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After 100M IE7 Downloads, Firefox Still Gaining

Posted by kdawson on from the denting-the-monopoly dept.

Kelson writes "Internet Explorer 7 hit the 100 million download mark last week. Yet in the three months it's been available, Firefox's market share has continued to grow. InformationWeek reports that nearly all of IE7's growth has been upgrades from IE6. People don't seem to be switching back to IE in significant numbers, prompting analysts to wonder: has Microsoft finally met its match?"

6 of 425 comments (clear)

  1. Re:If you're like me by omeg · · Score: 4, Informative

    True. Or you just want to check to see for yourself whether it really fixes some of those nasty CSS problems. There are plenty of reasons for installing IE7, but none of them imply that you will also be actually using it. Site statistics will have to assess whether IE7 is really being used a lot, not the amount of downloads.

  2. IE7 on Linux: get it while it's hot by adnonsense · · Score: 4, Informative

    At least one of those downloads was by my humble self and now graces my humble Ubuntu desktop, thanks to the excellent IEs 4 Linux package.

    (Disclaimer: I do web dev work and need it for testing purposes. And I feel all dirty and sordid with every time I fire it up).

  3. Re:Well being that it is part of windows upgrade.. by cyxxon · · Score: 3, Informative

    Don't forget that a lot of companies don't just install Windows upgrades because MS releases them. They undergo rigid inhouse testing and then later are deployed from their own update servers, so they would not be counted as donwloads from Microsoft anyway.

    Also, IE7 is (at the moment, fix upcoming in SAPGui release 20 IIRC) incompatible with SAP software, so any admin worth his salt will block this update if the company also uses SAP software (which I bet are quite a lot of desktops). And this problem is AFAIK a blunder by SAP, saying things like "uh, nobody gave us IE7 early enough, how were we supposed to fix our code".

  4. Two reasons by ReallyEvilCanine · · Score: 3, Informative
    1) You're logged in as a restricted user and only the Admin can give the update installation the go-ahead
    2) Your admin installed the IE7 Blocker Toolkit for corporate administrators ( http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=65788&siteI d=3&oId=2100-7350-6098500&ontId=1009&lop=nl.ex)

    We warned our customers' admins about this back in August but they ignored us... until October 18th. Then they started submitting Prio-1 tickets, the fuckwits.

  5. Re:ie tabbed browsing by Calinous · · Score: 3, Informative

    Why did they mod you funny?
          While using an antivirus and a spyware program is good (along with a firewall and so on), you should take into account that antivirus programs offer their security with delays. Between the start of an attack until the moment all the updates are on the system, usually more than a day occurs.
          And you should take into account that IE has open holes (Firefox probably has some too) that can be attacked by any totally new virus

  6. Re:If you're like me by MMMDI · · Score: 4, Informative

    I run two different sites, both of which are far from being tech-oriented - one is a music site, and the other is a movie review site. The stats on both sites consistently show an increase in FF usage from month to month. I know I don't bring in a fraction of the hits that Google and the other "major" sites do, but if this is any indication...

    Thus far this month, we're looking at the following:
    MMMDI
    1,867,564 hits
    64.1% IE / 29.6% FF / 1.9% Safari (the big three)

    MvMMDI
    186,191 hits (yes, this site is still relatively new and unestablished)
    59.9% IE / 34.5% FF / 2.1% Safari (the big three)