Firefox May Soon Overtake IE In Europe

peterkern writes "The July browser market share reports are somewhat inconsistent, but if we believe StatCounter, then it looks like Firefox will be overtaking Microsoft IE's market share next month. The two browsers are both within 1 point of 40% market share, IE above and Firefox below. Europeans are more crazy about Firefox than Americans: In Germany, Firefox has a 61% market share, while IE has only 25%. Google Chrome is, according to StatCounter, now above 10%. ConceivablyTech has more details, including market share data from both StatCounter and Net Applications (which as of this month is limiting its free data)."

Comments

Browser market share

[odies]

Firefox To Make History, About To Surpass IE in Europe

Firefox to make history by surpassing IE? I don't think it's really making history, considering Opera has always had up to 50% market share in CIS countries.

Also as it happens, IE is no more losing market share, but increasing it at the cost of Firefox.

Microsoft Internet Explorer continues to make a comeback, gaining market share for the third month in a row, mostly to the detriment of Mozilla Firefox.

Internet Explorer increased its share of the browser market in July by 0.42%, for a total share of 60.74%. Firefox, on the other hand, took the biggest hit: a loss of 0.9%.

In addition to IE regaining some momentum, Chrome usage has also been soaring. At the short end of the stick though is Firefox, whose market share peaked in April at 24.59% and has steadily dropped since.

These stats fly in the face of the conventional wisdom that Internet Explorer is doomed to decline against the superior speed, extension capabilities and HTML5 support of FirefoxFirefox and ChromeChrome. And there’s an even bigger wrench that will soon be thrown into the mix: Internet Explorer 9, which boasts superior hardware-accelerated speed and strong support for open standards.

Re:Browser market share

[Chrisq]

Of course this is all irrelevant to firefox making history by overtaking IE in Europe. An analogy, many parts of the world have universal healthcare but it would still be history for the USA if it was introduced there.

Re:Browser market share

[lattyware]

And Firefox has succeeded in doing what it was really meant to do - getting rid of the hell that was IE6. As long as microsoft keep trying to imporve their implementation of standards, then I don't care if people use IE or not. Personally, I use Firefox because of NoScript, AdBlock and DownThemAll, and the fact it has a master password for it's password database (unlike Chrome).

Re:Browser market share

[blackest_k]

your stats are all over the place literally, your opera 50% share crawls along the bottom of the graph where your showing IE as gaining. Thou did you notice the blue line was higher at the start of the graph than where it is now. The graph doesn't actually say where the stats cover I assume it is worldwide or maybe just microsofts website.
we just don't know do we.

ok so browser share is pretty much static and perhaps there is some more interest in chrome.

pretty much expected don't you think

Re:Browser market share

[selven]

IE increasing at the cost of Firefox? Really? My sources show that the slow march down for IE is still continuing.

Re:Browser market share

[delinear]

Unfortunately there are still sufficient users stuck on IE6 that we have to continue to develop for it (unless we're willing to turn away a sometimes significant number of users). These users are the ones who likely don't even have the option of using Firefox, probably because they're on a locked down corporate network. That means we have to rely either on MS back porting IE8 to older operating systems (never going to happen), admins allowing non-IE browser installations (I'm guessing there's a valid reason they're not doing this already) or just waiting around for those users to be migrated to more recent Windows installations. Either way we're still stuck with the horror of IE6 for some time yet, I fear.

Re:Browser market share

[WrongSizeGlass]

I was really hoping for an analogy using the metric system.

Re:Browser market share

[lattyware]

This is true, but the point is, the trend has started. Not much we can do to speed it up, but at some point, reasonably soon, IE6 will become a distant memory.

Re:Browser market share

[Bert64]

Yes but the point is, there are now sufficient users running browsers other than IE that you have to develop for them...
A few years ago, sites were developed for IE6 and nothing else, causing problems for people on non windows systems.

The fact that developers are still burdened with having to make sites compatible with IE doesn't really effect end users so much, it's much easier to develop a site that works with modern standards compliant browsers than it is to kludge a site to work with IE6.

Re:Browser market share

[Inconexo]

It amaze me how many users are still using IE 6. I mean, why such a pain?

I can only explain it as either masochists or spambots identifying as IE 6. Only machines can sustain these unhuman conditions.

Re:Browser market share

[uffe_nordholm]

Don't worry, eventually the metric system will take over the USA, inch by inch.

Re:Browser market share

[hairyfeet]

Oh grasshopper, allow your old and wise pal Hairyfeet to explain the ways that led to the garden of evil.

You see young one, once upon a time there was this thing called ActiveX. And in this naive and innocent time, when the web was young and the word bukkake was unknown in the west, the developers at Redmond pushed ActiveX as "everything you ever wanted...in a box!" it could build Rich Internet Apps, and turn even the hardest job into a simple form even sally in the typing pool could do. And even trained monkeys could write for ActiveX! And you know what? It was true! Oh how young and foolish everyone was! Every PHB on the block joined right in, and all thought it was well.

