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IE 8 Is Top Browser, Google Chrome Is Rising Fast

Posted by kdawson on from the trend-is-your-friend dept.

An anonymous reader points out that the latest Net Applications numbers show that MSIE 8 has become the world's most-used browser, taking over from IE6, which has been hit by the decline in the use of Windows XP. PCMag.com emphasizes another angle on the numbers, which is that Chrome is the fastest-growing browser. Firefox's market share has stalled just below 25%. Chrome is now in third place, ahead of Safari. The Guardian's article reminds: "There's no guarantee that NetApps' numbers are accurate, and they are very unlikely to be correct to two decimal places. However, they do appear to be a good indicator of market trends."

75 of 319 comments (clear)

  1. the more prevalent it remains, the bigger the risk by jollyreaper · · Score: 5, Interesting

    With so many people still using IE, whatever holes there are in firefox and chrome just won't get the same attention from the hackers. That alone makes me not want to use it. Obscurity may not be obscurity but it's also not jumping up and down with a target painted on your chest.

    --
    Kwisatz Haderach
    Sell the spice to CHOAM
    This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
  2. Re:the more prevalent it remains, the bigger the r by Again · · Score: 2, Funny

    [...] Obscurity may not be obscurity but it's also not jumping up and down with a target painted on your chest.

    ;) I see what you did there.

  3. Going by rendering engines... by argent · · Score: 5, Interesting

    MS HTML control 62%
    Gecko 24.5%
    Webkit 9.7%%
    Opera 3.0%
    Miscellania 0.7%

    1. Re:Going by rendering engines... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      some of us still use telnet host:80!!!

    2. Re:Going by rendering engines... by Eskarel · · Score: 5, Informative

      To be pedantic since you're talking about Gecko and Webkit, the layout engine for Internet Explorer is called trident, and Opera's is Presto.

    3. Re:Going by rendering engines... by argent · · Score: 3, Funny

      Thank you for an informative response! I must be in the wrong room, I thought this was slashdot. :)

    4. Re:Going by rendering engines... by keeboo · · Score: 4, Informative

      The be even more pedantic, "Internet Explorer" not necessarily means a Trident engine, it could be Tasman instead.

    5. Re:Going by rendering engines... by keeboo · · Score: 4, Informative

      :)

      The reason I remember that engine is that, for ~1 year in 1999-2000, I had an Macintosh (bought it used, the new ones were horribly expensive here).
      Well, my knee-jerk reaction was to use Netscape. But the machine ran OS 7.5 and had mere 16MB RAM, and Netscape was - really - slow and unstable (the usual result of software crashes in Macs, back then, was system reset).

      Then I tried MSIE "Microsoft - yuck" for Mac. Well, not only it rendered the pages beatifully (it even did a perfect dithering job in order to simulate 24bit colors in a 15bit display), not only it was much faster but it was really stable.
      That was the day I realised "man, there _are_ talented people working in Microsoft".

      Also strange, it's the fact it was better than contemporary Windows' MSIE. For a couple of years I was puzzled why was that so, until I learned about the fact it used a different engine.

      Well, better stopping here before getting beaten, accused of treason. I'm a Linux user, it seems I'm not supposed to say anything positive related to Microsoft. ;)

    6. Re:Going by rendering engines... by Eskarel · · Score: 2, Informative

      A lot of folks don't remember it, or choose not to, but Internet Explorer 5 was once the best browser you could get and 6 was better still. The period between netscape 4.9 and a functional Mozilla build(let alone the rise of firefox among the great unwashed) was a long and dark one though, and Microsoft got complacent and let it rot.

  4. It will be through the roof once Chrome OS is out. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    If you think Chrome is becoming popular now, just wait until Chrome OS is finally available on netbooks. Chrome's usage will literally shoot through the roof. It will rise from its current 8% up towards 45% to 50%.

    Everybody is underestimating the market penetration of netbooks right now. They're going to go critical within the next two years, and Chrome OS will be there to bring Chrome to the masses.

