Mozilla Gains on Internet Explorer

Alizarin Erythrosin writes "PCWorld is reporting that Internet Explorer's share of the browser market has dropped 1%, the 'first noticeable decline since WebSideStory began tracking the browser market in late 1999.' With all the exploits and security holes in IE recently, it's no wonder! Google News has related stories, including many on the recently disclosed (and patched!) bug in Mozilla on Win2k/XP machines (documented on Slashdot on Thursday)"

Comments

Whooptyshit, one percent.

[JessLeah]

I love Mozilla as much as the next geek-- and I hate hate hate hate hate Microsoft-- but one percentage point is simply not statistically significant. It could be a glitch. It could simply be a single large-scale corporate migration to Mozilla, plus a glitch. It could be a totally random thing. Wake me when IE is down to 60% usage.

Re:Whooptyshit, one percent.

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody uses a webbrowser. 1% of everybody is a lot of people. It is also a high growth rate for a browser which is still in single digit market share territory.

Re:Whooptyshit, one percent.

[yelvington]

Whoa there.

Margin of error applies to survey methodologies -- ask a sample, project the answer to a larger population.

WebSideStory isn't doing that; their data is continual, actual pageview analysis from their (large) customer base, and in that context a one percent shift is really a one percent shift, not one percent plus or minus something.

It's still small, though, and is yet more evidence that people do not behave rationally.

Re:Whooptyshit, one percent.

[jd142]

actual pageview analysis from their (large) customer base

Which means that it is just a sample of all browser users, and not a random sample at that.

From the story:

WebSideStory's estimates are based on a daily survey of about 30 million browsers hitting thousands of different Web sites that use the company's Web analytics software, Johnston said.

So it only measures visitors to sites that have specifically installed the software. It would not be unreasonable to suggest that those sites that would install such software tend to be more computer oriented and thus visited by more tech savvy visitors, people pre-disposed to have an alternative browser. That may not be the case of course, but in no way is this a true random sample of websurfers.

This is more akin to the cnn poll on the cnn home page. There's no control in place to assure a random sample.

Even if this were a true random sample, which it isn't, since this is only a subset of all computer users, there would be a margin of error. The margin of error would be dependent on the total number of websurfers world wide and the total number of unique surfers in the sample.

The best that can be said for this is that visitors to a set number of sites might be trending to Mozilla.

Re:Whooptyshit, one percent.

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Man, 1% is like 10 million people.

That's more than the population of most states.

That means circa 10 million people who thought that IE was the ONLY way to get on the net, found new browsers and installed the. And that's with no TV or Magazine advertising. That's amazing.

Re:Whooptyshit, one percent.

[1u3hr]

why am i not seeing MS advertising about IE?

Because they don't sell it. And advertising it would only raise the profile of alternative products -- they've got a large number of users who can't imagine there is any other way to access the web.

Moz vs. IE

[chunkwhite86]

I think another reason moz is gaining on IE is that many banks and financial institutions are starting to get a clue and are coding their web pages to be compatible on multiple platforms. For a while, IE was a requirement to log into any sort of on-line banking. I guess this last wave of IE vulnerabilities was the straw that broke the camels back, and people are finally deciding to switch.

Re:Ha!

[ScrewMaster]

Actually, you're looking at this the wrong way. 1% is absolutely huge when you consider how many Windows machines are out there.

Re:dear god (or dear devil?)

[Jorgensen]

Of course Mozilla hasn't taken over the browser market.

Mozilla is technically superior. But inferior when it comes to marketing and (especially) *access* to the market.

Nearly *everybody* gets IE pre-installed. The vast majority of PC users will happily go with what's installed already, rather than having to "open the bonnet and get their hands dirty". Most Windows users with a bit of experience will know that installing/removing software will tend break things.

Now... If some large OEM was to pre-install Firefox, then the picture would really start to change. But I doubt whether their contracts with Microsoft *allow* them to do that.

Remember: A *person* may well be intelligent, but *people* are stupid. All generalisations are false.

Re:dear god

[Ender Ryan]

Along with excessive popup ads, annoying active X controls, et cetera. So all of us who support Mozilla (and KHTML), have moron executives who continue to add more and more ads to websites, like it's an addiction, to thank for the increasing acceptance of "alternative" browsers.

We have several "normal" computer users at the office. When having one of them try Firefox, because she was frustrated with popups, the first day she said, "I don't like Firefox, can't you just fix the Internet?" The second day, after she figured out tabs, popup blocking, and even the speed, she said, "Firefox is so much better. Why would anyone still use Internet Explorer."

Before, she didn't understand the difference between "The Internet" and "Internet Explorer". After 1 single day using Firefox, some things clicked in her head, and she is now a much more saavy Internet user, requiring much less support from our technical staff, ie. me.

Re:dear god (or dear devil?)

[Farmbubba]

It could be not a gain in Mozilla, but a drop in the number of IE machines that still function. IE lets so much adware/spyware in that a lot of machines will cease to function at all.

Your statistics are belong to us

[DarkL]

Valid statistics should be based on facts and these are hard to gather in the browser market simply because most non-IE browsers have to identify themselves as the MS product in order to gain access to many web sites. The default for Opera is MS IE. Same for OmniWeb and many other popular browsers for the Mac platform. In fact, there is such a browser spoofing feature in just about every browser I know, including Safari, OmniWeb, Opera, iCab, etc.

So, what is being counted as MS IE may not really be IE. I'm sure their real numbers are much, much lower.