Unfortunately there was a REASON why ActiveX was so damned easy, and that was because it blew a hole right through the OS the size of a Peterbuilt. It turned out that trained monkeys also existed in China and Russia, and thanks to security not being taught the day the ActiveX guys were at school it quickly turned craptastic. MSFT, after getting laughed at and having rotten fruit thrown at them wisely treated ActiveX like the red headed stepchild and tried to quietly bash its brains out and bury it in the backyard. Sadly waaaay too many PHBs had bought into ActiveX Intranet apps, and found out that IE 6= works, and IE anything else =toast. But PHBs, being a rather stupid lot, decided that rather than spend the money to rewrite their Intranet would simply keep IE 6 4EVAR BWA HA HA HA HA!

So there you have it my son, the reason why a crappy browser nobody really liked is still used day, after day, after day, after day. It is because PHBs are stupid, more crappy Intranet ActiveX sites exist than you'd care to know (I even know of a few that still use IE 6 ActiveX based sites for processing CC info of their customers EEEK!) and until XP is quietly pushed out on that iceflow to die IE 6 will continue to slowly lumber on.

Re:Browser market share

[morgan_greywolf]

Also as it happens, IE is no more losing market share, but increasing it at the cost of Firefox [mashable.com]

A <1% gain two months in a row doesn't rise above the level of statistical noise.

Re:Browser market share

[Antique Geekmeister]

This is sadly true. I have a number of critical paperwork handling work applications which do not work properly on IE 8 or Firefox or any sane modern browser. And I have others that will no longer run on IE 6, so I need 2 desktop environments, and 2 licenses for them, just to push the paperwork.

Yet I still get angry glares from some of our own corporate staff at software presentations when I ask "does it run on Firefox" or "does it run on Linux"? It's especially sad when I ask "which version of Java does it require", because the "write once run everywhere" sometimes breaks down.

Re:Browser market share

[Inconexo]

Quite a story. So, wise hairyfeet, I wait for another day in which you tell me the thing behind COBOL.

Re:Browser market share

[brainscauseminds]

Fortunately, according to http://gs.statcounter.com/ Firefox is the most widely browser for some time now in countries like for example Finland http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-FI-monthly-200907-201008 and Estonia http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-EE-monthly-200907-201008 .

Re:Browser market share

[tenco]

I don't think it's really making history, considering Opera has always had up to 50% market share in CIS countries.

ITYM "over 50% market share"[0]. According to your source, Opera has only over 50% in Belarus. If this was always so isn't mentioned in your article.

[0] otherwise: Opera had up to 50% market share since it's release. Just like FF. Worldwide.

Re:Browser market share

[commodore64_love]

>>>many parts of the world have universal healthcare

Monopoly healthcare. No choice healthcare.

Oh and yeah you're right. The article is about making history in EUROPE, because it would be the first time since Netscape that IE was not #1. The fact Opera is #1 in the former Soviet Republics is irrelevant to European browser share.

Re:Browser market share

[Zumbs]

I seriously hope you mean square inch by square inch ...

Re:Browser market share

[commodore64_love]

>>>DownThemAll

Why would I want to use this instead of Firefox's built-in download manager?

>>>it features an advanced accelerator that increases speed up to 400%

I don't see how this is possible. My ISP is 90 KB/s and I don't see how that could be accelerated upto 360 KB/s

Re:Browser market share

[amorsen]

Yes but the point is, there are now sufficient users running browsers other than IE that you have to develop for them...

The funny thing is that when Firefox had a similar market share to what IE6 has now, lots of sites said "screw it, this site only works in Internet Explorer". Adding support for Firefox was easy; just write a reasonably standards-compliant site and it looked ok in Firefox. Now developers have a much harder job trying to make sites work in IE6, yet you rarely see sites just rejecting it.

I still find the occasional site telling me I have an unsupported browser (Yahoo is one of them, which is pretty hilarious in 2010). HP blade enclosures "support" Firefox by asking you to install the IE tab extension.

Re:Browser market share

[realityimpaired]

Youtube and Google Apps have already dropped support for IE6. If they work in the browser, great, but if you try visiting either site using IE6 you'll get a "hey idiot, isn't it time you upgraded your browser?" message.

Many other major sites have stopped developping for IE6 out there... Dell's website doesn't render properly in IE6, Microsoft's own website and MSDN portal don't work properly in IE6. It's really just corporate tools that've been developped for the piece of shit browser that's holding things back these days, and the natural upgrade cycle will, eventually, get rid of that problem. I'm fairly sure that once corporations start upgrading beyond IE6, the number of users still stuck with it at home will become insignificant.

The thing is, the majority of the web isn't *developped* for any specific browser. Slashdot will render mostly correctly in IE6, for example, because aside from some of the AJAX involved, it's mostly just plain text/html. E-bay is just frames and tables. Hotmail the same. Most of the web doesn't require special functionality of any browser these days, and it's been that way ever since Microsoft changed the default behaviour in their browser to disable activex in the first place, and to sandbox it when the user enables it.