  5. I'm using Chrome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I use it at work, and at home on my Mac and PC.

    I have used it for months, but I am quickly becoming agitated with its bugs. I have had multiple occasions where the entire browser becomes unresponsive (which was supposed to be extremely uncommon with each tab as a process).

    Flash absolutely destroys the browser after a few hours of listening to last.fm, and if I leave the browser on overnight, I regularly return to a browser that I can watch as it refreshes the screen line by line (literally, I could count the lines as it repaints the screen).

    With Firefox's latest improvements, I am very eager to see what they can dish out in 3.7, and I am slowly working my way back to using their browser.

    I also hate how Google "helps" by hiding a large portion of modestly large URLs when I highlight the link.

    Google won me with speed, but, as usual with everything except search and GMail, they are losing me with bugs and a lack of features (Print Preview, the ability to remove typos from my search history (like "sl," which gets very annoying now when I type sl and it googles it instead of selecting Slashdot, and internal settings, like automatically signing into corporate intranets, while on the intranet--Firefox and IE support this).

    1. Re:I'm using Chrome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      ...and with the lack of features, the memory footprint isn't that much better than FF or Opera. Chrome is tricky though, every time you open a tab, Chrome creates a new process, so if you're not paying attention, it looks like Chrome has a smaller footprint than the other two.

      Chrome isn't impressive at all. FF is still my champ.

    2. Re:I'm using Chrome by goldaryn · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Google won me with speed, but, as usual with everything except search and GMail, they are losing me with bugs and a lack of features (Print Preview, the ability to remove typos from my search history

      I agree with you. I switched to Chrome as my main browser for similar reasons. I used to use Firefox, but I became weary of how slow Firefox is relative to Chrome, even without extension. With extensions it's a joke. (Side note: I like the userscript extension method in the Chrome Beta - which is very stable for a Beta).

      But why, as you say, can't they have a half intelligent search history, like Firefox? Why does the browser constantly chatter to 1e100.net? image If this is a Google server, why doesn't it LOOK like a Google server? Why doesn't a Google search for "Chrome plugins" have as a result the proper Extensions page? https://chrome.google.com/extensions. In fact, why is that page the SECOND result for "Chrome extensions"?

      Mystifying.

    3. Re:I'm using Chrome by mister_playboy · · Score: 2, Funny

      (like "sl," which gets very annoying now when I type sl and it googles it instead of selecting Slashdot).

      That annoys me as well... It's happened enough times that I can say I remember Second Life is the first Google result from a search for "sl".

      --
      Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law ::: Love is the law, love under will
    4. Re:I'm using Chrome by Duct+Tape+Pro · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Why does the browser constantly chatter to 1e100.net? image If this is a Google server, why doesn't it LOOK like a Google server?

      I suspect they were going for 1x10^100, which is by definition a googol

      --
      i hotdog.
    5. Re:I'm using Chrome by bkgood · · Score: 2, Informative

      Theories are nice, concrete proof is nicer.

  6. At some level this is may be a good thing by JoshuaZ · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The results show that we've got pretty heavy diversity of browsers. We now have four browsers with ranges in the 12% to 24% of market share (although why they made the graph with those as the numbers easy to track isn't clear to me). This means that any single exploit that is browser specific isn't going to harm more than a fraction of all users. Just as genetic diversity helps prevent epidemics from sweeping through and wiping out a species, browser diversity does the same thing. The real upshot is not the rise of IE 8 but that we have more than 2 serious browser choices that are being chosen by people who aren't just the types who read Slashdot. That also means that a lot of people are making real choices about their browser types, possibly indicating that the general public is more aware about browswer issues than they were about a decade ago. On the other hand, another way of looking at this data is that around 40% of people are still using some form of IE. So all of those people have what is essentially their default browser. It might be interesting to compare this over longer term, but the data in the article only goes back a year.

    1. Re:At some level this is may be a good thing by dave562 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yes and Porsches are made by the same people who invaded France and killed the Jews. Luckily for the human race and society, people and groups change... often times for the better.

    2. Re:At some level this is may be a good thing by tehcyder · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yes and Porsches are made by the same people who invaded France and killed the Jews.

