The new browser wars on on. More than a decade after Microsoft killed off Netscape with Internet Explorer, competition in the browser market has never been stronger. Just last week, Mozilla released Firefox 3.5, which has now been downloaded nearly 14 million times. Earlier in June, Apple released Safari 4. In March, Microsoft introduced Internet Explorer 8, and Google came out with a speedier beta of its Chrome browser.
Some early data is coming in showing relative market share and how fast people are upgrading. If you look at the chart above from Statcounter, it indicates that since March Internet Explorer has lost 11.4 percent market share to other browsers. That is the combined market share of IE8, IE7, and IE6. Certainly IE8 (the light blue line) has been growing strong since its release last March, capturing 16.7 percent of the market as of July 4. Those strong gains make up for most of the drop in IE7’s market share from 49.1 percent in March to 30.1 percent yesterday, indicating that Microsoft is doing a good job of getting existing IE7 users to upgrade at a steady pace. And in mid-June, IE8 finally surpassed IE6, which still stubbornly holds a 7.6 percent share. Add those three up, (IE6+IE7+IE8), however, and IE all together holds only a 54.4 percent market share versus the 65.8 percent combined share in March, 2009.
In just over three months, Internet Explorer has seen its overall market share erode by 11.4 percent. Where did that go? It went to Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. Nearly 5 percent of that, or about half, went to Firefox 3.0, which currently has 27.6 percent market share. That doesn’t count last week’s upgrade. See the dotted line just below the light blue IE8 line? That is a combined set of “other” browsers and appears to include Firefox 3.5, Safari 4, and Chrome 2.0.
If you look at a 30-day version of that same chart, it shows Safari 4 with 4 percent market share and Chrome with 3 percent market share. It doesn’t yet break out Firefox 3.5, but if you assume that makes up the bulk of the remaining dotted line which jumped to nearly pass IE6 in the past week, you can figure out more or less which browsers are taking share from Microsoft. (I’ve used data from the most recent daily chart in this post, but embedded the monthly chart below which has data as of June 30).
As I said, this is early data from one source. Net Applications, another commonly cited source for browser market share, is currently reviewing its June numbers, but I have a feeling they will show similar trends. (This Wikipedia page shows other browser market share sources, most of them haven’t been updated since March). It is difficult to make any firm conclusions at this point, since market share is shifting so rapidly as every major (and minor) browser tries to convince users to upgrade.
But we are in the midst of a major upgrade cycle simultaneously across IE, FireFox, and Safari (with the Chrome wild card thrown in). When all is said and done, we might see a major shake-up in market share and almost definitely will see leadership pass from IE7 to another browser. The question is will that be IE8 or Firefox? Whichever one wins, the good news is that IE6 is finally dying.
Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Browser Version Market Share
Bing is gaining what IE is losing, which I think is better for MS in long run anyway.
Bing isn’t gaining anything, I mean it’s a great engine but people are sticking to Google because of laziness and anti-microsoft sentiment (which ironically doesn’t make sense considering Google’s monopoly).
Also you failed to mention the inherent liabilities given in making that claim Erick. Your basing it on statcounter stats, which are only representative of a small percentage of websites and are widely added to block lists amongst corporate firewalls as well as privacy and adblockers. The stats shown could be heavily influenced by pro-firefox sites that use statcounter (I’m not giving an example, I’m just listing a very likely possibility).
If Bing manages to make some headway over Google, they’ll start promoting IE and take back what Chrome probably stole from them – especially since Google has been really pushing Chrome via the frontpage of Google – which it really reserves for dire notices as it tries to keep the page size down even if it means failing validation.
I disagree, bing is added twitter, i think is making improvements in terms overall user search experience.
it will only be matter of time when MSFT’s sorting algorithm catches up to google.
i think the market will change that eventually bing can become a second market place contender similar to how firefox is contending to IE
You’re forgetting that Google isn’t stagnant with their sorting algorithms. Microsoft is playing catch-up, and they’re a couple of years behind on this one. While they’re trying to make Bing as good as Google is now, Google is trying to make Google better than Google is now.
In a year or two, Microsoft MIGHT have a search algorithm that is as good as Google’s is now, but Google will be using a new algorithm that is a year or two more advanced than what they currently use.
ie8 is good enough.. not long before we stop talking about browsers.
govt. should stop goog as default engine for ff as it adds to monopoly antitrust.
