Slashdot Mirror
Internet Explorer's Share Dips Below 90%
sheepoo writes "CNN has a story stating that, according to a WebSideStory report, Internet Explorer has slipped below 90% usage share for the first time." From the article: "Firefox, an open-source browser collectively developed by the Internet community under the Mozilla Foundation, had a 6.8 percent share as of April 29, an increase from 3.0 percent since WebSideStory began tracking Firefox separately in October."
Googledot receives a few hits everytime someone mentions it on Slashdot. I've been keeping track of the hits and such, which show 67% of slashdotters (who are willing to click a link for a laugh) are using firefox, and only 14.5% of them are using Internet Explorer. It is interesting to look at how many people still use Windows over *nix too. I guess it is all very much depending on what type of website you're counting from too.
You can look at a few statistics here that have been collected since over a few months.
Proceed with Format (Y/N)? Y
but I haven't run into any sites lately that require IE. Recent Mozilla handles everything just fine. Apart form some minor rendering weirdness on a few sites I haven't had to jump over to IE for anything.
Now "only" 9 out of every 10 systems uses IE. Hopefully FireFox will continue to grow and IE will continue to shrink.. of course that will be tough when Microsoft copies all of Firefox's features in the next release of IE.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
What does 90% market share really mean? I use both IE and Firefox on the same machine. Do they both get counted?
I love vague facts and figures
Oh my god! Microsoft's monopoly level has fallen from "complete total dominance" down to "utterly terrifying massively overwhelming" in web browsers.
But, wait, actually. Seriously for a second. Isn't this exactly the type of competition that the DOJ argued would/could never happen as long IE was integrated into Windows? Wasn't the argument that IE was illegal tying because there would not be competition due to MS's dominance with Windows?
Firefox has managed to take ~7% of the market in a short period of time from a massively well-funded competitor on an ultra, ultra, ultra shoestring budget. This kinda proves what MS was saying, and disproves what the DOJ was saying.
...for, I dunno, *this* page, which still doesn't render right in Firefox.
FireFox has tallied up 15.52 percent of the hits to my site since May 1.
It's probably based on the platform you use to work on.
When i was at school i predominantly surfed from linux, at work it's predominantly solaris, and when i change jobs i'll be back to windows.
If you are in the computer field then you pretty much run whatever OS is required for your job.
Internet Explorer has slipped below 90% usage share for the first time.
First time? Was the author born after 1998?
Speak truth to power.
See this is a new type of business model that Microsoft can't beat. It used to be that when they decided to bundle or bully, competitors are dead.
No more. Firefox doesn't need to make $ to survive, so M$ can't beat by price. Bundling won't work either because broadband is everywhere.
Now, the killer app (analogy) is reputation. IE has been branded as spyware/exploit-ridden. People want an alternative. IE has lost its credibility.
eTrade SUCKS
So, even before it was writte^H^H^H^H^H^Hcopied from Mosaic, it had 90% market share? That's AMAZING! :)
You are not the customer.
Okay, just curious, but wondered how much of the traffic measured accounts for, knows about, figures in, etc., for Firefox "reporting in" as Internet Explorer so as not to get rejected from using that site. I have mine set to be "Internet Explorer" for my on-line banking (go figure). Think it would add any significant usage for Firefox?
I hope that this data will motivates webmasters and site designers to create more universally viewable sites.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Firefox has managed to take ~7% of the market in a short period of time from a massively well-funded competitor on an ultra, ultra, ultra shoestring budget.
"Ultra shoestring budget"? Relative to Microsoft sure, but the vast majority of Mozilla development occured with the direct financial support of AOL, Sun and what was left of Netscape after the buyout with numerous other companies contributing. The Mozilla foundation was given millions of dollars to get started. While none of that in any way detracts from how impressive their accomplishment is, I would hardly describe them as working on "an ultra, ultra, ultra shoestring budget."
f(x) = number of user
f'(x) = growth = growth rate
f''(x) = grown increase rate
So
Decrease in growth rate == decrease in growth
In related news, according to this story, IBM employees (numbering +- 300,000) are urged to switch over to Firefox. That should help the numbers even more
(answering myself) - maybe lobbing to the windows 98 users? AFAIK people using windows 98 makes around 50% of the people who uses internet. Internet explorer 7 will not be released for windows 98 and in fact Microsoft should already have stopped updating it with security fixes (windows 98 is 7 years old)
May be we could use a catch phrase, say "the one secure option for windows 98/me/NT 4.0" "Microsoft forgot of your Windows 98 box? Try firefox". Or something like that.
You haven't visited http://weightwatchers.com have you?
I went there with Firefox 1.0.4. If you examine the URL they forward you to and the site itself you learn that their web masters assume Firefox doesn't support JavaScript or Cookies, and there's no "Click here to use the site anyway" like button.
I had an exchange with their customer service a month or two ago about this, and their reply amounted to saying they wouldn't support an "unpopular" browser.
I sent back an article about Firefox having more users than all non IE browsers combines, and they sent back the same form letter about not supporting every browser.
Funny thing is, if I spoof my browser string as Internet Explorer 34691.0.45.72.22222 running on Windows THFFFT, the site works fine. I haven't signed up yet though, since I won't spend my money on a site that require me to futz around with obscure browser settings to work.
I also found it odd that their email replies seemed to consider Firefox to be an Opera variant.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
Yes, a decrease in growth does exactly equal the decrease in the rate of growth. That's what growth means. The rate of increase. The rate of growing.
Did you mean to say that a decrease in growth isn't the same thing as a decrease in the number of users? That's true, and maybe not as obvious to a lot of people as it should be.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
Why do people assume that the only reason for not using Microsoft products is that you don't like Microsoft?
I don't use Cubase because I hate Emagic, or PSP because I don't like Adobe.
I do use Firefox because it works fine, and I have not had any spyware since I started using it. It's quite simple really, and if Microsoft comes out with a better browser, I'll use that. They are both 'free' as I got explorer free with Windows.
I wonder why they have manipulated the statistics like that. They split Opera into different versions and systems, while not doing the same for IE and "Mozilla". In the case of Mozilla it's even worse, the lack of Firefox suggest they lump all Gecko based browsers together as Mozilla. Besides where are Konqueror and Safari?
Bzzt, wrong!
Firefox renders to something called a standard.
Slashdot is absolutely nowhere near any known web standard.
Thus, Slashdot's HTML is ballsed up. Firefox may stand a better chance with valid HTML, the other browsers are using 'quirks' mode and rendering what they think the page should say, not what it does.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
Bill Gates: "Internet Explorer has fallen below 90% of the browser market! We still have total dominance! OSS is a dismal failure! Buy Windows XP!"
You must think in Russian.
firefox does not render the web according to a standard. check this test if you dont believe me:
http://www.webstandards.org/act/acid2/
no browser renders the web according to the standards. have you ever tried writing a website to work across all browsers?
even safari (the only browser so far to pass acid2) doesn't render according to standards - they had to hack the code to make it render the parts of the standards that acid2 touched on (not the entire standard).
Firefox has a bug, deal with it.
http://www.maxthon.com/
Really makes the switch from browsing at home to work alot smoother, even if it isn't a perfect solution. What it really makes me think though - if these guys can get tabbed browsing and whatnot into the current IE, why is MS not doing the same thing to slow lost market share to more usable/secure browsers???