      Worst. Car analogy. Ever.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
  7. Looking at the bigger picture... by geekmux · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...I could really care less who fights for what place. The bigger impact being made by the browser wars is we finally see more than one damn browser on the list, forcing many websites to adopt to user choice rather than the IE "my way or the highway" web hole we dealt with for many years.

    1. Re:Looking at the bigger picture... by BenoitRen · · Score: 2, Funny

      The bigger impact being made by the browser wars is we finally see more than one damn browser on the list, forcing many websites to adopt to user choice rather than the IE "my way or the highway" web hole we dealt with for many years.

      Unfortunately, this has turned into the IE & Firefox "my way or the highway".

      --a SeaMonkey user

    2. Re:Looking at the bigger picture... by roman_mir · · Score: 4, Funny

      I could really care less who fights for what place - you could care less, but can you try not to?

      --
      You can't handle the truth.
  8. Re:the more prevalent it remains, the bigger the r by John+Hasler · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The fact that IE has most of the business market also makes it a much more profitable target.

    --
    Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
  9. Who are these people? by LoudMusic · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Literally NO ONE that I know uses Internet Explorer. If it's a computer that I set up for someone else I install Firefox AND Chrome and explain to them the values of IE, FF, and Ch, and months later I'm still seeing them using Firefox.

    Ok I take that back. Some of my coworkers (and myself I suppose) use IE for some Cisco and HP devices that have clunky web interfaces. But those browsing sessions don't get registered on these kinds of reports and certainly don't add up to 40%.

    I'd like to see a list of what sites are being browsed with what browsers. I bet that would be a very telling set of statistics as well.

    --
    No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
    1. Re:Who are these people? by MichaelSmith · · Score: 2, Informative

      Everybody where I work outside engineering uses IE. At the most firefox might be kind of a perversion they might dabble with one day if they want IT to know they are a rebel. I am sure that most big workplaces with big, professional IT departments will only use IE.

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
    2. Re:Who are these people? by parallel_prankster · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Old people, non-geeks, spouses of slashdotters maybe. Seriously, a lot of people still use IE. There are reason though. I was able to "convert" my wife from IE to FF a few months ago, however, her company's payroll system only works on IE. Once she switches it on, she continues using it. That to me is a big problem with FF. We as geeks just don't go to crazy ass sites as other regular people sometimes and we think FF is the best whereas, there are still a number of sites that don't work well with IE. I remember flashblock extension screwed up videos on a number of sites for me for a long time. Also, FF has its own issues. I typically have to restart my browser every other day because it makes my system slow and I am already using Adblock and Flashblock to cut off the junk and the memory leak from flash. The biggest advantage of Chrome is its popularity due to Google and perceived speed. It feels like Chrome loads pages wayyy faster FF. However, in many instances, it succeeds in loading only half the page fast, there are elements of the page that load slowly and if you note down the start to end loading time, it is comparable to FF. However, since it loads a visible portion quickly, people believe it is wayy faster than FF.

    3. Re:Who are these people? by RoFLKOPTr · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Literally NO ONE that I know uses Internet Explorer.

      I believe the majority of that statistic is the result of corporate computer deployments where IE is pretty much the norm, and employees are unable to install their own browsers. That's why IE6 was at the top for so very long, even through the entirety of IE7's lifetime, because corporations hadn't taken the time to install new software like that en masse.

      I'm glad to see that IE8 is on top now, though(*). Shows that corporations are perhaps finally realizing how utterly bad IE6 is and they're moving forward.

      (*): this is not an endorsement of IE... I honestly can't stand it... just anything is better than IE6.

    4. Re:Who are these people? by GF678 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Literally NO ONE that I know uses Internet Explorer.

      I do a lot of IT support for school. EVERYONE uses Internet Explorer. Students don't know any better, teachers don't know any better, admin don't know any better. I don't know if it's mandated as such, but it's what people go for straight away when they need to use the Internet. Doesn't matter that I put a Mozilla Firefox icon on the desktop of all machines either (which is nice for me and anyone else who knows what it is).