IE8 is “good enough”???!!! That’s what separates Apple & Google from Microsoft. Microsoft caters to the average. I pity the fool.
BTW, isn’t IE’s tendency to switch default homepage and search engines with each Windows update abuse of Monopoly power?
Can’t Microsoft hire better astroturfers???
I think BING will not be as good as GOOGLE search engine … the zune never was better that the Ipod, Windows is not better like other OS, the GOOGLE search engine make better results that BING does, Other thing, BING funtions is not available in other countries Microsoft take advantage of their other services to make publicy to BING like Hotmail or MSN.
Is hard to say, Bing and Google are different.
Google has better results
Bing has better user interface.
bing is improving its results by just adding twitter results. yes i agree with you that it will take many years before Bing & Google are completely comparable, but in the mean time competition is good for the free market
1. I don’t think Bing has the better interface. I’m searching and therefore I don’t need the fluff. Google is and always has been simple and to the point – perfect for my goal-oriented task of searching.
2. As far as sentiment goes, I think if you’re working to better people’s experience on the web, or simplify the way we work, so what if you continuously turn out awesome software (Google) and develop a Monopoly. The difference is, nobody is forcing us to use Google therefore it’s not a monopoly. Microsoft was forcing its software upon us and therefore was one. We use Google because Google is efficient. It’s optional.
3. Microsoft consistently tries to barge its way into niches on the web. Microsoft consistently fails. The only thing good that’s come out of Redmond, Washington is the XBOX, and maybe Windows. The Zune failed. Internet Explorer has since failed. Windows even has its fair share of haters. They have, however, successfully become the jack of all trades, master of none.
My point being this: Google aims to better our web experience. It does this by unifying online applications, simplifying search, and making our online experiences pleasant.
Being a student of the user experience (and of common sense and intuition) I know that when people become comfortable with one thing for so many years, they dislike having a wrench thrown into the mix. It’s confusing. It’s uncomfortable. And it’s worse if it’s not a drastic improvement.
Personally, Microsoft isn’t thinking of our experience on the web, rather they’re thinking of money to be made within the search market. Because a good user experience is one that’s as streamlined as possible. Google has been the search engine of choice for nearly a decade, it makes no sense to come in and try and best the best. Period.
@freetube
You wrote:
“anti-microsoft sentiment (which ironically doesn’t make sense considering Google’s monopoly)”
Most non-Microsoft shills understand that the public’s hatred of Microsoft is not due to their monopoly status. As with most of their legal troubles, Microsoft’s negative public image is largely driven by their long history of ABUSING their monopoly power.
In contrast, Google has a long history of producing a never-ending stream of interesting, useful, and robust applications and services. Likewise, Apple – who arguably has a de-facto monopoly of digital music distribution – is also known for a long stream of crowd pleasing, consumer-friendly, and brilliantly innovative products. In fact, Apple fought against and eventually vanquished music DRM against the wishes of the record labels while Microsoft, in the same arena, repeatedly conspired with the record labels to promote DRM.
Aside from their now legendary inability to innovate, Microsoft has repeatedly demonstrated an attitude towards consumers that ranges from utter indifference to hostile antagonism. You’d have to have lived in a cave for the last 20 years to not realize the reasons for their lack of popularity.
Apple makes the shittiest, over priced, and monoplized products. I can buy a PC and install Mac OS on it, because they both now use the Intell processor, there is no difference in the hardware and it will be about 1000 dollars cheaper. i work at a tech support desk and people call in with MAC and NONE of them know how to use it. Macs’ are you artsy coffee shop goers who think they need a mac to run photoshop
Ricky, you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. But keep living that “Microsoft is the Awesomest / Apple is Teh Lame” dream.
Also, “MAC” is actually written Mac. All caps MAC stands for “Media Access Control” and is the identifier assigned to network adapters. You should try to learn about computers before you support them.
Ricky,
Why the heck are you installing “the shittiest, over priced, and monoplized product” on your PC then?
Ricky.. you idiot.
Bing is gaining eventhough not quite a lot. At least a big applause for their first effort.
Microsoft will pick up the browser market share in no time by changing the default browser to IE and start breaking Firefox or Chrome browser capability in windows.
