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After 100M IE7 Downloads, Firefox Still Gaining
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?"
You upgrade IE6 with the assumption that MS will require it for one thing or another. We don't actually use it but we install it just in case.
Based on my experience with corporate networks and home machines, about 85% of those were pushed via Automatic Updates. I expect a maximum of about 20% of those downloads to be intentional or wanted.
Is it fair to compare these stats? Most IE users don't choose to upgrade, it's simply foisted on them by Windows' Auto Update. When I returned home this Christmas both my mum and sister asked me to "fix the internet" because IE7 had been installed and its new layout confused them. They certainly didn't choose in the way that someone chooses to download and install Firefox does, so the victory is even more in FF's favour.
Please note that this isn't a Firefox fanboy post (despite my love for it), merely pointing out the facts.
Internet Explorer 7 hit the 100 million download mark last week.
Gee, perhaps that has something to do with Microsoft marking it a high-priority update, so everyone with automatic updates turned on will unwittingly get it?
Not much of a claim to success to say that 100 million people, running an OS that has automatic updates turned on by default, have wasted bandwidth on a program they didn't even choose to download.
I installed IE7 on my Windows box. I use Firefox exclusively. The only reason that I installed it was because the automatic update manager wanted to, and since IE is a deeply embedded component of Windows, a security update for IE is a security update for Windows. Otherwise, I wouldn't have bothered.
I switched (mostly) to Linux to get away from IE. But I still installed IE7. So no, I don't consider this news to be surprising in the slightest.
So we can assume out of all the windows users out there only 100 million out of all the people who have Windows PCs are actually upgrading their system. Is it just me or is that kida scary.
So lets assume that 2/3 of the people in the US have windows computers that means half of the people in the US has been updating their windows systems and the the other half and the rest of the world hasn't.
I know most companies are waiting for a SP release of IE 7 before upgrading. Even though a person uses firefox it really shouldnt exclude them from using getting IE 7 because of the integration between windows and IE can still be a security problem. I am not saing IE 7 is more Secure then firefox or even IE 6 but IE 7 will be updated longer into the future then IE 6 and IE 7 Problems will be fixed faster then IE 6's
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Or, if you're any type of web designer you use both to check your sites work. Simply quoting download numbers is a completly bogus way of proving popularity. You'd think something like InformationWeek would know better than to report this pointless bit dick waving.
That's poorly worded at best. Firefox has pushed all the innovation in web browsers (unless you count Opera, other FOSS browsers). IE hasn't done anything new in nearly a decade. Open Source is always superior to proprietary (long term), for the simple fact that Open Source gets fixed faster, and by a bigger pool of coding talent.
Plus, last I checked, Mozilla doesn't have a vendor locked in OS X clone that is the hegemonic dominant force in the industry with which to leverage their sub-par browser.
The fact that Firefox even has 2% of the market (and obviously it's much higher) given this environment that so strongly favors IE, speaks volumes to the superiority of the browser, the superiority of the code, and the superiority of the Open Source model of software development.
My prediction is that IE will not have a version 9. If it does, nobody will pay any attention. Version 8 will be nearly as laughable a joke, but still have some market dominance just based on sheer MS monopolism, and the lethargic ignorance of the average Joe computer user.
Version 10 of IE will be Firefox automatically installed in Windows 2012, because otherwise Windows will fall even farther behind Linux and OS X in user adoption and market dominance.
rhY
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Now I'm not usually one to get all up in arms about the appearance of a program, but IE7 looks well and truly ugly to my eyes, and for the 5 minutes or so that I bothered buggering around with it I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to move the toolbar icons and the addressbar in any useful way. Contrast that with Firefox, which handles the toolbar UI configuration very well and MS looks immediately to be onto a loser.
While people might argue about all manner of things like standards support, security, and rendering speed; the initial ugliness and apparent difficulty/impossibility to configure the UI to my liking is probably going to put more people off IE7 within 5 minutes than anything else.
I presume there is a way to change the UI (hell, even IE6 could do that) and maybe it's actually quite obvious if you take the time to look, but quite frankly why should I when Firefox can do it right off the bat in an intuitive manner? I think that's the way a lot of casual users see it too.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
That's one download because it's a 'critical update', and another download to get a second copy of the installer to actually complete the installation when you realise the first one is broken.
Seriously, the number of borked IE installations I've seen recently is stupid. Perhaps they should measure satisfied customers instead?
I've actually increased the number of Firefox users thanks to IE7 - it was the quickest way to get the laptop back on the net to get the newer build of IE7.
insignificant sig
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).
Considering these circumstances, it is amazing to see how well Firefox is doing considering the odds.