      Having said that, pulling down updates via WSUS for IE makes it a lot easier to update than static versions of Firefox which are fixed until the next build of the system image. I know there's a 3rd-party created MSI for Firefox, but they're no-where near as automatic as what Microsoft punches out. Maybe if the school was running Linux I'd employ repositories to fix that (like that's ever gonna happen with the inertia Windows has).

    5. Re:Who are these people? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      When I got my girlfriend a Mac she had a hard time switching because she thought I was "taking her Internet away"... yes, she's hot.

    6. Re:Who are these people? by blind+biker · · Score: 2, Insightful

      However, since it loads a visible portion quickly, people believe it is wayy faster than FF.

      Since one can see the text and other features of the page faster with Chrome, for all intents and purposes it is faster.

      --
      "The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
    7. Re:Who are these people? by interkin3tic · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Literally NO ONE that I know uses Internet Explorer... Ok I take that back. Some of my coworkers (and myself I suppose) use IE for some Cisco and HP devices that have clunky web interfaces.

      You sound like a professional, so the pool of people you know is probably a bit skewed. I'm a biologist, literally no one I know is a creationist. Sadly they are many out there lurking in dark places, conspiring to ban evolution from the classroom and replace it with a bible.

    8. Re:Who are these people? by Mad+Merlin · · Score: 3, Funny

      Old people, non-geeks, spouses of slashdotters maybe.

      As well as the honest politicians and the easter bunny?

      --
      Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
  10. Can someone please answer this? by mystikkman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Something that bugged me throughout the whole China-Google-IE6 fiasco... Why were Google etc. using IE6 internally and got hacked? MS released IE7 with sandboxing in Vista and Windows 7... and Google's internal IT saved lots of money by sticking with IE6, but then turn around and blame MS for IE6 when MS itself recommends upgrading. Did I miss something or did Google PR and astroturfing successfully prevented this point from being made in any of the articles or Slashdot comments?

    1. Re:Can someone please answer this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It was their plan to be hacked.

    2. Re:Can someone please answer this? by bigstrat2003 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Did I miss something or did Google PR and astroturfing successfully prevented this point from being made in any of the articles or Slashdot comments?

      Or the far simpler explanation that no one simply happened to think of it. No conspiracy theory required.

      Furthermore, I can think of at least one good reason for Google to still use IE6 internally, and that is testing. Granted, one would hope they were taking precautions to make sure they didn't get attacked because of it, but the fact remains that it was pretty reasonable for them to keep a couple of IE6 machines around for testing their services.

      --
      "16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
    3. Re:Can someone please answer this? by mystikkman · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The best that I can figure is that GOOGLE itself was NOT HACKED. Just the accounts of people using Google services were hacked. Those people were external. But because newspeople are clueless about technology they equate "wah, my google account got hacked" with "Google got hacked". You are right; outside of some simple virtual machines for testing their code changes against IE6 nobody at Google uses IE6.

      Wrong. If that's the best you can figure out, you're either a Google shill or really lack reading comprehension. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/01/operation-aurora/

    4. Re:Can someone please answer this? by WraithCube · · Score: 2, Informative

      If I remember the articles what you said is correct. There were accounts that were hacked through phishing and bugs in IE6. Actual attacks on google did not succeed and had nothing to do with IE6.

    5. Re:Can someone please answer this? by TrancePhreak · · Score: 2, Informative

      I believe MS has a free virtual machine available for testing IE6. There's absolutely no reason to need to keep a machine with valuable info so far behind any more.

      --

      -]Phreak Out[-
    6. Re:Can someone please answer this? by Mad+Merlin · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's also a pain to use. It BSODs on boot in KVM, you have to first boot it in another hypervisor, run mergeide, and then it'll run normally. Plus they expire every few months, so you get to do it all over again. Ultimately easier to just fly to bird to IE users.