Why Bing is getting involved in the Browser Wars that much. I couldn’t believe that IE is still the popular. I imagined that everyone is using Firefox nowadays for better browsing. IE sux!
http://www.smartbloggerz.com
Isn’t this article about BROWSERS? Bing is a search engine!
The reason many people stick to Google apart from the laziness is that even though Google is a big concrete company like MS – they have managed to look nice where MS look like villains and crooks.
Which may, or may not be true – but I stick with Google even though I actually liked the Bing interface more.
Google will catch up. MS has never been good at honest competition.
Alas, that is still 54.4% of people using slow, buggy substandard browsers. As a developer of desktop-style Ajax web apps that work brilliantly in the latest browsers, I really hope this trend accelerates!
Actually, you’re talking about less than 40% of people using IE 6 and IE 7. The other browsers, including IE 8 are not really sub-standard. IE 8 is a bit slow, but it’s a good improvement on previous versions in both performance and standards support.
From a web-dev point of view, IE8 is both light years ahead of IE6 (supporting significant parts of CSS2), while light-years behind the “modern” browsers.
If I had to ballpark based on our dev experience, I’d say IE8 is equivalent to a 2004-era, FF 1.0-1.5 browser. The early versions of FF were well-versed in standards, but “quirky”.
Unfortunately IE8 still comes with a ton of legacy baggage with its IE7 emulation modes. Those should have been entirely opt-in from the page author’s point of view – anything else using the quirks mode of their modern engine.
Don’t get into standards war. All losers get together and came up with ideas against a company that has the majority of market share and call it a ’standard’. It should be based on what users use rather than what developers want. As a developer ignore your 55% audience at your own peril.
Jim,
You are confusing the definition of “de jure” and “de facto” standards. By letting a single vendor dictate standards, you are effectively giving control of a market to a single player. If a single player controls the market, no other player can do anything but catch up (see Wine and Mono as examples of markets like this).
The “losers” you describe (aka, the W3C), included players from Microsoft which contributed to the standard. The remainer of the “losers” are currently on track to make up a majority minority very soon now.
@jim said, “Don’t get into standards war. All losers get together and came up with ideas against a company that has the majority of market share and call it a ’standard’.”
Actually, one of those “losers” is Microsoft. Microsoft has been as much a part of the standards bodies as any of the other browsers.
@Asa. Microsoft participated in standards bodies, just like the Bush administration participated in talks about Global Warming.
A lot of people forget that IE has a very large standard of users and their is the target of a lot of virus, or just render issues etc. People are going to make attack what is used most. So give it a while and those other browser will have trouble just as IE does. Here is a good example
http://www.gigo...lorer-7-cometh/
It’s better – but it still sucks compared to almost any other browser out there. Their standard compliance is rightfully to be called “substandard”.
To me the biggest lesson here is one of marketing.
It reminds of that book, the 22 immutable laws of marketing where they say: if you are FIRST to get in the prospects mind for a concept like ‘web browser’…almost nothing can change it later.
Not even YEARS of having a vastly inferior product. I mean Microsoft couldn’t have given the competition a better chance if they tried. IE is downright horrible. Yet they still haven’t lost the #1 spot…it’s amazing. Once the connection is made in someones mind “web browser” = “internet explorer” it’s very hard to change it.
As Netscape showed, you can provide a substandard product for a while without losing your edge, but a determined competitor (and in IE’s case, one with a significant edge) will push you over the tipping point very quickly.
Here’s hoping that IE’s tipping point is within the next 24 months!
“but a determined competitor (and in IE’s case, one with a significant edge) will push you over the tipping point very quickly.”
IE’s edge was Microsoft bunding IE with every new PC that shipped and threatening OEMs with outrageous Windows licensing fees if they continued to bundle Netscape.
It’s not about being “first”. It’s about being installed on 300 million new PCs sold every year.
You’re making a grave mistake if you think people only use IE because they “don’t know any better.” Firefox has made great strides *because* they don’t make this errant assumption, or at least they weren’t in the FF2 days.
Lots of people try browsers like FF and don’t like them. I use IE8. I use it by choice. I’m well aware of the alternatives, and their advantages. But IE8 on Windows 7 is my choice because I find it to be the best looking, easiest to use, and most reliable browser.