Re:Browser market share

[realityimpaired]

2 months in a row does become a trend though. Yes, it's less than half a percent rise, but if the stats show a half a percent rise every month in a row for 6 months, that does become more than statistical noise....

As others have pointed out though, the numbers the GP posted are suspect at best....

Re:Browser market share

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't Korea (the one with electricity) develop an ActiveX app to do secure online banking?

Re:Browser market share

[cc1984_]

Monopoly healthcare. No choice healthcare.

I'm genuinely curious as to where this happens.

Re:Browser market share

[maxwell demon]

Are those metric dollars or imperial dollars?

Re:Browser market share

[maxwell demon]

What I don't get is why it is so complicated to just have two browsers installed: IE6 for legacy corporate apps, and a modern browser for the internet (there may be trouble having IE6 and IE8 at the same time, but there should not be any troubles having IE6 and Firefox, or IE8 and Opera). Maybe you can have a proxy which ensures the right browser is used for internet access (i.e. that blocks all IE6 traffic leaving the corporate network). That solution would be simple (no need to update internal ActiveX stuff) and even more secure than using another browser for everything (because any internet site which compromises the browser, but doesn't otherwise compromise the user's account, cannot access any internal stuff because of the lack of ActiveX; moreover non-IE6 access can simply be blocked for internal stuff for additional security). If you use Firefox, you can even make it almost seamless by using IE tab extension.

Re:Browser market share

[Ash Vince]

Monopoly healthcare. No choice healthcare.

Only if you believe the drivel forced down your neck by the US media.

Government healthcare is NOT monopoly healthcare or "no choice healthcare". Here in the UK I have the option of being treated on the NHS (government) or I can go private, it is entirely up to me.

Here are some useful links to anyone interested in private healthcare in the UK:

http://www.spirehealthcare.com/
http://www.bupa.co.uk/
http://www.privatehealth.co.uk/

Unfortunately I still have to pay for the government healthcare out of my taxes but that is not what you were complaining about at all was it?

Re:Browser market share

[moonbender]

Germany has basically universal public health insurance and people can chose between dozens if not hundreds of regulated insurance companies as well as many, many private insurance companies. There is absolutely no monopoly and a bewildering amount of choice.

Re:Browser market share

[aBaldrich]

Monopoly? Here in Argentina public healthcare is open even to illegal immigrants, and it coexists with private hospitals.

Re:Browser market share

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just that trying to get the stubborn People to do what's good for them is difficult, because they keep talking about miles and gallons.

Do what is good for them? What a stupid, shit headed, arrogant faggoty cocksucker you are.

Re:Browser market share

[commodore64_love]

Well to put a more realistic view on this whole subject:

51% Microsoft Explorer
31% Mozilla Firefox
10% Google Chrome
4% Apple Safari
3% Opera

StatCounter

Re:Browser market share

[Kazuma-san]

But here in Germany we have more than enough problems with our costly health system. Politicians are trying to reform it for at least a decade, because a breakdown has been imminent for decades. So I don't think, it is an example of a good health care system.

Re:Browser market share

[iserlohn]

Why is it that a bewildering number of smart people has been indoctrinated into believing that the "free market" is the only solution to everything?

If the cost benefit ratio is less for a market-based solution compared to an alternative solution, then maybe it's time to go with the alternative.

By all metrics, the US healthcare system is delivering comparable medical outcomes to other industrialized nations at about 2 times the cost.

It is beyond debate that a completely laissez faire approach to markets ultimately leads to distortions that prevent efficient resource distribution in most (if not all) sectors of the economy. The is just no reason to object based on the facts, yet people still object. Funny this ideology thing.....

Re:Browser market share

[commodore64_love]

Sounds like Germany's healthcare system is in as sad as shape as America's healthcare/retirement system (medicare and SS respectively).

The reason I labeled it a "monopoly" is because even though you have "choice" between doctors, you are still dealing with the same central monopoly. It's akin to if you bought a Macintosh or Amiga or Linux computer, but still had to pay money to Microsoft.

Re:Browser market share

[commodore64_love]

>>>public healthcare...coexists with private hospitals.

Same here with our public and private schools. But the monopoly still controls the money. It's akin to if you bought a Macintosh, and yet still had to send $1000 a year to Microsoft. You have "choice" of which device you use, but not where your money goes. It's a monopoly.

Re:Browser market share

[lokedhs]

Indeed, Korea really loves their activex. It's so bad that you really can't use the Korean Internet without activex. One example: try to even see the front page of one of Koreas major banks without ie: www.kdb.co.kr

Re:Browser market share

[dov_0]

I think that the announcement of Firefox taking over from IE is becoming like the yearly calls of 'the year of Linux on the desktop.' A tradition, like Christmas. It comes around, people oooh and aaah and then get on with life til it comes round again.

