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IE Market Share Falls To Historic Low
An anonymous reader writes "Predicting that Microsoft will lose market share from month to month isn't especially difficult. Yet it is amazing to see the downfall of what was once a bastion for Microsoft. It appears that Microsoft can't defend IE against Firefox and, as it seems, Google's Chrome. Net Applications now believes that IE has a share of less than 60%, which is about the range that IE had in early 1999, when IE5 was launched. IE is now officially back in the 1990s. Chrome, by the way, is the fastest growing browser, both in absolute numbers and percentages. It is well ahead of Safari and more than tripled its share within 12 months."
Most people are not complete morons. If they get burned once with IE, they'll tell their friends to use a different browser. And of course, they themselves will use a different browser. As the number of people recommending alternative browsers increases, more people will switch away from IE voluntarily...
As a human being I'm normally predisposed to abstain from unconditional hate.
As a web developer who has "done the dance" with former versions of IE late into the night too many times I hate hate hate and welcome this news. Nothing can undo those atrocities. IE6. Never forget!
My work here is dung.
This is the best news since... the last news that IE market share was dropping...
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
There was a moment in time when MSIE had effectively 0% market share right? So this 60% is still a huge triumph if you choose to spin it that way.
But seriously, any drop in market share is a historic low for Microsoft. And here's what I love about it -- Microsoft will be hard pressed to explain why it would choose to not completely support competing browsers with its web based applications such as Outlook Web Access and the like. It has been a while since I looked at it, but OWA did not offer full functionality to browsers other than MSIE. I don't know if that is still the case, but I suspect it is.
In any case, it is in large part due to Microsoft's behavior that our next enterprise email server at the office will be anything but MS Exchange.
Microsoft is desperately updating their browser to meet the same modern standards as the competition. IE9 is supposidly going to be a revolution for them, supporting all sorts of long standing stuff like SVG, CSS3, HTML5 and supporting a fast Javascript engine, which is exactly the direction in which Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera have been developing lately.
Obviously Microsoft is doing this in an attempt to gain some market share again. It's great for web developers, because they can finally start really deploying some of that shiney new tech. But in reality, most people aren't aware of these webstandards at all and aren't switching to Firefox or Chrome because MSIE doesn't support them. They're switching because other browsers are faster, more secure, less obnoxious, more cool and support more plugins and other goodies.
I don't think IE will ever be as big again as they once were, but because MS doesn't get what the root of the problem is, they're helping the web forward in the process of trying to get some users back. Which is actually great for everyone.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
"Falls To Historic Low"
[...]
"which is about the range that IE had in early 1999"
?
So, it's historic, because it's the second time it's around that range?
...is that most people now either use Firefox or Chrome - which heightens these browsers' endangerment concerning malware specific to them.
It's not as if it really affects me as an Opera user, but having to put up with Firefox at work, I'm not too excited about this, since the company I work at usually takes its time to update (FF 2.0.0.7, here).
Oh well, at least MS's share is dropping...
Non-supporter of Online Activation and any other draconian DRM
why is this news that people should care about?
*rolls down his turtleneck to reveal the permanent bruise from trying to hang himself after spending an endless night trying to figure out what was causing IE6 to crash but not Firefox*
*rolls up his coworker's sleeve to show the scars of slash marks on his wrist after trying to get alpha transparency working in PNG images inside IE6*
*holds up a memorial plaque of yet another coworker who jumped to his death from the top of the building after trying to code Javascript that would abstract many functionalities so that they would work both in IE6 and Firefox*
Trust me, as a developer who has tried to understand the madness that is IE6, we care and we are not alone. The damage continues to this day.
My work here is dung.
The reporting is also flawed because even if you change your default browser from MSIE to firefox, programs will still use the MSIE branded http dll to download things. To wit, make your proxy reject all requests that contain MSIE in the user agent string, and try to install the next version of lets say skype. Or browse in Outlook internet content. Or try to access any link through http from an Office 2007 document: http://blogs.msdn.com/vsofficedeveloper/pages/Office-Existence-Discovery-Protocol.aspx
http://superuser.com/questions/41935/clicking-hyperlinks-in-email-messages-becomes-painfully-slow/42237#42237. I wonder if any of the legislators in Europe who settled with Microsoft over the Browser wars were aware of these issues. Bottom line: you cannot get rid of MSIE because Microsoft designed it that way!