      --
      Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
    7. Re:Can someone please answer this? by eh2o · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Google has just announced today they are phasing out support for IE6 in the Apps suite (Docs, Sites, etc) by March 1 2010.

      http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2010/01/modern-browsers-for-modern-applications.html

    8. Re:Can someone please answer this? by lorenlal · · Score: 2, Insightful

      To add to this point... Like this summary states, up until recently, IE6 was the most common browser... like it or not, you've gotta make sure the *majority* of your visitors get the right look and feel.

      That being said... Please for the love of God help everyone you can get off of IE6 and onto (literally) anything else.

  11. It's very different in some parts of the world by Enleth · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I remember posting about this about a year ago or so on /., and now I see the trend continue.

    I run a website about the Heroes of Might and Magic game series (very little "geek bias"), in Poland and for Polish-speaking audience. It's relatively popular, about 1500 unique visitors a day, first hit for "Heroes of Might and Magic" in a localized Google search, thrid for "heroes" only after a Wikipedia disambiguation page for the term and the page on that goddamned TV series. The statistics are so completely different that it looks almost as if it were a parallel universe or something:

    January 2008:
    53.58% - Firefox
    31.19% - IE
    13.83% - Opera

    January 2009:
    60.99% - Firefox
    23.99% - IE
    12.32% - Opera
    2.10% - Chrome

    January 2010:
    60.33% - Firefox
    16.12% - Opera
    15.29% - IE
    6.24% - Chrome

    Data gathered by Google Analytics, active on just about every non-static page on the server. It gets even more interesting in a month-by-month comparison on a graph, some of the fluctuations clearly correlate with new releases of FF, Opera, Chrome, *and* IE, but I'm afraid that I don't have the time right now to prepare something you could see and decide yourself.

    Any other admins out there with similar statistics to share?

    --
    This is Slashdot. Common sense is futile. You will be modded down.
    1. Re:It's very different in some parts of the world by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      "very little geek bias"??? you have got to be kidding, who the hell do you think your audience for a game like heroes of might and magic is if it isn't geeks?

    2. Re:It's very different in some parts of the world by Tumbleweed · · Score: 3, Funny

      > I run a website about the Heroes of Might and Magic game series

      Okay...

      > (very little "geek bias")

      Ah. I think a "nerd bias" still impacts browser usage, though.

  12. Re:That O browser... by Mad+Merlin · · Score: 2, Funny

    Konqueror?

    --
    Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!
  13. I downloaded Chromium a few days ago by Omnifarious · · Score: 4, Interesting

    And I have a bunch of random observations. Nothing so coherent that I'd call it a review, but still relevant here.

    So far, I've been really pleased. It's very fast compared to Firefox.

    Unfortunately, almost all of my Firefox plugins are geared towards privacy and security. I can't run any of them on Chrome, so I am only willing to use Chrome to browse a small subset of the websites I'm willing to browse with Firefox. Slashdot happens to be among those.

    Strangely, now that I no longer browse Slashdot with Firefox, Firefox behaves significantly better than it has been. Apparently, one of the absolute worst sites for the overall performance of Firefox is this one.

    I routinely keep at least 30 or 40 tabs of state in Firefox.

    Incognito in Chrome also looks like a much more convenient (and in some ways better) privacy feature than anything I currently use on Firefox. Though I still really wish I had Ghostery and NoScript.

    Chrome does have some features that are almost as nice as Firebug built into it.

    I really wish Firefox would just go multi-threaded, get a much better Javascript rendering engine and lose the horrible memory leaks. Last time I had to shut down Firefox it had a VSS of nearly 4G!

    --
    Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
    1. Re:I downloaded Chromium a few days ago by Tumbleweed · · Score: 5, Informative

      Strangely, now that I no longer browse Slashdot with Firefox, Firefox behaves significantly better than it has been. Apparently, one of the absolute worst sites for the overall performance of Firefox is this one.

      Do a validation test on this page. I just got: 104 Errors, 2 warning(s)

      *whew*

      I'd get fucking FIRED if I put out that kind of crap at work.

    2. Re:I downloaded Chromium a few days ago by mister_playboy · · Score: 2, Informative

      I agree, Chromium is way, way faster than Firefox on /., and Opera is significantly slower than Firefox on /..