Re:Browser market share

[garyebickford]

I'm not so sure. Back in the 60s (IIRC) the Feds made it law that everyone had to switch. After much complaining, the car makers switched and began building cars largely in metric. (it was not a coincidence that more parts were coming from metric countries.) Just about the time when the manufacturing sector was finally getting tuned to working in metric, the government switched back. Sigh. But in fact the inch has been defined as 1/3937 meter for about 100 years, so we can argue that we are already metric - just in funny numerics.

If it happens it will happen because (as you allude) everything will have become de facto metric, and there won't be any reason not to. That will be after my lifetime.

On a side note, for computer geeks some of the Imperial system actually makes pretty good sense - the liquid measures (cup,pint,quart, gallon, etc.) are a base-two system (with a few gaps where little-used unit names exist, like two quarts). IMHO that actually makes more sense in the abstract than a decimal system. There's nothing magical about base-10 units other than for counting on one's fingers. Base-12 makes more sense, since it is divisible more ways, and (obviously, for us geeks) base-two and base-16 are ideal for computing.

Another one - we use thousands (three digits) for grouping, but the Chinese use ten-thousands (four digits) for the same purpose.

Re:Browser market share

[commodore64_love]

>>>Do what is good for them? What a stupid, shit headed, arrogant faggoty cocksucker you are.

Ooops. My fault. I forgot my sarcastic tag. I was not being serious. Hence the reference to the Democrat Congresses' $950 fine to punish the People for not buying health insurance. Congress must force the People to do what is good for them.

Re:Browser market share

[Rennt]

If its anything like other download managers, it downloads over multiple connections to get around transfer limits on the remote server.

But you are right, in most cases it won't make any difference at all - so all you are doing is tying up connections without achieving anything.

In those cases where it DOES work, you are potentially DoSing other users - transfer limits are usually there because of limited resources.

Re:Browser market share

[commodore64_love]

Well it happens in the US, not just in healthcare but also schools. If I choose to attend a private hospital/school instead of the public variant, I must pay EXTRA money on top of the money I paid to the Uncle Sam monopoly. It's akin to if I decided to buy a Mac or Amiga computer, and yet still had to pay $1000/year to the Microsoft Monopoly.

Choice is not choice, if someone else controls the money.

Re:Browser market share

[Thinboy00]

That's partly because the US sucks at regulating anti-competitive practices.

Re:Browser market share

[commodore64_love]

>>>Why is it that a bewildering number of smart people has been indoctrinated into believing that the "free market" is the only solution to everything?

Why is that a bewildering number of people paint the world as black-and-white? I consider myself a "smart people" and I support the free market, but I don't think it's the solution to "everything". For example if you have a natural monopoly where it would be impossible to provide Choice, such as water and sewer pipes, then the free market is not your best option.

Please be more careful with how you paint other people with your strawman arguments. We're not all black. And we're not all white. Most of us are shades of gray with varying viewpoints all along the political spectrum.
.

>>>at about 2 times the cost.

First: You exaggerate. US healthcare is more costly, but only by 1.1x not 2x. Foreign healthcare like Canada is also costly, but most of the cost is hidden behind bureaucracy and taxes. ----- Second: Sometimes it's worth the extra cost, just so you can have freedom. That's why we have ~30 different car companies, and not just a GM (government motors) Monopoly. It probably would be cheaper to have a single Car Monopoly run by Government, but who wants to live in such a world???

I prefer a Pro-Choice solution wherever possible so that as much power as possible is placed in the hands of the People. Choice == Freedom. Monopoly == Slavery.

Re:Browser market share

[Thinboy00]

Are you sure that's a real page? Firefox blocked it as an "attack" (which I'm choosing to read as phishing).

Re:Browser market share

[commodore64_love]

>>>The funny thing is that when [Netscape] had a similar market share to what IE6 has now, lots of sites said "screw it, this site only works in Internet Explorer".

Fixed that for you. "It never hurts to kiss-up to the boss." Microsoft was viewed as the safe choice to support for 90s-era sysops desiring to keep their jobs, where Netscape was viewed as a small company and not worth sticking your neck out for.

BTW I hear a lot of hate directed at IE6.
Is IE7 any better?
What about IE5? Anybody still using it?

Re:Browser market share

[INT_QRK]

Good point. I actually have 3 browsers: Safari, Firefox and Chrome. I use Safari by default, because I like its look, feel and performance. I use Firefox all secured-up with restrictive settings and script protection, for when I'm note sure where I'm going. I also use Chrome. I had Opera at one point, but haven't used lately. I use a Macbook for work, but there are times when Safari won't work with a particular site. Usually Firefox or Chrome will. For home I use a Debian Gnu/Linux distro, but also have browser diversity for same reason: Firefox, Chromium, and Opera. As long as USG and other institutions still insist on using IE-optimized pages, browser diversity will probably be a must.

Re:Browser market share

[drinkypoo]

DownThemAll utilizes Firefox's built-in download functionality, but it does a lot more with it, like say downloading multiple parts of a file at once to bypass download rate limit restrictions. Which of course generally makes one an asshole, but it's not hard to prevent that sort of thing and DTA will do the right thing if a server manager has done so. It also has a number of very nice functions for downloading multiple links from a page at once. You can do stuff in the browser you would normally have done with for, seq, and wget.

