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IE Losing 10% Market Share Every Two Years

mjasay writes "Mozilla's Asa Dotzler points to some interesting long-term trends in browser market share, noting that 'browser releases aren't having any major impact on the macro trends,' which suggests that a better IE will likely have little impact on its sliding market share. The most intriguing conclusion from the data, however, is that Firefox could surpass IE market share as early as January 2013 if Firefox continues to gain 5 percent every year, even as IE drops 5 percent each year. In the past, Microsoft might have fought back by tying IE to other products to block competition, but with the EU keeping a close antitrust eye on Microsoft and the US Obama administration keen to make an example of an antitrust bully, Microsoft may have few good options beyond good old fashioned competition, which doesn't seem to be working very well for the Redmond giant, as the market share data suggests. Microsoft's loss of IE market power, in turn, could have serious consequences for the company's efforts to compete with Google on the Web."

6 of 345 comments (clear)

  1. MSIE market share has not changed much by SgtChaireBourne · · Score: 0, Troll

    The blog entry is quite misleading (or maybe just assimilated). The market share of MSIE has only gone down as much as the market share of MS Windows has gone down. It can be that Windows has disappeared at a rate of 5% - 10% per year recently, but Microsoft is fighting back by tying IE to other products to block competition. That other product is MS Windows.

    MSIE must be removed from MS Windows. Or better yet, just ditch MS Windows and save your economy.

    --
    Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
  2. Re:browser wars are old news by Dracos · · Score: 0, Troll

    Agreed, the browser wars are over. MS cheated and won.

    Now IE has real competition for the first time in about a decade, and MS knows they can't actually compete on quality or features. They've given up on IE and forcing people to use it as a way to control the web... now they've shifted focus to control how the web itself works. IMO, Chris Wilson, as the chair of the HTML working group, is a mole.

    The standards wars are upon us. Long live XHTML2.

  3. based on my experience, firefox going down by cinnamon+colbert · · Score: -1, Troll

    I was , untill the google scuzz fest, a firefox fan boy: got my family and many people at work away from ie and onto ff
    no longer - why should i support something that is in bed with google, pays its ceo an over inflated salary, and is doing a terrible job upgrading (why does a bad pdf download freeze my ff ? in excusable)
    I wonder how many people there are like me

  4. Re:antitrust bully? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Wow, not only is this way off-topic, but a fairly stupid statement to boot. They wrote the software, they released it to the two platforms they wanted to, and don't want it anywhere else. Where do you get off telling them how they should release THEIR software. This assumption that anything that gets release by any company... hardware, software, whatever, is suddenly public domain and those companies should be burned at the steak if they don't allow it to all people in all places at all times is quite disturbing.

    You can do whatever the hell you want with the software that YOU wrote. You have NO RIGHT to tell another entity what they should do with THEIR property... i.e. software. If you don't like it, DON'T FUCKING USE IT!

  5. Re:There's an Artificial Barrier by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Troll

    Also posting anon because I work for the government...

    It is called Mercury Performance Center / Load Runner / Quick Test Pro, learn to use it. The government has access to LOTS of test software to expedite the testing of software, I am sure you could hunt yourself up a copy. Besides, it is only the sheep that will listen to the messages that are sent out that say: "OMG OH NOEZ!! Don't install IE8! If IE8 is found in use your account will be locked .. blah ... blah..". Those of us that realize this IS the government we are talking about, and since you can't test software in a reasonable amount of time, you can't tell if Joe User is using IE6 or IE8...

    Stop drinking the kool-aid dude. IE8 sucks, but at least it is better than IE6...

  6. Chrome by ehiris · · Score: 1, Troll

    I've moved to Google Chrome now. It is awesome and far superior to both IE and FireFox. IE is just a giant memory hug and FireFox crashes a lot while videos don't play in screen, ... . FireFox recovers well after a crash but it's always annoying.

    Chrome is lightweight and works perfect. Now if people would quit developing with activex, I could be completely independent of IE.

    A Linux version of Chrome would be nice too.