      The ads/popups/etc on some sites make me want to shut down Chromium, whereas trying to browse Slashdot makes me want to shut down Opera.

      --
      Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law ::: Love is the law, love under will
    3. Re:I downloaded Chromium a few days ago by goldaryn · · Score: 2, Informative

      Though I still really wish I had Ghostery and NoScript.

      IMO there is no need for them with a good HTTP proxy like Privoxy. Add a bit of Incognito use and a good user.action file, and all is great. I made my own user.action file ages ago from the MVPs.org hosts file, and ever since the world has been good. It's here if you are interested.

    4. Re:I downloaded Chromium a few days ago by BZ · · Score: 2, Informative

      Because most of the threads are i/o threads. Low CPU usage, high latency, tend to be blocked on stuff. You don't want those operations on the same thread as your UI.

      Most of the cpu-intensive stuff Firefox does (e.g. layout) does in fact happen on one single ui thread at the moment.

  14. Chrome by PietjeJantje · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Chrome the fastest growing? Looking at the numbers, it seems growth is also flattening out. Perhaps a headline: "Chrome will not make it if they continue this way" is more accurate of their situation.

    1. Re:Chrome by trazan · · Score: 2, Informative

      http://www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=1&qpcustom=Chrome

      This is not a flattening curve.

  15. Re:That O browser... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This childish shit is ridiculous.

    Why would so-called adults battle each other over web browsers?

    The fanboyism involved is utterly lame.

    Alright, I can almost understand the 'Internet Explorer versus All The Rest' wars, what with all the shilling and astroturfing so prevalent and common these days.

    But why almighty fuck would the fangirlies of one non-IE browser devote so much time and effort to bashing any other non-IE browser?

    "Z0MG TEH OPERAS IS TEH GAY AND R33L GEEKS USE TEH FIREFOX Z0MGLOL!!!!1111ELEVENTYONE"

  16. Re:the more prevalent it remains, the bigger the r by bigstrat2003 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So what? If porn sites bothered to have malware targeting Ubuntu, a porn addict could easily get an Ubuntu PC loaded up with it. No amount of OS security is a defense against the user being stupid enough to fall for "you need this program to get $thing_you_want!"

    --
    "16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
  17. Most of that Miscellania will be Webkit by Rix · · Score: 2, Informative

    Since it will largely be mobile browsers from iPhones, Android, and Palm, which are all Webkit based.

    1. Re:Most of that Miscellania will be Webkit by Rockoon · · Score: 3, Informative

      The vast vast majority of mobile browsers are Opera.

      iPhones, Androids, and Palms are trendy.. but they are still a minority.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
  18. Re:the more prevalent it remains, the bigger the r by MightyMartian · · Score: 2, Informative

    IE8 sucks. It particularly sucks on XP, but in general, in a slow, bloated pile of garbage. I've given up any hope that Microsoft has any capacity to build a browser that isn't pure unadulterated shit.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  19. Re:the more prevalent it remains, the bigger the r by icebraining · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well, Chrome OS doesn't let you install or run any programs at all. It might be sufficient, but you never know.

    --
    Dilbert RSS feed
  20. Re:the more prevalent it remains, the bigger the r by Kadin2048 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "Legacy bullshit" is Microsoft's stock in trade. That's what they are. Windows is the win32 API; IE is IE6-style HTML. That's the core of their business, why it's so hard to get rid of them. Lots of people would like to be rid of Windows and move onto a platform that's less of an attack vector, but nearly everyone has some shitty old application somewhere that they can't do without and Windows provides a good upgrade path, or at least better than anyone else. IE may be a shitty browser but it works on a lot of shitty intranet sites that were designed for IE6 and that nobody can afford to fix now, and probably won't be fixed for a decade at least.

    If they decided to pull an Apple and just say "screw you, everyone who built stuff for the old API, you're dead to us," they'd be torn apart by the market as a thousand little competitors jumped in and tried to get in on everyone who'd been left behind. (Apple only gets away with it because they're small enough, and cater mostly to home users with shallow pockets, that nobody really caters to the people who get screwed by the Steve Jobs Upgrade Treadmill.)