Re:Browser market share

[mdwh2]

So you are against taxation, not just national healthcare? That's what tax is - it's money to the Government, even if you don't personally benefit.

It's akin to if I decided to buy a Mac or Amiga computer, and yet still had to pay $1000/year to the Microsoft Monopoly.

Well no, Microsoft aren't the Government.

Re:Browser market share

[mdwh2]

Why is it that a bewildering number of smart people has been indoctrinated into believing that the "free market" is the only solution to everything?

Indeed - and it's also funny that these people seem to have no problem with the vast amounts of money the US Government spends on a socialised military.

Re:Browser market share

[jimicus]

Why is it that a bewildering number of smart people has been indoctrinated into believing that the "free market" is the only solution to everything?

"Intelligence", "Insight", "Common Sense" and "Has memorised so many facts that they can pass for intelligent, even though they can't really apply those facts to anything outside their sphere of experience" are all different things.

Re:Browser market share

[flyingkillerrobots]

I think it's already doing that, at least in engineering circles; I can think in either pounds or kilograms equally fluently, and for more abstract measurements like power, I only think in SI. As for how long it will be until other start to intuitively think in SI, there are still people in England who think of their mass in Stones.

Re:Browser market share

[chris mazuc]

Why is that a bewildering number of people paint the world as black-and-white? ...

Choice == Freedom. Monopoly == Slavery.

You've got a mighty big brush there yourself.

First: You exaggerate. US healthcare is more costly, but only by 1.1x not 2x. Foreign healthcare like Canada is also costly, but most of the cost is hidden behind bureaucracy and taxes.

Total horseshit.

You are looking for "Table 1. Health Care Spending in OECD Countries, 2004"

In 2004, health care spending in the United States averaged $6,102 per person,
according to data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD). The OECD consists of 30 democracies (listed in Table 1), most of which
are considered to be the most economically advanced countries in the world.1
As shown in Figure 1 and Table 1, U.S. per capita health care spending was
well over double the average of OECD countries, which was $2,560 in 2004. Health
care made up 15.3% of the U.S. economy in 2004, as measured by Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) -- up from 5.1% of GDP in 1960. No other OECD country devotes
as much of its economy to health care, also shown in Table 1.

The table before that ("Table 1. Health Care Spending in OECD Countries, 2004") shows the breakdown between private and public funding for health care in industrialized countries. In case you didn't feel like doing the math, it works out to about $2,684 spent by the US government last year for your health care, which is more than the Canadian government spent on universal health care per capita ($2,183).

Please stop peddling this bullshit like you aren't going to get called out on it.

Re:Browser market share

[csubi]

"Monopoly healthcare. No choice healthcare."

Even if you were right ( you are not ), think this over :

      My doctor asks for a complete blood test, billed $500 to me. My health insurance then takes over and responds to Labcorp: "we agreed that we'll pay you $50 for this test ". Labcorp agrees and finally accepts $50 for the same service. I guess they still make profit so this means that they mark their prices up by >1000% to someone who walks in w/o insurance.

      Could you try to charge services / sell products with 1000% profit on a market where there is real competition? I don't think so.

      Is there a complicity between health care providers and the insurance sector ? Probably yes, I'd even call it a sort of mafia - if you don't pay the "protection money" for the insurance company, their friends the service providers will overcharge you 10x for everything.

      Unless this changes, you don't have much bragging rights about health care in the US.

     

Re:Browser market share

[Anonymous Coward]

If you had ever made use of the US system you would understand why the UK private system is basically just the NHS with nicer rooms and satellite TV. The UK has extremely limited private emergency care (a single hospital for the whole of London), private hospitals often make use of off-duty NHS doctors meaning coverage can be extremely sporadic and often private hospitals send patients to NHS casualties if something goes wrong simply because they don't have the staff or facilities to deal with it themselves.

Irrespective of the cause (we would be involved in a discussion of NHS is good vs evil all day) private hospitals simply offer good quality and fast diagnostic medicine, better patient facilities (in terms of food, rooms, etc) and good access to some electives (plastics etc) but they don't work for day to day medical needs that the NHS or US private hospitals can.

Ultimately I view it like this; the UK has 57% the survival rate for cancer as compared to the US and 38% the heart attack survival rate of the US. If I get sick I want to get sick in the US.

Re:Browser market share

[Anonymous Coward]

It's taking over NASA inch times centimeter by inch times centimeter.

Re:Browser market share

[shutdown -p now]

Adding support for Firefox was easy; just write a reasonably standards-compliant site and it looked ok in Firefox.

You overestimate the average qualification of Web developers at the time Firefox first appeared as a viable competitor. The other issue at hand was that a lot of people had existing large IE-only sites, so it wasn't a question of writing, but rather of rewriting. Which is much harder to justify.

The funny thing is that when Firefox had a similar market share to what IE6 has now, lots of sites said "screw it, this site only works in Internet Explorer". Now developers have a much harder job trying to make sites work in IE6, yet you rarely see sites just rejecting it.