FF does nothing for me. 3.5 finally fixes some of the goofy useability issues of 3.0, but it offers me nothing significant over IE, and is missing several features without add-ins. I don’t like the default UI (looks very “my first Windows app” and just has messy chrome). It doesn’t have out-of-proc or low IL isolation. “Newer standards support” isn’t really a feature, at least not until sites I actually care about it start working differently from in IE.
Chrome is fast and works well. Looks nicer. But is missing too many features and still seems buggy to me. It’s got a lot of potential though. Safari is in a similar position. They both seem more interesting to me than FF.
But for now I’m quite happy with IE8 and so are many other people I know.
Adblock Plus and FlashBlock alone make FF worth using. I also use plenty of other extensions that I can’t do without – DownloadHelper is great for example. Using keyword search from the address bar is also very useful – type ‘g’ and the search term to search Google, ‘wp’ and the search term to search Wikipedia, etc. I’ve taken the search bar out all together. If you don’t expect much from a browser, IE8 is fine though. The reason I will never use it as my primary browser I don’t want to support Microsoft’s continued efforts to hold back the web – poor web standards support (see ACID test results), no HTML5 support unlike all other browsers, etc.
“Lots of people try browsers like FF and don’t like them.”
Care to define “lots”? I’d wager than fewer than half of the people using browsers today have ever tried a browser other than what came on their system. That may be “lots” in your book but not in mine.
Microsoft has a huge advantage shipping a browser with its operating system, knowing that fewer than half of its users will even consider an alternative. That’s a pretty awesome channel.
@Brian Armstrong
But look at the video some guy at google made recently. Just asking random people on the street what a ‘web browser’ is. 1/3 had no idea, 1/3 said “google” the rest either had half a clue or said “Yahoo”.
The absolute BEST thing Google could do right now is release 2 re-skinned versions of Chrome named “Google Web Browser” and “Google Internet” and make sure the logo features the regular GOOGLE logo. It will by downloaded and promoted via word of mouth like crazy. Who’s dumb idea was “Chrome”? Hell, Apple should probably release an “I-tunes Web Browser” too.
I wrote about part of this just a couple of days ago using data from Net Applications.
IE 6 is falling at a pretty consistent pace, I believe tracking the growth of the Web and the PC upgrade cycle. It doesn’t appear from the data that any of the “modern” browsers are having an impact on IE 6.
http://weblogs....explorer_6.html
Also, if you look at the last week’s data at StatCounter, you can see Firefox 3.5 broken out. It’s now overtaken Chrome with 3.23%
http://gs.statc...090628-20090704
Net Applications mostly agrees, yesterday putting Firefox 3.5 at 2.32%, also ahead of Chrome.
Thanks Asa, is the data from your post available on Net Apps right now? I had trouble finding it.
Eric, it’s not available in their public reports yet. It’s also probably going to change a bit since they’re not finished sorting out some oddness in the June numbers.
No so simple. Remember that every single smart phone out there other than Windows CE (that has a tiny marketshare), creates a new non-IE browser to be accounted for. This creates a dilution affect rather than a “switched to a competitor” affect.
But “every single smart phone out there” only accounts for about 1% of Web usage, a figure that’s mostly too small for Web developers to worry about.
And half of that 1% belongs to mobile Safari which works pretty much like desktop Safari so you’re really talking about half of one percent of browser usage that comes from various odd mobile browsers.
Umm, guys… yeah IE7 dropped, but look at the IE8 increase.
But IE 8 did not gain as much as IE 7 lost and IE 6 continues to go down. If you look at the total IE share since the end of last year, IE is falling.
http://gs.statc...081204-20090705
IE8 isn’t as bad as IE7, still shit but more bearable.
Here’s a chart I whipped up from the StatCounter data. You can see there’s a solid decline in IE totals this year. Firefox and “other” which is mostly Chrome, Safari, an Opera, picked up that lost IE share.
http://www.flic...124298/sizes/o/
i LOVE when people use statcounter as a source.
Statcounter is the LEAST reliable “source.”let me repeat that. LEAST RELIABLE “SOURCE.” its so unreliable that i wouldnt even say its a source. Its not significant in any way, and the only sources i would use are Comscore, nielsen, and quantcast for this type of measure.
