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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."
But the way most people think is
-- Sorry, I can't think of anything funny to say here.
Hmm...so when given a choice, people sometimes choose different browsers? This is news? This sounds like the argument Netscape made back when they were suing Microsoft here in the USA...
Palm trees and 8
I guess most people don't care, and select one of the browser at random, or click the first one. Of course, given that IE has the biggest market share, it is going to drop.
For the statistics to mean anything, they should tell what percentage of the people choose which browser on the ballot, otherwise it's meaningless.
Even if most people are choosing IE, it is still likely for IE to fall. So where are the stats about what the users choose on the ballot itself?
why would I care which browser is the most popular?
did you forget to take your meds?
This is what happens in a socialist paradise like Europe.
The "Evil Corporation's" web browser is forced to showcase it's rivals on an equal footing. The best product wins and free market capitalism dies a little.
Glenn Beck just urinated on his producer.
In a way, this will probably HELP microsoft because this means less malware infections, which will make their O/S look more secure.
Many people have no idea what any of these are.
"Oh. I search with Google. This must be what I use."
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
No, that's not what they're saying. They're saying that IE's TOTAL market share has dropped by 2.5%, 1.3%, and 1% in the above countries, in ONE MONTH, which would tend to suggest that a substantial portion of the installs from that month utilized an alternate browser. Remember, not every computer user in the EU installed Windows 7 this month!
You are saying that out of 62 of the users who are getting the ballot box, in the past month 61 have chosen IE and one has chosen to switch?
No, he's saying that 0.62 have chosen to switch!
Now if there could just be a "Pick your OS" pull-down on first boot ...
If statistical results are quoted to tenths of a percent, e.g., "1.3 percent in Italy" and there is no backup data, including a statement on sample sizes or significance, then I dismiss it as the work of a marketing department hack.
Germany showed a slight increase:
Many people have no idea what any of these are.
"Oh. I search with Google. This must be what I use."
There's "internet" in "Internet Explorer". And they recognize the icon.
All the bullshit from here in the US and over in Europe, and god only knows how much tax money went to suing M$ for its evil ways
I think the two billion dollar in fines Microsoft has received so far covers those expenses nicely.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
It does not just appear on new installs but also after Windows Update installs a patch.
You're linking to old articles, other one from 2007 and other one from beginning of 2009. Things have changed since then, like this ballot screen shows now.
The later article didn't explain what illegal tying, but did you know Google also pays people to tie their products in - almost all of Firefox revenue is coming from Google and in turn they set Google as the default search engine. Same thing for Opera and other browsers and even some manufacturers (I think HP)
You don't have to install Win7 to see this - I got the ballot box on my WinXP box, after it auto-updated.
Ironically, I thought it was malware and closed it via the task manager.
The ballot has 12 browsers organized into two groups. Each group is randomized amongst itself for purposes of display order. The first group is always displayed first and consists of: Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Firefox, and Opera The second group consists of: Maxthon, Avant Browser, AOL, K-Meleon, Flock, Sleipnir, and Slim
Why is Mozilla waiting until 30th before releasing the patch?
The beta patch is out now. Mozilla is waiting to upgrade the general public in order to make sure the patch doesn't introduce worse problems.
{snip}it'll take more than this to chip away from IE's 62 percent lead in the browser war,{/snip}
Before we work on getting rid of the whole OS (good idea BTW ;) ), we should start by getting the effin' journalists to check their numbers and do some decent reporting - IE isn't even at 62%, much less @ a 62% lead over *any* other browser... The *only* thing IE leads in is, as you have pointed out, default installs.
"...there are some things that can beat smartness and foresight. Awkwardness and stupidity can." ~ Mark Twain
Canonical doesn't have it's own browser, how can they do the same? And the default browser, Firefox, is available in all major desktop OSes.
In fact, Ubuntu (like any other distro) is basically a collection of software from other organizations, so they have almost zero software tied to them. You can use almost any other distro and get the same software, only packaged in a different way.
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what google's doing is not tying. What MS does, is indeed tying. I think you might want to try to understand legally what that means before you make such an incorrect statement.
It's one thing to pay someone to bundle, it's another to refuse someone from being able to unbundle (essentially the issue of illegal tying).
Ever tried to remove internet explorer from windows? Yeah, just a little bit of tying there. /sarcasm.
Many of us believe that a Linux distribution with a decent default configuration is inherently more secure and less exploitable than the average Windows system that ships with new PCs. There are several reasons for this. Access to source makes it easier to build binaries with protections against buffer overflows and other exploits. The wide variety of distributions combined with the extreme configurability of each, down to the ability to replace most core system components with alternative implementations, means that Linux tends to avoid the problems that come with a monoculture.
Centralized package managers make it much easier to keep all of your software up-to-date. Compare that to Windows where Windows Update can only service Microsoft software and all of your other programs are on their own. Also, Linux distributions are not known for abusing their update mechanisms by pushing WGA and other non-customer-friendly components. They have no "piracy" fears that would tempt them to do so.
I used to look at widespread Windows worms and wonder at the fact that so many of them exploit already-patched vulnerabilities. It amazed me that people weren't updating, and I think the lack of trust towards Microsoft has much to do with that. If those people did trust Microsoft to provide updates that are high-quality and only in the customers' interests, then there'd be no reason not to allow automatic Windows Updates. For these reasons, it's both easier to keep all software updated in Linux and more likely that users will do so.
It'd be nice if no single OS had an overwhelming majority of marketshare. I don't think there'd be compatibility issues. Bear in mind that you're posting to a Web site using ASCII and HTML and JavaScript, all of which are open standards usable on Windows, Macs, and *nix. Incompatibility is really just a synonym for "vendor lock-in". Right now, vendors like Microsoft can get away with that if they have enough marketshare. More diversity in OSs would just compel them to use open standards, otherwise their customers would find themselves on a network where everyone else can communicate and they cannot.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
This works as well
$ rm -Rf C:\windows
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
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.
While you may not be able to choose, Google is opening its Adwords network to third parties.
We have launched a new capability in AdSense allowing Google-certified ad networks compete directly within AdSense, which means that advertisers from these third-party networks will be able to compete with AdWords advertisers to show on the Google Content Network.
Put identity in the browser.
You'd download a browser using the system package manager... Most linux distros work this way, with a single command or selection in a gui you can choose a browser and have it downloaded and installed for you.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I always knew the reason Internet Explorer won the 1990s browser war was because it was the default install. NOT because it was superior (it wasn't - IE was shit compared to Netscape), but because newbies equated IE to internet without realizing alternatives like Mozilla or Netscape or Opera existed.
Yeah, except for the fact that Netscape 6 was a buggy piece of shit and almost universally panned. It's not at all amazing that it was at around it's release that IE surpassed it. So basically you're making up bullshit and reinventing history.
>>>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
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.
Have you ever tried to use an operating system without a built-in html renderer?
Get off my lawn, you little baby.
Netscape 6.0 was based on Mozilla 0.6 (I remember it was starting to be usable by then, but definitely not for the faint of heart), Netscape 6.1 was based on Mozilla 0.9, so it is hardly surprising that is was buggy.
Mozilla 1.0 (June 2002) better than IE6 (August 2001). By the time Mozilla 1.4 came out (June 2003), there was no comparison.
Of course, that doesn't matter much, since the Browser Wars (round 1) where really lost in the Netscape 4.x/IE5.x era, due to a combination of "default browser" and IE 5.x being pretty good for the time.
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
That's the news article *I* want to see.