Thing is, when Firefox became popular enough that it attracted attention of developers, most Firefox users also had IE around (being on Windows). So shoving "IE only" into their faces would drive some away, but most of us would just sigh and grudgingly load IE - assuming the site in question provided a service that's useful or indispensable enough (typical example being online banking).

What's worse is that most Firefox users know what is IE, and, indeed, the general concept of multiple browsers which can all be used to surf the same Web. In contrast, for many IE users, IE is the browser, and is the Internet. If you say "this site works in Firefox only", or even "this site works in IE8 only", and provide a download link, they would be profoundly confused.

Have some patience. IE6 is going to die soon enough now that even MS is trying hard to kill it. Meanwhile, non-IE browsers taken together have gotten a slice of the pie large enough that they cannot be ignored anymore, and IE9 promises to deliver a lot that is long overdue, and give the final push that is needed for HTML5 to take off rapidly - and that will be the final nail in the coffin of older IE versions.

Re:Browser market share

[lattyware]

Well, for one, I was only saying that I use it, not that anyone else should, but I'll bite. It has some nice features such as automatically downloading every link of a certain format off a page (say I wish to download 40 images from a gallery, normally I'd have to right click each and hit save as, while DTA can do it all in one click, and even rename files automatically to a set pattern as you get them), along with some other stuff like checking checksums after the download is finished. And yes, the 400% thing is talking about multi-part downloading. It will only speed up your downloads on the odd rare occasion.

Re:Browser market share

[Sloppy]

Why is it that a bewildering number of smart people has been indoctrinated into believing that the "free market" is the only solution to everything?

Because my dog just had surgery (which included a hysterectomy, an RFID cyber-implant, and 4 baby teeth pulled) for a total cost of $200. That is what health care costs (with a reasonable markup to cover overhead and profit). With humans, I understand if people want to include some additional safeguards, so maybe multiply that cost by n (where I'm thinking of a number like two or three, not a hundred!), and that tells you the potential that a free market has to offer the problem of health care.

Likewise, I can look at the cost of a hotel room in a free market ($50-$200; I know this varies wildly depending on where it is) plus the cost of a well-trained expert (say $75/hour, except amortized across several customers, just like doctors and nurses work in real life) and that tells you what a hospital room can cost.

When you think about these numbers and compare them to what we currently pay, I wonder how people can not desperately want a free market.

It is beyond debate that a completely laissez faire approach to markets ultimately leads to distortions that prevent efficient resource distribution

You know what? I'll concede that; free markets aren't perfect. But can a market planned by government (i.e. lobbyists) have so little distortion?

Why are people upholding US health care as some kind of example of free markets? If the US had a free market for health care, we would all be bitching about how Wal-Mart surgeons are squeezing the mom'n'pops out of business. Doctors would be complaining that it's hard to repay their student loans on their $20/hour job, yet not quite impossible since, after all, the student loan is only for about $5000 * years_in_school.

Re:Browser market share

[scamper_22]

lol. I suppose you think public education is not a coercive monopoly too.

Maybe if you are a millionaire you can afford to pay twice for everything.
Pay once for healthcare in the public system.
Pay again for your own healthcare choice.

Pay once for education in the public system.
Pay again for your own educational choice.

You know what would be 'fair' to everyone. Have everyone pay taxes for healthcare and education. Just like today.
But if you choose not to use the public monopoly, you get a per capita voucher to spend wherever you want.

Re:Browser market share

[iserlohn]

So somebody sooner or later will point out that we have tons to regulation in the US on healthcare, implying that this regulation is cauting the inefficiencies.

No amount of data would persuade these people because they are blinded by their ideology to the fact that before doctors and dentists were regulated, being died as a result of low standards, and a lot of times, outright fraud.

If the government runs the police, the fire service, the coast guard, the public parks, the national highways, the FDA, etc, etc.. and most people have no problem with this, then why is it that when healthcare is the subject, people start mumbling about socialism? We're not in a socialist nor capitalist economy, we've been in a mixed economy since the beginning of the modern era.

People tend to forget that in a democracy, the government is us. It is our responsibility to keep government accountable and honest, but it is also our responsibility to vote for government do its job and fulfil its duty for our benefit. They are us. Without a stable government that regulates and balances the interests of the nation, somebody will step in to fill the void, and these actors are usually less accountable than government.

Re:Browser market share

[iserlohn]

Wow, that post was so full of spelling errors I hang my head in shame.

Re:Browser market share

[Anonymous Coward]

Monopoly healthcare. No choice healthcare.

Monopoly? No choice? Hardly.

I'm from Germany, myself. We've got both regular ("gesetzlich", actually) and "private" health insurances; most people are insured in the former, for a variety of reasons. Ignoring the "private" ones, here's a list of the regular health insurances. You'll find that there's quite a few to choose from, even though one should add that not ALL the BKK's and IKK's are open to the general public.

