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.

[garnetridge]

"A loss of 1 percent of the market may not mean much to Microsoft, but it translates into a large growth, proportionately, in the number of users running Mozilla and Netscape-based browsers. Mozilla and Netscape's combined market share has increased by 26 percent, rising from 3.21 percent of the market in June to 4.05 percent in July, Johnston said." A 26% increase for Mozilla and Netscape in less than one month is significant to them. I'll bet MS considers it significant also.

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.

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

It could simply be a single large-scale corporate migration to Mozilla...

Now that would be significant...

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.

dear god

[mateomiguel]

an article with no comments? can such a thing be?

In all seriousness I don't understand why Mozilla hasn't taken over the browser market already. It has all the features that anyone would want in a web browser and I've been using it for years. Why doesn't...

Oh, right. I remember my mother, the standard by which all computer users can be compared. I can't even imagine trying to explain to her what an internet browser is, much less explain that there are better ones around. This is the woman that once asked me in a panic-stricken voice "where's the K key, I can't find the K key!" while trying to give her a walkthrough on how to use Microsoft Publisher.

I love her to death, but she is the bane of technological civilization.

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.

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.

Change IS Change

[eSims]

I am not a statistician and therefore am not going to discuss the merits of 1%, but Change IS Change.

While Mom and Pop (tm) may still use whatever is default for some time to come, just keep passing out CDs and downloading it for friends... it IS catching on.

I just burned a CD for a friend stuck on dialup. She is a school teacher in NYC and could care less about mozilla/ie/netscape/blah, BUT she has adware/spyware clogging her computer. So I burn a CD with adaware, spybot, AND Firefox along with a text file telling her how and what to do.

Voila... another Mozilla user!

Yes, Whooptyshit, one percent gain against MS

[MooseByte]

"but one percentage point is simply not statistically significant."

It's extrememly significant. When is the last time a dominant MS end-user product *lost* marketshare? Coming at a time when the "Life Around MS Campus Is Going To Get Tough" memo is released, I think it shows that MS is for once (and largely thanks to open source) finding itself with an actual fight on its hands.

Go penguins! And little BSD daemons. And that... Mozilla lizard thing. :-)

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.

Nice features.

[jb_02_98]

"Once people start examining the features of Mozilla versus Internet Explorer instead of looking at a brand name . . . I think they'll see there's a lot more value," he said. - quoted from article.

Yeah... it even blocked the pop up that pcworld tried to through at me. YAY for features!

A change is afoot

[foobybletch]

I Think I first really noticed that Mozilla and Firebird were making an impact, when finally my bank actually supported a browser other than Internet Exploder for their online service, and specifically mentioned support for Mozilla!

I guess that if (some) online service providers can be bothered to support a significant minority of users (e.g. Mac users, no flames here!), then support for another browser should be possible, and especially in their enlightened self interest

-Fooby

Citibank recommends non-IE browsers.

[MongooseCN]

When I log into citibankcards.com (using mozilla of course) there is a message in bright red that comes up warning users that they should not use IE. It seems to come up no matter what browser I use.

Re:Citibank recommends non-IE browsers.

[upsidedown_duck]

When I log into citibankcards.com (using mozilla of course) there is a message in bright red that comes up warning users that they should not use IE. It seems to come up no matter what browser I use.

This is probably because Citibank was specifically targeted by that password-sniffing exploit of IE that came up recently. The exploit installed something via IE that send passwords directly via HTTP, which would bypass firewalls entirely. The security problems in IE have finally become dangerous to their users--this is beyond simple spyware or adware, this is real no-holds-barred computer crime.

Re:Is your mother really THAT stupid? Probibly not

[GreatDrok]

I got my mother to switch to Mozilla about 6 months back and she has been thrilled with it. She started using it for the spam filtering and stayed for the browser itself. The other day I phoned her to tell her to upgrade mozilla because of the shell:// problem and she had already done it! I think she may actually be getting it.

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.