    It's Microsoft's blessing and the key to their success, but it's also their curse and will probably be their eventual downfall. They can toss billions of dollars around and try to get the greatest programmers in the world, but they're always going to be hampered by the thing they can't (or are unwilling) to change -- the legacy cruft that gives them real vendor lock-in, or at least a huge advantage over all comers.

    --
    "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
  21. Re:This confirms what I said earlier ... by twidarkling · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Personally, I think auto-update needs to go die in a fire. I don't want a program dialing home, downloading a file, and then bitching at me to install it (or even going ahead an installing it on its own). FFS, even Windows Update doesn't do that if you tell it not to.

    However, what *does* need to happen is someone should make a small program that can check what version of a program you're running, and what the latest version is, and let you know if you can update. Ideally, the program would allow you to list and delist programs on your own initiative (in case you don't want something updated, say for compatibility reasons). I've heard that one massive problem with security on computers is running out-of-date software, so making something like this for Windows would be a massive boon. Especially if it could also track things like Flash.

    --
    Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
  22. Re:the more prevalent it remains, the bigger the r by mystikkman · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's already happening. Take a look at Firefox. http://i.imgur.com/qD2OV.png

  23. Re:It will be through the roof once Chrome OS is o by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    And I predict that we will see the Year of Linux on the Desktop within the next two years as well. Just wait and see...

  24. Re:It will be through the roof once Chrome OS is o by Eskarel · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Netbooks are great, if you need that sort of thing.

    Netbooks with expensive hardware requirements(SSDs still aren't cheap) and no non google native code, only running Chrome(so no IE only web sites), are not great.

    ChromeOS is pretty much the most insane thing I've ever heard of, the iPad is less locked down, has more functionality, and is probably going to be cheaper, and even that's probably a toy.

  25. Re:This confirms what I said earlier ... by kangsterizer · · Score: 2, Insightful

    apt.exe, right?

  26. Re:the more prevalent it remains, the bigger the r by icebraining · · Score: 3, Informative

    You can use Webapps and that's pretty much it (although their enhanced with HTML5 local caching and such so they can be useful even in offline mode).

    It's limited to me, but it would be more than enough for many of my relatives.

    --
    Dilbert RSS feed
  27. Re:It will be through the roof once Chrome OS is o by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Chrome's usage will literally shoot through the roof.

    Holy crap. You heard it here first, everyone. STAY AWAY FROM CHROME!!!! It will literally shoot through your roof!

  28. IE below 50% at W3Counter by rawler · · Score: 2, Informative

    Yet another angle on it, is that all IE combined has been on a steady decline for a good while, now also in January.

    Now for the FIRST TIME, w3counter puts IE below the 50%-line, which means that slightly over half of all users now actually DO run a more sensible browser.

    In my mind, that's a sign of a fantastic, and unexpected awareness amongst computer users.

  29. Re:the more prevalent it remains, the bigger the r by Dhalka226 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That's hardly proof of anything without some context. All I can see from the screenshot is that there are a shit-ton of toolbars. Whether this person deliberately installed them (intentionally or to make FF look bad), they were installed as part of some third-party program (optionally or otherwise) or they are the result of some sort of malware infection(s) isn't clear.

    In fact, a lot of the toolbars strike me as horribly suspicious to be anything related to malware. Google Toolbar, Netcraft, Facebook? These certainly don't seem like sites that malware would bother installing toolbars for. Somebody just went out of their way to cram as many stupid toolbars as possible into their browser for some reason.

  30. It depends on your audiance by jroysdon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My audiance, clearly more technical folks (as I just blog about technical stuff) say otherwise (this is last month's unique visits to my blog):
    1 6962 38.20% Firefox
    2 6818 37.41% Microsoft IE
    3 1034 5.67% Chrome
    8 491 2.69% Safari
    9 346 1.90% Opera
    22 149 0.82% Wireless Transcoder Google Wireless Transcoder
    28 119 0.65% Android
    71 44 0.24% Opera/9.80 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en) Presto/2.2.15 Version/10.10
    91 37 0.20% Konqueror

  31. Re:the more prevalent it remains, the bigger the r by thsths · · Score: 3, Insightful

    > IE8 sucks.