so i have ie8, firefox, chrome, safari, and opera installed on my desktop
i often find myself in this common usage scenario: 4 browsers open at the same time. ie8 opened with code being tested, opera running pandora, chrome with nytimes.com and other reading media on it, and firefox open with some online code documentation
i use those 4 browsers all the time, i don't use safari at all really unless testing code (but since its webkit like chrome, that's often redundant)
honestly, i lately have found myself prefering chrome over firefox. i love firefox, but chrome has a sleek ui and seems faster (opera's latest ui is pretty hot too, but opera has some compatibility issues, such as google map's api)
chrome just has more... chrome. consider this small bird adequately bedazzled by the shiny bells and whistles
currently i rank the browsers according to this personal preference:
1. chrome
2. firefox and opera tied for second best
3. ie8 and safari not at all
if firefox wants to win my heart back, it has to be super fast and bedazzle me with a hot ui. opera is doing a good job of that, but opera has issues
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Wasn't there a news explaining that a big part of that market share drop was due to the new "choose a browser" screen the EU forced Microsoft to include in the latest Windows versions?
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/07/24/1927255/Microsoft-Agrees-To-EU-Browser-Ballot-Screen
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/02/19/2135254/Details-Emerge-On-EU-Only-Browser-Choice-Screen-for-Windows
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Trust me, as a developer who has tried to understand the madness that is IE6, we care and we are not alone. The damage continues to this day.
Guess I'm lucky, my last 2 jobs got to drop IE6 as a supported browser, and my current one doesn't even directly support IE7! It's standards only, and if it works on Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera, we really don't give a rats ass about IE other than that IE8 doesn't make a complete mess of the pages. In truth, IE8 does a much much better job of displaying standards so this has been almost a non-issue. Amazingly enough, almost everything works in IE7 as well.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Chrome has the best UI amongst all browsers, hands down. I adopted Chromium months ago and then went to Chrome, and despite minor incompatibilities now and then (mostly rendering issues), I can't leave it. I tried to switch back to Firefox for a while, but after a week or so I came back to Chrome, primarily on the strength of the UI.
Nobody else seems able to come up with a UI that is:
- Businesslike and no-nonsense
- Small and out of the way
- Free of rendering artifacts and glitches
The default Firefox theme is just huge. Any replacement themes are buggy, loud, amateurish, and often glitchy. The "personalities" or whatever they are (you know, my web browser is now my wallpaper) are just ridiculous. There is a chrome UI for firefox, but it's not as fast and doesn't actually have all of the great behaviors of the Chrome UI, just a basic appearance.
Everybody else ought to take a page from Chrome!
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I recently forced my sister and her husband on to Opera because they kept getting new spyware every month.
Methinks the problem is not their browser.
Yet I know I will see this posted again next month...so would someone please explain the agenda to me?
I agree that IE is the worst of the trio (Imho of course), It's not the unholy creation of satan that it once was. It's still the only browser the responds to the DPI setting in windows. Its security is closer to the other other browsers now, and you can manage it with group policy... I think its about time we reccomended the right tool for the right job, as opposed to just avoiding it outright.
because they kept getting new spyware every month.
They shouldn't run their PCs as administrators. So changing browser didn't really solve anything, the moment Opera is targeted by hackers, you are back to square one. Remove the ability of your family to run Windows as administrators and they can use whatever browser they want and they'll be much safer.
I noticed a couple of months ago already, that Firefox's usage share is flat by all indicators. It's been stagnating since July-August last year.
Maybe that's fine compared to IE, which is shrinking, but pretty sad compared to, say Chrome.
Which I really like and would use also at work, if there was a portable version (so I can run it without installing it).
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Yes, the deals Google supposedly cut with some PC manufacturers are probably insignificant. But Google promotes Chrome...everywhere, I believe. Not only on almost all their websites, also for example on largest social networking sites. OK, not exactly bundling; but at the least a marketing campaign which jumps at you several times per day, it seems.
One that hath name thou can not otter
My biggest problem is that MS has deliberately broken standards to hold backup online development because it is a threat to their desktop based monopolies. Its not like they don't know what the standards are, or they can't afford to adopt them. Its a deliberate torpedoing of the market to protect their cash cow monopolies. Screw 'em. They can't be trusted to do the right thing. Them saying they will at some point in the future does not cut it. They have a long history of essentially lying through their teeth.