Just because I downloaded IE7 doesn't mean I use it any more than I have to.
Use IE on the sites I develop, but that usage is only hitting the internal dev server, and won't appear in any site stats. I certainly don't use IE for going anywhere else, unless the site breaks in Firefox, and even then I use IETab.
Article summary: Here's a vague statistic! Does this mean that we've finally slayed the ancient beast, bringing forth an unprecedented era of free software, good will, unshowered nerds, and 'view source' buttons?
Go team!! Gimme a 0x46! Gimme a 0x49! Gimme a 0x52! Gimme a 0x45! Gimme a cheer[0]! Gimme a 0x4F! Gimme a 0x58! What's that spell? VICTORY! Gooo team! Push the stack, pop the stack, saaaaaame stack!
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".
The longer that firefox maintains its current user base, the closer the time comes when a killer extension is released by someone (maybe you!). This killer extension would be something that so dramatically improves the browsing experience that pretty much everyone has to get it to be "really on the internet". By the time Microsoft rips off whatever it is, it will be too late. That is the best reason to support firefox, its extensibility means that at any moment, it could become develop a (albeit temporarily) insurmountable competitive advantage.
stuff |
This is not the right time for comparing IE7 effect on Firefox. The time will be when Vista comes out and new PCs come preloaded with Vista and IE7. At that time, people will get rid of the old PCs and we'll see whether they're sufficiently satisfied with IE7 that they won't bother with downloading Firefox. At the same time we'll also see if people used to IE6, when presented with IE7's new interface, might switch to Firefox. Whichever way the pendulum swings, that's when we should watch it.
"has Microsoft finally met its match?"
Um, no. There will always be some microsoft tool that requires their browser causing some form of lock-in. Heck, using microsoft's action pack subscription web page to purchase software requires IE. What the numbers mean is that web designers are finally paying attention and making their sites support firefox and a few other standards based browsers or risk loosing a good chunk of their customers. And now that everyone's favorite web pages work in firefox, they can start making a piecemeal migration away from vendor lock-in. However, just because they can use firefox for most things, you can be sure that microsoft will ensure there is lock-in someone and default to their browser giving them a 75% chunk of the market for life. The next chunk of the monopoly to fragment will be office with various online tools and openoffice making advances. But, I expect that will be another 2-4 years before we see anything like firefox's progress.
How many of those were imposed by the Automatic Update routine?
I have two WinXP systems (and several non-XP systems). Both of them got IE7 without me deciding to upgrade-- it just happened. (I've GOT to fix that.)
On the other hand, all of my systems, be they Linux, Mac, or Win*, have FireFox. I've even taught my kids to use FF instead of IE.
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
The same can be said for many people that downloaded Firefox. They tried it out, didn't like it, and switched back to IE.
It's been there in the "Software Update" for weeks. Or better said, I always log in as "Restricted User" (as does my wife) and I then don't get notifications about that particular "Software Update". It's only when I have to login as "Administrator" that I get the notification. Logging in as "Administrator" doesn't happen often, and when I do, it's usually to fix something and I don't have time nor motivation to launch the IE7 update.
So my machines all still have IE6, but nobody uses it... They all use Firefox. The rest of the family all have their machines setup to be used in "Restricted User" configuration and that way IE7 doesn't install. Why, I do not know, because other updates do install. So people doing the "right thing" (running non-admin) don't get it automatically. Funny, isn't it?
Let's consider the following facts:
- IE7's requirements say it will only run on XP or Windows Server 2003. Hence you'd expect that (most) people who downloaded IE7 are indeed on XP or Win 2003 machines.
- all XP and Windows Server 2003 computers came with IE6
I'm sure you can fill in the blanks there, because it's a simple case of "X => Y, Y => Z". If X="you upgraded to IE7", Y="you're on XP or Win 2003", Z="you had IE6". Did anyone really need a statistic or study to tell them that, surprisingly, unexpectedly, those who upgraded to IE7 had IE6 on their machine before?
Pretty much the only mildly interesting word in there is: "most". Did some people actually go through the trouble of making IE7 install on a system that doesn't run it? E.g., on Win 2000? I can only hope there weren't too many.
So basically this is such a useless revelation, that I can only hope that it was some attempt at manipulation. Because the depressing to think that someone was genuinely stupid enough to think they're onto some brilliant discovery and market trend.
So the one-word wisdom there is: duh.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
2) Your admin installed the IE7 Blocker Toolkit for corporate administrators ( http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=65788&site
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.
It hasn't happened yet, but someday scientists will rename that planet to end stupid Uranus jokes once and for all. I predict: Urrectum.
Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
I think the strategic advantages of IE6 over Firefox were lost when switching to IE7 and there is no return.
To me, these advantages where:
1. Program loading time: IE6 used to open quicker than firefox and also some pages. Not anymore
2. IE6 used to show pages differently to what firefox did, I think that was changed. Or people is really interested in writing the code for Firefox (or compatible) and It has been a while since a page was incorrectly displayed or told me so.
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
I myself downloaded IE7 because I just missed checkbox in the custom download options while getting security updates. That doesn't mean I'm actually using it.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Now that's a bit of a stretch, don't you think? I use and love Firefox. It's what I'm typing this in right now. But I use both browsers on a daily basis. There are some sites that only look right in IE7 (due to web developers optimizing for IE at the expense of standards), and there are some sites that don't like IE7 yet (and thus work better in IE6 or -- since that isn't available if you have IE7 -- in FF). And then there's sites using ActiveX (such as Microsoft's Outlook Web Access) which only work at full capacity in IE.
Sure, FF is making inroads. It's my browser of choice (almost exclusively because of extensions, though, and not due to any other groundbreaking feature in FF). But to construe that "abandoning" IE is ridiculous. Both are useful.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Why doesn't anybody complain about Safari, or Voyager or Konqueror being bundled with thier respective OS distributions? (Yes, I know Konqueror belongs to KDE, but think Knoppix and the like)
Because those OS distributions are not occupying 90% of the market, and are not essentially shoved down the throat of everyone who wants to buy a PC.
When you have a product that is a monopoly, you have additional rules to follow. It includes not taking advantage of this monopoly (the OS one) to force an unrelated product (IE) on your customers. What is so hard to understand?
You have to make sure that your intranet application renders properly (in spite of Microsoft's continued non-compliance with many CSS features) on what has always seemed to me to be a buggy, bloated, easy-to-malware infest piece of junk software application masquerading as a browser.
In fact, one of the studies we are doing internally at my company is looking at the cost of deploying Firefox exclusively inside the firewall. Interestingly enough, the main resistance at this point is that if we don't continue to support IE internally, our web developers won't have the skills to deploy and secure web applications OUTSIDE of the firewall.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
And, by the way, while I'm at it, how about the fact it automatically downloads updates and then forces them to install the next time I open Firefox, without asking me.
Edit - Preferences - Advanced - Update - Uncheck "Installed Add-ons"
Why can't I browse and tell Firefox where to put it instead of being arbitrarily forced to put it in the same inappropriate location?
Edit - Preferences - Main - Select "Always ask me where to save files" under Downloads.
The reason these things are like that by default is because, for most people, they're the Right Choice. If you don't like them, they're extremely simple to change. Being asked where to put a file every bloody time annoys me (and everyone I know) to no end. Similarly, many (if not most) people using Firefox have permissions to update their own extensions, but many don't know how or don't think to check for updates. Should they be kept at old versions because you are too lazy to uncheck a single box in a preference window?
- fader
Your SAP comment is good.
The bigger issue, though, is that most businesses still haven't moved off Win2k. No XP/2003, no IE7.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I don't surf for porn or cracked software; the only two kinds of web sites were my A/V software ever went off.
So it only alerts when visiting websites you don't visit?
TheCounter gets a very good sample of the Internet userbase, so instead of arguing like retarded kids what "X downloads for IE and Y downloads for Firefox means" we can see what people USE:
s er.php
:P
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2007/January/brow
19% for IE7, 11% for Firefox. End of story.
"But IE is preinstalled, but Automatic Updates, but, but."
Yea, we know. And? Firefox doesn't need skewed stats, nor it needs lame excuses. All of you, grow up
Judging by the average MySpace page, I wouldn't be surprised if the "designer" didn't bother to check what it looks like in any browser...
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
I've been using Firefox 2.0 since beta and before IE7 came out. Like a diligent /. reader I've been keeping up on the arguments from both sides. The one that stuck out in my mind was that Firefox has a pretty bad memory leak. At the time I read it, I didn't pay much attention to it because I never noticed any slowdown or stability problems when using Firefox. That was until a few weeks ago.
I started playing WoW a while ago and have recently been using Thotbott. I will have WoW open in one window (Full screen) and Thotbott running in Firefox in the background. After a while, WoW started chunking big time. I eventually figured out that if I closed Firefox, the chunk went away. On my system (P4 3.0ghz, 1GB RAM, XP SP2), IE7 doesn't cause WoW to chunk. I can leave Thotbott open in the background all day long.
Although I do use Firefox for most my browsing, it isn't the IE killer that it often gets made out to be.