4. Netscape 4,892 1.02%
    5. Mozilla 716 0.15%
    6. Opera 538 0.11%
    7. gzip 182 0.04%
    8. Moz
  • After these results were reported..

    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)

    by archcommus ( 971287 ) on Thursday October 12, 2006 @02:33AM (#16404797)
    Please, do not take my post as flamebait. I introduce general points. Many of you are geeks. Admit that, it's okay. Many of you are developers, too. Many of you are enthusiasts and like to tweak and customize out the wazoo. For all of you folk, browsers like FF are great. They're secure, customizable, not Microsoft, everything you could want in a browser. Now consider everyone else in the world. And actually, this even includes myself, even though I AM an enthusiast and a slight geek. You have IE7, given to you automatically via Windows Updates. No hassles required. It is already on your system, offers tabs and good security, and works without a hitch. It is integrated into the OS so it opens faster and does not introduce any problems. I have used IE6 for years and never once got a virus or spyware because of it. So please, tell me, why should I switch to Firefox? Answer: I shouldn't. IE7 may not pass some Acid2 test or whatever, but I am a user, not a developer. IE7 is secure and does what I need and there is really no reason for me to use any other browser.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Asylumn ( 598576 )

      I have used IE6 for years and never once got a virus or spyware because of it.

      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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by 14CharUsername ( 972311 )

      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

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