I think what’s relevant is the trend, not the absolute values. Our website statistics correlate well with the statcounter trend, which is the IE is quickly losing marketshare to Firefox.
“the only sources i would use are Comscore, nielsen, and quantcast for this type of measure.”
Care to point us to the daily, weekly, or monthly global browser share reports from Comscore, Nielsen, and Quantcast?
Oh, they don’t actually measure Web browser usage regularly. OK. Thanks for playing.
Why don’t yahoo, google, myspace, and facebook release browser stats. That would probably clear up most if not all uncertainty.
I regularly don’t visit many of the sites you mention, they are very US-centric.
Maybe that’s because the U.S. invented the internet’s foundation, the personal computer, the most popular personal computer operating systems, the browser, the entertainment philosophy which drives much of the content and has done so since day one, the free market which put all those personal computers into the hands of consumers and put internet access within reach of those new computer owners, the internet stores that put the free market economy in such a swirl a little over a decade ago, the internet search engines to help those new internet users find stuff, and has the laws that allow such diversity and entrepreneurship that allows such rapid growth and innovation on the internet.
The biggest things tech-wise to come out of the EU is Linus Torvalds’ Linux, and three guesses where Mr. Torvalds currently resides…. the first two don’t count. ;c) The other is the best browser ever developed: Opera. http://www.opera.com/
OF COURSE the most popular websites are U.S.-centric! Other than the Register in the U.K., do you know of any decent non-U.S.-centric websites that the rest of us should know about?
Cheers,
Robert~
I love Techcrunch. Can’t remember what the net was like before it.
Ermm…Where is Safari 4?
According to Net Appications, Safari 4 only accounts for about half of all Safari usage.
Safari 4 has about 4.5% share, Safari 3.2 is still about 2.5% and Safari 3.1 is at 1.5%.
If you were to assume a similar breakdown in the Stat Counter numbers, where Safari’s total is 2.83% share, you can see how the numbers for each version would quickly fall into the “other” or “too small to break out” category.
it’s not in the top 8. It could also be included into that dotted line (refering to others browsers) or perhaps it’s in the negative part of that chart
One Important fact missing from the analysis is the auto-update capability (or at least the reminder feature) of all browsers but ie6. The remaining 6% are therefore probably non-user controlled installations or installations on old machines.
On Windows machines, Safari is often installed “piggyback” with iTunes. The effect is debatable, but a fact.
Other effects are preinstalls of ff on machines, growth of iPod and iPhone use of windows users (therefore more iTunes and therefore more Safari use), googles heavy promotion of chrome etc.
My point is – users do not only switch for usability or even webstandards issues. There are other things at play as well.
If you look at the hourly or daily browser usage, you can clearly see a trend in evening hours and weekends where IE 6 drops off about 30%. That’s pretty substantial. Most other browsers, including IE 7 and 8, are pretty flat across evenings and weekends.
So, some reasonably large portion of IE installs are obviously enterprise deployments where they are, as you say, non-user controlled. But, I think a larger portion than not are “user-controlled” and many if not all of those are people who aren’t interested, for whatever reasons, in updating.
Firefox is not preinstalled on any meaningful number of new PCs. You’re thinking about IE there. More than 95% of Firefox users downloaded it from http://www.mozilla.com.
You show me an IE6 user and I’ll show you a member of a botnet.
IE6 is going to be passing the magical 10% mark soon, making it a more and more of a minority (and unimportant) browser for general web development. Once this happens, corporate users stuck on IE6 will be surfing a consistently broken web, pushing the IT folks to upgrade desktops. Combine this with push to upgrade intranet apps to modern standards and we’re looking at the effective end of IE6 (and much rejoicing) by the end of this year.
I’ve already dropped IE6 support on the sites I’m working on. Somebody has to start doing that before those last users will have an incentive to upgrade.
Then clearly you’re not building sites for professional clients who want THEIR clients in a corporate setting to be able to view their site properly.
Typo: “The new browser wars on on …”
Excellent.
That’s pretty cool. BTW, here is a vid from China I found interesting, in a way.
http://www.live...=ab9_1246385878
It’s a free for all over there I guess?
That’s the stats for just US or all the countries? If that’s just for the US, I think you’ll see IE nos going up significantly by including developing countries (like India and China). And if it’s for all countries, why, people are getting smarter!
