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IE Not Faring Well In the EU Ballot

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the who-is-surprised-by-that dept.

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."

18 of 325 comments (clear)

  1. My money is on Chrome by twoshortplanks · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The summary says:

    Most PC users hit the web using Internet Explorer by default, simply because that's what came along with Windows.

    But the way most people think is

    Most PC users hit google using Internet Explorer by default, simply because that's what came along with Windows.

    --
    -- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
    1. Re:My money is on Chrome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Why is Mozilla waiting until 30th before releasing the patch? FOSS advocates always say that with open source software critical exploits can be patched and roll-out in a few hours and criticize Microsoft update cycle.

    2. Re:My money is on Chrome by sopssa · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Oh come on, when it's about Firefox there is no rush, but when its just the same with Microsoft they are the Satan itself, root of evil and the reason for all the problems in the world. If you're going to defend the other one for not having any rush because you don't know it's not exploited, then do the same for both.

      And how does one know it's not being exploited on small scale? It only hits news when its huge.

    3. Re:My money is on Chrome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I know someone like that, he was my boss until a couple of years ago. His (very white) son got in trouble for putting "African-American" for his race on a demographics questionnaire =) My boss bailed his son out by (during the discussion with the Principal) calling in one of the dark-skinned students from the hall, explaining about his heritage, and asking if the dark-skinned student was OK with the son's answer on the form. The Principle was impressed neither by the stunt, nor the other student's answer of "He's got more of a right to that label than I do" =P

      -posting as anon to save my karma from the inevitable (and completely justified!) "Offtopic" mod

    4. Re:My money is on Chrome by Tanktalus · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Actually, my question isn't why they aren't rushing 3.6.2 out the door. It's why they aren't rushing 3.6.0.1 out the door with a backfitted patch. Presumably 3.6.2 was already in development with a laundry list of other defects patched, and probably some (hopefully minor, if at all) features added. You don't want to rush that out the door. However, backfitting a security patch back into the already-available streams would be a good thing, even if the next official release is "merely" two weeks away. Especially for a zero-day in-the-wild-exploitable security flaw.

  2. why would I care? by js3 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    why would I care which browser is the most popular?

    --
    did you forget to take your meds?
    1. Re:why would I care? by microbox · · Score: 3, Interesting

      That is spot on what happened at my work place. The boss looked at me like I was mad, to suggest that we try other browsers or get a Mac to test -- since there was no "business case". So we made crap, our customers bought crap, and people use our crap on the internet.

      --

      Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
  3. Need Basis for Comparison by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    IE's share has been dropping for years. How much has it dropped in, say, North America during the same period, with no "ballot" to influence things? Wouldn't surprise me if it was about the same.

  4. the results are not clear by zakeria · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I installed the update but was never asked to choose a browser I guess this is because I already had firefox set as my default so the update never even started up on my PC to ask me the question!!

  5. David Murray by adric22 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    In a way, this will probably HELP microsoft because this means less malware infections, which will make their O/S look more secure.

  6. Probably good for Google. by characterZer0 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    • Internet Explorer 8
    • Mozilla Firefox
    • Opera
    • Safari

    Many people have no idea what any of these are.

    • Google Chrome.

    "Oh. I search with Google. This must be what I use."

    --
    Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
    1. Re:Probably good for Google. by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Possibly the news is different where you live, but the BBC has run a number of stories about FireFox. They covered, for example, the 1.0 milestone, the billionth download, and often mention it in web-related stories. This is true for their television and radio news, as well as the Internet.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  7. Next Step by psbrogna · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Now if there could just be a "Pick your OS" pull-down on first boot ...

  8. Re:Not so much. by thijsh · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There a lot of truth in the fact that users just click anything that says 'internet'. When I install Firefox next to Internet Explorer I can explain that Firefox is a great browser and all but they will never use it, but when I rename the shortcut to 'Internet (Firefox)' and hide Internet Explorer it's no big deal suddenly... People just don't give a shit, they just want to click the first Internet icon and have it work for them... :-)

  9. No, no, no... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Glenn Beck has never denied urinating on his producer.

    There. That's better...

  10. Re:MSIE still on 100% of Windows machines by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Access to source makes it easier to build binaries with protections against buffer overflows and other exploits.

    For what's it worth, any Windows software built with VC++2005 and above with default settings is built with cookie-based stack buffer overflow protection.

    It amazed me that people weren't updating, and I think the lack of trust towards Microsoft has much to do with that.

    I suspect it has more to do with people not knowing nor caring about those updates, and treating all the dialogs and popups about "whether you'd like to update" the same way they treat any other dialogs & popups - as a nuisance which is best dealt with by clicking "Close" as fast as possible.

  11. Re:Why Netscape lost. Re:My money is on Chrome by commodore64_love · · Score: 2, Interesting

    >>>Netscape 6 was a buggy piece of shit

    (1) I said 1990s. That is not 1990s.

    (2) Yes it was buggy because it was actually an America Online product (after AOL bought-out the nearly-bankrupt Netscape). It did eventually evolve into Firefox, so it wasn't complete crap - just released too early (2002).

    (3) The *90s* versions of Netscape (4 and earlier) were superior to any IE product of the time. While IE was constantly crashing for me, Netscape 4 and earlier were rock steady, and offered lots of nifty features like frames and scripts. - So why did these superior products drop from the 1st place position they had held.

    Because IE was on the desktop by default.

    It held a monopoly anti-competitive position. Perhaps if the EU had made its "browser ballot" decision in the 90s, the browser war would have ended differently (with a 50-50 Netscape-IE split, or 33-33-33 NS/IE/Opera split).

    --
    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  12. Re:MSIE still on 100% of Windows machines by 644bd346996 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    These days, all the popular Linux package managers let you subscribe to third-party repositories, so as long as Microsoft made it easy to find and subscribe to the popular third-party repos, there would be no anti-trust problems.

    A cohesive way to track installed programs, libraries, updates, and which files belong to which packages would be the biggest improvement to Windows since switching to the NT kernel, and it would make much easier to deal with many of the common security problems on Windows.