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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."
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?
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.
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!
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.
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.
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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.
{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
People always had a choice. Nobody is forced to buy Microsoft's products. But most people want a good deal, and so buy whatever is cheapest. To them, browser choice is not as important as having more money to spend on other pursuits. So it is voluntary trade to mutual benefit, and thus is win-win. Now that Microsoft is forced to advertise for its competitors, it is no longer win-win.
Because if you ever do web development, you are required to hate Internet Explorer.
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
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.
Because if you ever do web development, you are required to hate Internet Explorer.
It's not so much a requirement as it is a natural consequence, in my experience.
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.
Microsoft has still not issued a patch for their Charset Inheritance Cross-Site Scripting Vulnerability that was found three years ago. The flaw exists in the current version of IE 8.
You may remember in January there was a flaw in Internet Explorer that Microsoft knew about for several months before they delivered a patch. Before the patch was delivered, the flaw was widely exploited by Operation Aurora.
Now, you're trying to equate those fuckups to Mozilla holding back on releasing a patch for two weeks when there's no sign that the vulnerability is being exploited at all? In case you can't see what the difference is, Microsoft delays patches far longer and gives black hats far more opportunity to exploit the vulnerabilities. How do you think all those botnets get created?
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Have you ever tried to use an operating system without a built-in html renderer?
Get off my lawn, you little baby.