Anyhow, long story short - "no choice" is a mischaracterization.

Re:Browser market share

[yo_tuco]

"I was really hoping for an analogy using the metric system."

I, on the other hand, was hoping for a car analogy.

Re:Browser market share

[drsmithy]

Well it happens in the US, not just in healthcare but also schools. If I choose to attend a private hospital/school instead of the public variant, I must pay EXTRA money on top of the money I paid to the Uncle Sam monopoly.

That's because you are paying for something the public services do not provide (otherwise why would you be paying for it).

Re:Browser market share

[moonbender]

The fact that a breakdown has been "imminent" for more than a decade is telling. But sure, it's not perfect, far from it. I never said it was. That doesn't make the association of publicly supported and regulated health insurance == monopoly == evil any less absurd.

Re:Browser market share

[commodore64_love]

>>>Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

This report has already been found to be filled with serious flaws. It has been roundly rejected by scientists, and just recently the OECD has admitted they flat out lied about the states ("errors" they called them). They also made invalid assumptions: Like only looking at government costs and not private costs (example: me paying $200 directly to my doctor) which would drive down the national average.

This is akin to those reports that keep proclaiming the "US is almost dead last in internet speeds!" when the reality is we are in second place behind the Russian Federation, and ahead of the European Union, Canada, Australia, China, et cetera. Such reports are lying with statistics. Don't cite reports where the conclusion was reached BEFORE the data was compiled.

I agree with you that US Healthcare is more expensive but as I said, it isn't that much more (1.1x) and it's preferable to having a monopoly. I'd rather have multiple choices than being forced to drive a GM Monopoly, just because it might be slightly cheaper.
.

>>>Please stop peddling this bullshit

Censorship? You wish me to be silent or else? No. You'll have to put a gun to my head if you wish to silence me, and even then I'll keep exercising my right to speak until you pull the trigger. I will not be intimidated by you, Congressmen putting me in neckholds*, men with guns standing outside my voting booth with guns**, or anybody else.

* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v60oNUoHBYM
** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neGbKHyGuHU
** "You got my back?" - clearly this guy was scared

Re:Browser market share

[commodore64_love]

Why Obama's DOJ didn't prosecute these people is a mystery:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX4dcvIYk9A

Re:Browser market share

[CastrTroy]

It depends on who you are asking. If you ask the programmer if the site works on IE6, he will say it does. If you ask the designer, or CEO if it works on IE6, he will say no, because some element on the page is off by 1 pixel.

Re:Browser market share

[Gadzeus]

This comparison isn't like for like.

"By all metrics, the US healthcare system is delivering comparable medical outcomes to other industrialized nations at about 2 times the cost."

The UK system uses collective bargaining (the NHS areas collectively) to purchase lower cost drugs. That is illegal in the US.

The NHS bill then includes many drugs subsidised and sold at the price of a prescription... about £6, I believe. US patients' insurance often does not cover drugs, or all drugs, and those drugs are more expensive than the UK due to that big-pharma favouring ban on collective bargaining.

Factoring in US patients' drug bills the UK savings are greater than 2 times.

Re:Browser market share

[commodore64_love]

Because the public service is a building to is slowly crumbling to the ground, or ridden with drugs, and yet I still am expected to pay for that POS.

It's akin to deciding to "cut the cord" and just watch television for free (by antenna or ATT cellphone), and yet I'm still forced to pay $60/month to the local POS Comcast monopoly. If you don't use a service, you should not have to pay for it.

Re:Browser market share

[commodore64_love]

>>>these people seem to have no problem with the vast amounts of money the US Government spends on a socialised military.

Yes we do. I was just watching Congressman Paul say, "Having 500 bases around the world is ridiculous. We should close them all except the ones located on our own soil, for self-defense." I agree with him, as do most Tea Partiers, if you had bothered to REALLY listen instead of making unfounded assumptions.

Oh and another thing: We don't have a problem with legitimate constitutional functions, like having a Navy to defend the coastlines. But I can lay my hand on no portion of the US Constitution that authorizes a government-run health system. Per the 9th and 10th amendment Rights, such a power is reserved to the Member States, just like over in the EU.

If you want to create a US-run health system, then follow the proper procedure and amend the USC to give Congress that power.

Re:Browser market share

[commodore64_love]

>>>we have tons to regulation in the US on healthcare, implying that this regulation is cauting the inefficiencies.

I don't have a problem with regulation - so long as it's useful and doesn't create a Housing Boom (followed by a crash) as happened with the 1997 "you must loan to poor people" regulation. That was the root cause of the financial collapse from 2007 to 2009.

I have a problem with my neighbor smoking most of his life, developing cancer around age 60, buying a new pair of lungs, and then sucking money out of my wallet to pay the ~$100,000 bill. That makes essentially a slave - working for somebody else's enrichment, rather than my own. I'm sorry my neighbor got sick but he created the problem himself, and he should fix it himself with his own money.