If the tool can't be handled safely by novices, yet is rammed down the throats of novices, then it's the tool and not the end user that is at fault.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
In truth, IE8 does a much much better job of displaying standards so this has been almost a non-issue.
True, IE 8 is a huge improvement over IE 6, but it still doesn't support W3C event model. For example, in IE 8, what's the recommended way to specify that a script shall run once the DOM content is ready? Or how do you attach multiple event handlers to an object, such as multiple things to run on load? IE is the only browser to support attachEvent and the only modern browser not to support addEventListener.
If that were true, one would expect Firefox's share to have risen significantly, but in reality, it's stayed pretty much the same, in fact it's at the exact same level as in November of last year. Further, the Browser selection screen has only been out there for 3 months and the trend of chrome and safari goes back a lot further than that.
Frankly, I'm more inclined to believe the rise is due to the rise of iPhone and Android based browsers rather than much change on the desktop.
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If someone calls me to fix their PC, i will, and i will install firefox. I also put a trigger on IE to save a text file with the number of times it has been opened. If they call me back, it they use IE regularly, i wont fix their PC. its their problem if they WANT it broken.
All around me, I see the otherwise-paranoid IT administrators allowing people to install VLC, because that is the easiest way to allow DVDs to play on a Win XP laptop.
I used to think I was a snarky anarchist installing free software to people's computers, and now they have gone and taken away my joy.
Chat with other atheists http://secularchat.org
You're a complete asshole.
I see you work in marketing.
"IE. Not the unholy creation of Satan it once was."
It's been great to see MSIE lose its grip on the browser market, but it seems that maybe things have become more complicated.
As bad as MSIE is, the user can add whatever they want to it. For example, Flash delivers new codecs and Google was able to deliver an HTML5 compliant core that worked with MSIE6.
But one of the browsers taking share from IE is Safari on the iPhone/iPad/iPod. Those users can't try a different browser or use any technology that Apple doesn't approve it. Can a third party deliver a new codec to Safari on these devices? Does Opera Mini for the iPhone come with Ogg codecs (I mention Ogg because I'm imaging Apple would Opera mini if it did)? I really don't know the answers to these questions and I hope someone will enlighten me.
While Safari supports HTML5, times changes, and other things like codecs are becoming more important.
So perhaps now we are looking at a much more fundamental threat.
I hear this claim all the time, but it ignores reality. There is a huge difference between ignoring standards, and deliberately breaking them. At one point in time IE6 had the best standard conformance of any browser. Believe it or not, but it's true. However, IE6 was stagnant for many years and new standards came along (or were improved) and new browsers came along (or were improved).
IE's standard conformance did not get worse in that time, as would be expected to support your claim that MS was deliberately breaking standards. In fact IE's standard support has steadily gotten better, and in fact is the only browser to have full CSS 2.1 compatibility, and the fewest CSS 2.1 bugs. (again, believe it or not, it's true).
From the standpoint of ratified web standards, IE has the best conformance of any browser. It's CSS3 and HTML5 support sucks, but neither of those are ratified standards. I think where it's failing the most right now is in DOM support.
So, having said that, yeah.. lots of other browsers are more modern and have more support for emerging standards, and thus seem "better", but this claim that MS is "breaking standards" is complete BS. If anything, they can be accused of ignoring them, or being slow to adopt them, but they're not breaking them.
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The visits to the dev team must be stressing though.
"Hey guys, I'm preparing the campaign. How's the new IE coming out?"
"IF THOU BE THE SON OF GOD, COMMAND THAT THESE STONES BE MADE BREAD."
Indeed. DOM seems to be the only area in which IE has consistently failed to improve. I'm hoping that will change in IE9.
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index.html:
...
...
...
<script language="JavaScript">
if ( navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase().indexOf('msie') != -1 ) {
window.location.replace("msie.html");
}
msie.html:
<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="5; url=http://www.microsoft.com">
</head><body><p>msie users move along. There's nothing for you to see here.</body>
Yes but it is good to see that for the first time since IE4-6, Microsoft will release a competitive browser. It is interesting what IE9 is doing with hardware acceleration, and hopefully it will inspire other browsers to improve which is good for everyone. If the browsers end up being almost complete operating systems, like the Chrome OS, they needs to be much faster than today.
depends, if he tells the people clearly after installing the trigger, i'd say he is well within his rights, especially if he fixes computers for free.
