IE Not Faring Well In the EU Ballot

unixcrab writes "Most PC users hit the web using Internet Explorer by default, simply because that's what came along with Windows. Now, after antitrust investigations, European users get a choice of browser to install via ballot screen, and initial reports are not good for 'ol IE. According to Statcounter, IE use in France has dropped 2.5 percent since last month's implementation of the ballot, 1.3 percent in Italy, and 1 percent in Britain. It's still early days, and it'll take more than this to chip away from IE's 62 percent lead in the browser war, but it's certainly not a good trend for Microsoft. With that in mind, we're going to have to ask you to place your bets now."

Comments

Re:why would I care?

[TheRaven64]

Because a browser with a majority market share gets to define de-facto standards. If MS goes its own way with web standards (not that they would ever do such a thing) then, a few years ago, you have two options. Either support IE and 80% of your target market, or support standards-compliant browsers and 20% of your market. What do you do? Go with the MS solution. Now they have 61%, so it's not such an easy decision.

If IE, FireFox, Opera, Chrome, and Safari all had 15-30% of the market, then it would not be worth the investment for most people to support features specific to any single browser. Once two support the same feature, it starts to become worthwhile. Once four do, it definitely is and the one that doesn't support the feature is left out.

Having no single dominant player in the web browser market is good for web standards. You shouldn't care which browser is the most popular, you should care that none of them is too popular.