That’s a good point.. check out the graph for Chinese users only:
http://gs.statc...y-200807-200907
IE6 is still 60+%. The release of IE8 took a big chunk out of FF3’s market share too.
What are Mozilla/Google/Apple doing to help this situation in China? Or are they going to cede the Chinese market to Microsoft?
Yes, I have noticed that Microsoft has made some real strides in Antartica too.
http://gs.statc...y-200807-200907
Mozilla better be worried and launch some crazy Eskimo targeted campaign before it’s too late.
Antarctica is in the south. Eskimos live in the north.
I wouldn’t put any stock at all in those China numbers. Firefox has no more than a few percentage points, maybe 5, in China, so any data claiming we were at 8% is just wrong.
The IE decline is global, ongoing, and consistent:
http://weblogs....rical_view.html
I’m still loving the Flock browser – http://www.flock.com
Nice to see IE6 go down, but not fast enough.
So funny to watch the decadence of Roman Empire live!
Again – messing up the numbers (so it would fit one perception)
After looking into the raw data provided by “stat counter” I noticed that if you group up browsers brands you would see that except for the last 2 month the percentages (US) are more or less the same but in the last period browser from the “other” group are rising rapidly (but could be associated to any brand).
This is to say that IE is not just the most popular browser and is also being updated from during time (as are other types). Other major IE rivals are not gaining on it and are even loosing ground to browser from “other” group. (by the way, looking on world wide stats would give the same result)
If it could be done I would like to know what is the statistics for, let say, the 20 most poplar browsers out there.
One last note, I still remember the time when Netscape ruled on the face of the earth and IE 3.0 where fighting for 0.5% …
Firefox 3.5 is in the other group, to name just one.
I’ll throw a party the day IE 6 has 0% market share.
And I think a major reason for the sharp drop in IE’s market share is Chrome. Its simply the fastest browser out there. FF 3 sucked balls big time.
Wow, look at the stats for Germany:
http://gs.statc...081204-20090705
61% for FF
21% for IE …. Impressive…
Also, FF just went ahead of IE in France
Firefox the most popular browser in the world
Very misleading article, Erick.
The drop is IE7 of 11% correlates with the increase of IE8 of 14% so actually when you look at the graph again, there is slight increase in percentage of people using IE.
agreed, and other more reliable sources show even greater gains for IE8
The IE (total) decline is non-trivial.
http://gs.statc...081201-20090705
I don’t think it’s as big a decline as StatCounter reports, but there’s no doubt that IE (all versions) is falling against Firefox and “other”.
See http://weblogs....rical_view.html for more.
…and web developers across the world rejoice!
I’m fascinated by the fanatic anti-Microsoft crowd’s automatic criticism of anything the company does, while complete ignoring Google’s search monopoly not to mention Apples resistance to having it’s proprietary OS run un anything but Mac’s – where are the Mac clones that could ignite some competition and make Mac’s more reasonably priced?
By the way – I run Firefox and my next computer is likely to be a Mac – so no, I’m not in love with Microsoft, but unlike many of my fellow creatives/developers I’m not about to turn Firefox, Mac & OpenSource into a Taliban Style Religion!
I Highly recommend this IE vs Firefox article:
http://www.tgda...view/43102/141/
So, what about those of us who are tech agnostic but as engineers and observers hold strong opinions on all three?
Namely:
1. Microsoft is literally a innovationless group of bumbling idiots who stumbled their way into a monopoly (read below), and can barely hold more than 50% browser share when they bundle the damn thing with every PC. However, their entry into search is good news because:
2. Google is so good at what they do and so likely to become pervasive and perhaps a world monopoly, that any competition is welcome.
3. Which leaves Apple, who makes phenomenal products and user interfaces, but because they’d rather control hardware and (every other decision in your life), handed the entire PC industry over to a nearly incompetent Microsoft and, oh by the way, is about to make the same mistake in cellular phones.
Disclaimer: I run Windows XP at work, Vista at home, use FF 3.5, Google search, have a GMail account, and own an iPod nano.
Cheers
Your fanatic hate of everything Microsoft just proved my point.
As for your view of Google, it appears that you don’t mind monopolies (the corporate version og dictatorship) as long as your favorite monopolist is in charge.
i don’t understand how a company can come up with such a great operating system & have such a horrible browser, doesn’t make sense, mine crashes all the time and as a web developer it gives me the most problems. They should just scrap the browser all together.