    Performance wise: yes, absolutely. Despite all the claims of better javascript performance etc it feels a lot slower than IE6.

    However, the rendering is pretty accurate, and that is all that web designers care for. Because a badly looking website is the designer's fault, while a slow browser is the user's problem.

  32. Re:the more prevalent it remains, the bigger the r by Z00L00K · · Score: 3, Interesting

    And you should also realize that there are many organizations that still are stuck with IE6.

    I'm working on a web-based application and the clients accessing it are more then 70% IE6, 23% IE 7 and 3% IE8. The remaining are the other browsers. But this application I work with is not placing demands on which web browser to use, it only takes statistics of the user agent and is designed to be W3C compliant through the HTML Validator.

    And it's also easy to see that there are still clients out there running Windows 2000 and Pre-SP2 Windows XP. (information that is provided through the user agent string).

    --
    If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
  33. Re:the more prevalent it remains, the bigger the r by Fred_A · · Score: 2, Insightful

    And you should also realize that there are many organizations that still are stuck with IE6.

    Well we're stuck with Gopher !

    IE6 is now 10 years old. It predates Windows XP. The Windows XP which will be retired in July (or at least which ought to cease receiving support).
    So granted there also are orgs that are stuck with VT120s but that doesn't mean anyone has to support them.

    If some people really want to develop in-house stuff using terminals or IE6, why not, but excuse us while the world moves forward. It just doesn't make sense any more to support those specifically any more (except that a terminal hooked to a machine running links or lynx or somesuch will probably work better than IE6 on a well written site).

    --

    May contain traces of nut.
    Made from the freshest electrons.
  34. skinning the goat by Martian_Kyo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So as always with statistics it can be skinned anyway you want it.

    For example why are firefox 3 and firefox 3.5 being treated as two different browsers. They are both Firefox version 3
    If we were to add those to statistics Firefox 3 would have roughly the same share as internet explorer 8.0 that is 22.30%

    Version numbering is affecting the statistics here, MS doesn't use the same philosophy as Firefox when it comes to versioning.
    MS never had internet explorer 6.5...but it had internet explorer sp1 and sp2...which are as different from each other as firefox 3 and firefox 3.5. Yet internet explorer 6.0 is displayed as one browser.

    Once IE 8 receives a sp or a major update should its statistics be split to ie 8 with sp and ie 8 without sp

    How different two versions of the same browser have to be different to justify the splitting of their statistics.

    1. Re:skinning the goat by Martian_Kyo · · Score: 2, Informative

      Just to complete the picture after using the same Data presented in the article and summing up all internet explorers and all firfoxes we get
      ie first column firefox the second chrome third and others fourth

      68.28% 20.46% 0.00% 11.27% 100.00% March, 2009
      67.60% 21.18% 0.00% 11.22% 100.00% April, 2009
      67.26% 20.58% 0.01% 12.16% 100.00% May, 2009
      65.05% 20.47% 0.07% 14.41% 100.00% June, 2009
      62.76% 20.75% 0.13% 16.36% 100.00% July, 2009
      61.45% 21.36% 0.23% 16.96% 100.00% August, 2009
      60.65% 22.27% 1.20% 15.88% 100.00% September, 2009
      59.58% 22.69% 3.14% 14.59% 100.00% October, 2009
      58.28% 23.29% 3.34% 15.09% 100.00% November, 2009
      57.38% 23.23% 3.75% 15.64% 100.00% December, 2009
      56.96% 22.39% 3.92% 16.73% 100.00% January, 2010

      as you can see in past months ie has steadly lost market share( lost 12 %) while firefox...has been..actually pretty steady.

      Chrome is the biggest winner in past few months

  35. Re:the more prevalent it remains, the bigger the r by smash · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Given adequate malware protection, IE/Windows is quite maintainable. Which is why there are plenty of businesses out there successfully running it...

    --
    I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.