Lots of people expect us nerds to just fix their computers because we are good at it, and it is supposed to be our hobby, fuck that. If i fix a machine i am doing you a favor, and if i give advice on the use of a computer, they should listen (hey, i'm the computer expert right?), if they chose to ignore my advice and in the process destroy my work, am i an asshole for not doing it again and again?
People, what a bunch of bastards
Additionally, I've never been too savy with the seperate window it opens when you want to download something. To me, these are on par with pop up ads.
You need Download Statusbar: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/26
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
as a web developer, i hate you fucking ad blockers
Tough shit, asshole.
If you want someone to blame, go blame the website operators, who've forced users to block ads because they got steadily more and more obnoxious, until they were simply too unbearable to endure any longer.
And yes, I block ads, asshole. I block ads as a big "fuck you" to you to all the douchbags out there that made browsing the web a fucking nightmare without it. Does that mean I end up punishing the "good" websites, too? Yup! Tough shit.
Meanwhile, if these sites have decent content, people will pay for it. If they don't pay for it, then evidently it's not worth the money. But if your little fantastical nightmare scenario comes true, all the good content will be hidden behind paywalls, and so if we really want it, we'll pay for it anyway. Which is fine by me, as long as I don't have to put up with pop-ups, pop-unders, overlayed ads, interstitials, flash ads, and all the shit that comes with them (including drive-by virus infections, among other things).
So, in short, fuck the website operators, and while I'm at it, fuck you too.
Think of Open XML... Nuff said.
I really don't mind ads on web pages, per se. The ad supported model is reasonable. Yet, I find that there are numerous web pages I won't read because of their ads, and eventually I installed ClickToFlash to get rid of the worst of it. Here's what ticks me off:
If websites cannot find a way to stay in business without the annoying kinds of ads, then they need to find a new business model. This is not my problem, it is theirs. Or yours, as the case may be.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Microsoft is now producing a 'consumable' that cannot be easily consumed. I believe it was never their original intention, but the market has evolved, and they did not adapt. Internally, they probably feel obligated to support their installed base for compatibility reasons, but I suspect the team senses they are on the Titanic. It is rare, but sometimes you get to watch the inevitable unfold in slow motion before your eyes. It is tragic and spectacular to witness. Wait until MW7 releases with an IE8-compatible browser, it will sadly make their current situation seem bearable by comparison.
By the way, I know you were being sarcastic, but ActiveX is actually a standard maintained by the Open Group.. The same people that maintained X Windows for years (not sure if they still do). And ActiveX had all the same problems that Netscape plugins had, although those had to be manually installed (there is nothing in ActiveX that requires automatic installation, that's just something IE did).
The fact is, ActiveX (or something like it) was needed back then. Less so, now.. but many corporate environemnts continue to need additional functionality that's not available in the browser. For the internet, ActiveX is (and should be) largely dead, though plug-ins are still needed for things like Flash, Silverlight, even things like the Chrome Frame and SVG plug-ins would not be possible without such an interface.
It's simply impossible to make a native plug-in interface that's secure. The best you can do is make it so difficult to install that most people won't bother unless it's really really important.
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Regarding the shared code and such, browsers use a *LOT* of private memory, that was one reason why Firefox used a ton of memory a few years ago because it cached forward and back pages. The shared code is relatively insignificant compared to the memory used for everything else.
Take Firefox, and open 20 pages in seperate windows. Check out the private memory usage statistics.
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Really? What standards does OOXML break? Geez people, seriously? Does blind hatred of Microsoft make you stupid? Does this argument even make ANY sense?
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I think its about time we reccomended the right tool for the right job, as opposed to just avoiding it outright.
I totally agree with that. IE6 for those legacy internal corporate applications that don't work with anything else. The latest Firefox for all other web-related work.
Meh, you should try being a PC repairman for a living! I swear we are treated just like plumbers, we walk into somebody's house and it is like "Hey buddy, glad to see you! BTW, could you look at my PC? It is acting funny"
As for IE, I've even moved my 67 year old dad over to Firefox. IE is too virus prone, they take too long to patch holes, and is still too big a target for hackers IMHO. Firefox with Adblock seems to take care of most of the clueless users (like my dad) along with a decent AV, which I prefer Comodo.