Do you seriously think Windows is a great OS? Are you kidding me? It is a joke. All they’ve done for the last 20 years is desperately rip off every feature they can find from other OS’s – they have “come up” with precisely NOTHING apart form the occasional anti-competitive proprietary crap like C# and IE. And if you really need to see how disgustingly bad their garbage is, just try looking at their standard C include files. ‘Nuff said – HORROR STORY. Incompetent horror story. And the only reason they don’t fix this trash is because they’re too scared to touch anything for fear of it breaking.
Why would Safari 4 not be included in this graph? Has adoption been so slow as to not show up in measurements?
proly because it has a 4 – 10% share of browser usage
Safari 4 is makes up only about half of all Safari usage (2.8% at StatCounter) so it’s a small enough figure to not be included in the topline numbers.
I know of no better tool than IE when it comes to downloading and installing Firefox on a virgin windows box.
WTF?
I wouldn’t put a virgin windows box on the web EVER! That box is staying offline Until I download standalone updates and firewall and antivirus etc on another system.
IF I had to go online with it I’d be using the command line ftp to access my server and download the security stuff I need.
Have you forgotten the days when a fresh XP install would be utterly molested after less than 8 minutes of being online (without opening IE)!
Sure things aren’t anywhere as bad as that these days but I say it’s just a matter of time!
Just keep those things behind a NAT-firewall/router.
Please.
That’s a good one! However, take a look at this:
http://portable...irefox_portable
So I guess as far as not knowing a better browser to get Firefox or other browser on a virgin machine, you do now!
;c)
Cheers,
Robert~
MSFT should release a “IE lite” version to compete with chrome. It can be the Bing browser so the MSFT fanboys have an alternative to Chrome.
If you look at the public data from Net Applications, IE’s market share as a whole has gone from 67.55% to 65.50% from January 2009 to May 2009 (since June is still not available publicly). So it’s steadily moved downwards, but not the huge leaps seen in Statcounter.com.
Also in this time frame according to Net Applications IE6 has gone from 19.21% to 16.94% in that time. Although Firefox 3, did finally surpass IE6 this past February. However, according to their stats, that still puts IE6 as the 3rd most popular browser as of May 2009.
This kind of statistics are interesting, but the only ones that really matter for a web developer are the statistics for whatever site they are developing for.
“This kind of statistics are interesting, but the only ones that really matter for a web developer are the statistics for whatever site they are developing for.”
While the sentiment “seems” logical, it can be dangerous to follow blindly. At my last company, some people looked at our site’s browser breakdown and saw that IE6/IE7/FF2 each had roughly a 1/3 share, with the “others” being almost non-existent. They concluded that we shouldn’t “waste time” developing for other sites because they didn’t provide enough incentive…
The problem there was, the site was completely busted and, for all intents and purposes, totally unusable in any “other” browser (Chrome, Safari, etc… even serious issues in FF3).
It’s circular reasoning; “we should support X-Y-Z browsers because only users with X-Y-Z browsers can use our site in the first place.” It severely limits your site’s expansion and marketability.
Note that large portion of IE installs are enterprise deployments which are not user-controlled.
The reason why everyone is leaving IE 7 is because IE 8 just came out. Look at your chart and in less than 3 months 8 will be on top where 7 used to be……………..
Actually no, IE doesn’t take months to replace, it usually takes 2 years to get rid of an old IE and replace it with a new version.
Who the hells uses “statcounter code” in their website?! That’s the only thing this metric counts…
Buried as INACCURATE
Its funny watching/reading all the MS bashing going on. You all make me laugh!
IE is still my browser of choice and i love my “web slices” and “accellerators” …
Looking forward to IE9!
IE lost over 17%. 11.4/65.8 = 17%ish
That’s an even better headline.
I just figured out something !!!
StatCounter data most likely are using HTTP user-agent as browser identification.
Most of NON-browser application that I know, like off browsers, automatic publishing tools, widgets (on windows based) are using IE 6 signature by default (and most of the time could not be altered).
THE REAL IE 6 NUMBERS ARE MUCH LOWER.