As for the GP whacking IE users with the stick? The key is to give them candy, NOT whack them with the stick. Here is how this old greybeard gets IE users to switch...Give them Adblock along with, and this is the key, give them ForecastFox in the Menubar at the top set to their zipcode. I have found folks loooove having that little 3 day forecast right at the top where they can glance at it before work, and when you tell them it will pop up severe weather alerts if something bad is headed their way it seals the deal. I have yet to have a user go back to IE after giving them ForecastFox with Adblock.
Oh, and if you are switching them from IE? Take note of what their home page is set to and be SURE to make sure Firefox has the same! Folks get really pissy if their favorite homepage isn't on startup. I have found a good 85% have it set to that ugly Yahoo portal, but do NOT change it, no matter how much you think it sucks! They actually like that mess, and like to read the headlines and check their mail before going out onto the bigger web. Just give them FF with ABP and FCF, make sure their home page is the same, and you'll see you don't need that text file, as they'll be quite happy to stay with FF. Always catch more flies with honey than vinegar you know.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I have 12MB in this computer, and it only cost me $200.
its bad when you remember when 12MB was MORE than $200... [and yes, I did mean MB]
ummm. Rather than use existing standards, OOXML creates a whole new set by simply anointing existing Microsoft technologies as new 'standards'. If you don't think using monopoly power to prevent existing standards from taking hold is equivalent to breaking standards, then you deserve a job in the MS PR department. What is the purpose of standards beyond the goal of multiple implementations? That is definitely not Microsoft's goal, though. So unless you think it's appropriate to redefine what a standard is and is for, don't assume criticism == hatred == stupidity.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Oh please, let's not get into "is equivlent" BS. That's just subjective, and isn't in any way accurate.
No. I don't care who you are, or what your opinions. Promoting your own competing standard is *NOT* breaking the other guys standard. Breaking the standard means deliberately implementing it incorrectly, and there is no other way to interpret it.
It's funny, but i'll bet you're one of those people that say "Copyright infringement isn't theft" (which it's not). Call something what it is. If it's bad, it's bad without equating it to something diferent that is also bad.
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I'm not surprised at all. Having diligently tried to use IE8 for months, I can confidently say it is a horrible experience. Much worse than IE6 ever was. It hangs on a regular basis - not just one tab, but the whole progam. New tabs can take a long time to come up. It slowly eats more and more memory. I've experienced bizarre bugs, for example I load a page that renders incorrectly, I click through to another page, and then hit the 'back' button, and the first page now renders correctly. Etc... Microsoft is driving down their own market share by providing a shitty product. We're not talking bells and whistles here, just basic functionality.
Well, the reality is that people don't want to pay for it - at least not as much as advertisers.
Let's take a brief math example: The superbowl had 62 ad slots which averaged 3 million dollars in 2008 and 98.7 million watched it. That's 1.90$ per person watching, but since it was only 48.1 million households a PPV licence would have to work out to about 4$. But that is assuming there'll still be 98 million viewers and 48 million households, which is unlikely - it's RIAA/MPAA math. First of all, many people just casually interested might not watch at all, those that do would be gathering more and you might see maybe 60 million viewers on 20 million households. Then it's a 9-10$ / PPV license which drives away more people and the numbers work out even worse and so on.
If advertising is simply made unfeasible, there will have to be large cutbacks all around. It's not just that people can get the same thing for free as they get behind the paywall, it's that people value the content much less than the advertisers value the eyeball time. I think this whole scenario that everything will be behind paywalls are ridiculous, the harder it becomes to get eyeball time the more it'll be worth - it's basic supply and demand. Eventually when enough content is behind paywalls it will again be profitable to run ad-based sites. Which I don't even think will happen in the first place.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Care to point out which part of the code acts as a keylogger?
Follow me
Or to a particular element:
Of course you have to use a bit of object detection to determine whether to use attachEvent or addEventListener, but a function that handles that for all browsers is one of the first things I paste into my code. Then it's just a simple myAddEventFunction(HTMLelement,'click',functionName); and who cares what browser that runs in.
Don't forget bookmarks, god fucking help you if a user loses their bookmarks, they will bring the wrath of god down on you and everyone else around them.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
how do you think the shit you like gets paid for?
Depends - I do pay for some shit, when they ask me to pay (or go elsewhere if I don't think it's worth the money). If they don't ask, then why should I care?
but if you were smart, you'll shut the fuck up about it, because the more people who do that, the more the websites you like disappear. if you don't understand that, you're an idiot
Websites are a dime a dozen today, and, thanks to Google, finding one for a given topic is not a problem at all. In practice, it's websites which compete for users' attention, not vice versa. If you do not understand it, you're an idiot.
show some fucking discretion, and stop telling people you block ads. its nothing to be proud of, and you are obviously so very fucking proud of your smug smarmy self
I don't block ads, but I'm seriously tempted to do so now just to spite you. You're obviously very smug to think that whatever you have to offer on your website deserves that much attention.
Yes, you can use a comma and have it be an additional clause. That is perfectly valid. It's also valid to start a new sentence with "but". It retains the same concessive semantics, but can be used in situations where you don't want two clauses to be joined to each other in a single sentence. Consider the following example:
"We have developed all kinds of advanced technology and because of that, we consider ourselves to be the greatest species on the planet. But without that technology, we are as
fragile, if not more so, than many other species."
You can't convert the period before the "but" to a comma without creating, at best, a run-on sentence. You also lose the strong contrastive force. If it were an additional clause, it would be a concession as a mere afterthought ("I would go, but I don't have time"), perhaps even just a clarification. At the beginning of a new sentence, however, it says "what I just said is about to be seriously questioned or refined". It applies instead to a whole string of thoughts, not just to the clause preceding it.
You might say "however" or "yet" would be better. They sound a bit stuffy and perform the same function as "but". Thanks the flexibility of language (which pedants, such as yourself, seem intent on needlessly stamping out, lest people be able to express themselves in anything but sanitary prose), the word can be used as a plain old coordinating conjunction, or it can be used as a sentential adverb (or even as a preposition -- gasp!).
The point is, there's no good reason to avoid putting "but" at the beginning of the sentence, and there are actually very good reasons *to* put it at the beginning of a sentence. In light of that, I will gladly put "but" at the beginning of sentences where appropriate.
www.pcc.edu for the last 30 days.
Internet Explorer 532255 50.94%
Firefox 334610 32.02%
Safari 119225 11.41%
Chrome 53363 5.11%
Mozilla 1922 0.18%
Opera 1463 0.14%
SeaMonkey 578 0.06%
Mozilla Compatible Agent 482 0.05%
Camino 377 0.04%
Opera Mini 306 0.03%
It is incorrect to put “but” at the beginning of a sentence because it (like any conjunction) connects two words, phrases or clauses together... not two sentences.
You didn’t answer my question, though. Does “without” not indicate a sharp enough contrast?
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
There's no reason why conjunctions can't join two sentences together. Of course, I don't think that's what's happening here. Instead, I think we have a sentential adverb that sets the mood of the sentence, or acts as a semantics-only conjunction, connecting the sentence with thoughts before it without having an explicit syntactic connection. Pronouns and articles already get to do this. But in answer to your question, no, I don't think "without" necessarily indicates contrast. The sentence could go on to be "without these technologies, we'd still be the greatest species on the planet", which confirms the previous thought, rather than conceding it. OF course, in that case, you'd definitely want to use a sentence-initial "and": "and without these technologies, we'd still be the greatest species on the planet". Omitting the "and" leads to a slightly stilted and somewhat disconnected series of sentences. My real problem with your entire line of argumentation is that it is both unsupported by logic and is also limiting. Why force people to avoid useful language because of personal prejudices and opinions? Instead, let's allow people to be flexible in their language, that they may express shades of meaning and nuance that wouldn't be available with the kind of strict, bare-bones approach taken by the modern language pedant (no doubt well-versed in Strunk and White nonsense). Using "but" at the beginning of a sentence does nothing to take away from the meaning of sentence or series of sentences, nor does it contribute to confusion and vagueness (a legitimate concern in effective communication). Rather, it offers a nuanced alternative to other constructions (such as "however" and "though" -- themselves quite valid and useful). I simply can see no downside to using sentence-initial "but" and "and", save for an overzealous strictness when it comes to parts of speech and word usage. We aren't talking about unnecessarily vague and annoying synecdoche like "CPU" for "computer", where an incorrect metaphor has weakened the language of some speakers. If you had called someone out on that, I would have agreed with you. But I can't here because I see nothing wrong with "but". And neither should you, although you are free not to use it at the beginning of your sentences. Just don't tell people they are wrong for doing so.