P.S: this in not to counter any thing I wrote on my comment above
The Data Might be Inaccurate as every one is saying here .Going forward chrome and firefox will increase their share .I’m waiting for the next official release of Chrome .
http://tekunik.blogspot.com
This story is misleading. IE 7 is losing marketshare, but look at the graph for IE 8. According to my eyes, IE 8 market share is growing as fast as IE 7 is losing. In other words, this story is suggesting that IE 7 is only losing out to competitive browsers, when in fact much of the decline is due to upgrades to 8. I am sure you hate Microsoft, but this article is downright bunk.
Alright, according to the raw data from the site, IE (6,7,&8) share was 67.01% in 07/2008. The latest numbers for all versions of IE is 54.79%. That is a loss of 12.22% total share over a year. Safari 3 actually lost about 1% of total share over the same period, FF both versions gained 3.51%. The big difference, came in the Other category, which gained 10% more of total share.
So, to those claiming this article is misleading, unless I’m completely missing something here, it’s pretty much spot on.
Badly misleading- Ie7 numbers go down , because many are uograding to IE8…. Add the numbers!
Besides, the best and smartest browser is Opera10 UNITE… Customized it and love it!
Here here! If and when they get the bugs worked out, I think Opera’s gonna see a surge in popularity thanks to Opera Unite. Not to mention just being an all around better browsing experience.
IE8 is not bad but the new firefox is very very nice, and great. If IE8 want to recover on Firefox, microsoft must do more, and according to me, this is impossible because firefox continue grow every day.
It is about time! Firefox is a much better browser than IE 7 or 8. I addition Microsoft’s habit of checking ones PC every few days is becoming very annoying …
If only 8% of people know what a browser means, Why are Mozilla and Google not advertising on the radio to simply explain that the dumb internet explorer is not the best choice.
They can run short ads on CBS 1010Wins..
I am sure this will open the minds of non geeky people that are the only ones understanding what a browser is all about.
Super misleading headline. As many are pointing out, IE8 clearly gains about 15% in the same time frame. Silly, silly article.
“The new browser wars on on.”
WTF?
Microsoft should have just given up on search, let google have the monopoly, then let the government dismantle google. problem solved
I don’t use ie at all now.
MS Rocks! I love IE8. Stop hating.
Given the public’s positive response to IE8 and strong traction of Firefox, Safari and Chrome – it seems we are entering a new era of no single dominant browser. Users will truly be able to choose the browser that works best for them. For web developers this means a new era of cross browser compatibility – no more messages like “I see you’re using Firefox, bad luck this website only works in Internet Explorer”… this will force development practices and standards to fall into alignment …. not a bad thing on all accounts. IMO
@Steve McInnes
If only everyone thought that way, the world would be a wonderful place.
Best technology doesn’t always win (Windows, perfect example). Most consumers don’t care about this technology and in fact would subconsciously prefer to just be told what to use, as long as it works. They will live with a lot of shortcomings, obviously, as they have lived with them in Windows and will probably keep doing so.
In the absence of a forced choice, a market filled with choices consumers will inevitably settle on one and that will gain majority share. Things may go in cycles but there will be one dominant player and so too will this so-called browser war settle back down to 1 market share leader again. But let’s hope it lasts as long as possible. It definitely helps advance web standards.
And also according to Google’s field research, only 7% of people (in Times Square, anyway) even understand what a “browser” is. Basically it highlights that people don’t care about the tool, they only care about what you can do with it.
By the way my choice – Safari
The raw StatCounter data for July gives a 9.2% market share at the moment – I’m guessing (as it’s still July) that the data for this month is recalculated regularly by StatCounter.
I’m guessing that you took your data during or just after the weekend, where non-IE usage is typically higher, and that over the course of this week the IE6 figure will rise, then drop over the weekend – I don’t think it’s possible to get an accurate picture for the whole of July before it’s over.
My rough guess from the trend is that it will probably settle very slightly higher or lower than 10% (somewhere between 9% and 10.5%).
Well it’s now at 9.19%, so it must be updating pretty regularly!
This means that all of the stats for July are inaccurate – adding it together now it’s 55.51% (making the drop more than 1% less than the drop given), and give the weekend bias (see above comment) I’m guessing IE overall market share will end the month higher than this.
It’s still a drop, but likely not of quite the magnitude being reported.