I also have a problem when the US ignores our 9th and 10th amendment rights. If the power to create a government-run health system exists, it is reserved to the Member States, just like over in the EU. I have no objections that Massachusetts created such a system. That's perfectly legitimate.

Re:Browser market share

[commodore64_love]

You also failed to factor-in the UK citizens pay about 70% tax burden, while the US tax burden 40%. I recently spoke to a UK transplant, and she told me that's the principal reason she and her husband moved to the US - to keep more of the money they sweated to earn.

Re:Browser market share

[commodore64_love]

Comcast has a monopoly.

Don't you think they are evil? Why? Simply because they are bad? No. Because you (an american citizen) doesn't have any other choice. Lack of choice is what makes that situation evil.

Also if the US private/insurance-based health system is nor perfect, but neither is Germany's public system, why do we want to import an system that is still imperfect? That's simply trading a pile of crap for a pile of manure.

Re:Browser market share

[commodore64_love]

>>>I guess they still make profit so this means that they mark their prices up by >1000% to someone who walks in w/o insurance.

You're guessing wrong. A lot of doctors are quitting the profession specifically because they are *losing* money due to underpaying insurance and/or government insurance administrators. Those that manage to survive are doing so off the backs of their richer patients. The profit from the rich helps subsidize those $50 bloodwork tests that actually cost $100 to do.
.

>>>where there is real competition?

I don't know where you live but where I'm at there are ~10 different hospitals choose from. 30 if I expand my search to the next closest cities. There's as much competition in health as there is for grocery stores. I think the system works just fine. ----- In fact on my last visit I told the doctor that I didn't think it was necessary to come to his office a second time in two weeks, since all he did was look at me. He agreed that he didn't really do anything so I paid nothing. He knew that if he said "no" he'd probably lose a customer.
.

>>>Is there a complicity between health care providers and the insurance sector?

I agree. "yes". So stop buying insurance and just pay cash. Or switch to catastrophic insurance for emergencies (like cancer), and pay cash for everything else. You don't have to participate in the collusion. ----- Well... that is until Congress started fining us $950 for not having insurance. Now there's collusion between our Congress and the Insurance sector. Wonderful. I'll be glad when we get rid of Bush and his Corporate Sellouts called the Republicans.

Re:Browser market share

[moonbender]

I never said you should import anything; I certainly never said you should copy Germany's system and I don't really think anybody else is suggesting that, either. Though I'm not aware of a perfect system, so trying to implement that and only that might be futile. I don't have any real insights into the US health system drama, whenever I've looked all the arguments sounded as if they were coming from a different planet.

I'd be willing to trade a pile of manure for a smaller one.

Re:Browser market share

[drsmithy]

Because the public service is a building to is slowly crumbling to the ground, or ridden with drugs, and yet I still am expected to pay for that POS.

Yes. That's so that when you aren't rich enough to pay out of pocket for your health care, you can actually get treatment instead of being left in the street to die.

If you don't use a service, you should not have to pay for it.

Ah. You're one of those guys who thinks the police shouldn't investigate a crime unless the victim pays up front. I imagine you'd have an awesome time in Somalia.

Re:Browser market share

[Noughmad]

Which you do, thanks to the free market.

Re:Browser market share

[Red Flayer]

Or switch to catastrophic insurance for emergencies (like cancer), and pay cash for everything else.

Good luck on getting any claims on that catastrophic insurance paid.

Now there's collusion between our Congress and the Insurance sector.

Yeah, that's a problem. But the government's collusion comes with strings attached that benefit the public. Less than liberals like me wanted, but better than an unregulated insurance industry.

Re:Browser market share

[Red Flayer]

I don't have a problem with regulation - so long as it's useful and doesn't create a Housing Boom (followed by a crash) as happened with the 1997 "you must loan to poor people" regulation. That was the root cause of the financial collapse from 2007 to 2009.

If you believe that was the root cause of the crash, then you are severely undereducated about the crash.

The root problem was excess capital from the previous bubbles (tech especially) that had nowhere to go... it went into real estate, and there we finally bled off the excess capital (painfully). This was compounded by the relaxing of regulation of the banking and financial insurance industries, coupled with a systemic issue of poor risk evaluation on derivatives.

Your "you must loan to poor people" regulation is a red herring.

Re:Browser market share

[miketheanimal]

Bewarre dodgy comparisons: http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2009/08/17/we-need-to-be-careful-when-comparing-us-and-uk-cancer-care/

Re:Browser market share

[mdwh2]

Well, according to the mod, all taxes go on things that personally benefit every individual tax payer, and Microsoft are the Government. My bad. Thanks for correcting my obvious errors.

Re:Browser market share

[Sloppy]

I didn't say anything about socialism. All I did was..

No amount of data would persuade these people

..present some data ($200 for 3 surgical procedures) about how well a free market can provide health care, in spite of its "distortions that prevent efficient resource distribution." If you're saying socialism can provide health care even cheaper than that, I think that's great and I hope you make your case well.

BTW, I know it was a trivial tpying eror (I sometimes make some doozies) so I'm not giving you shit about it, but out of such things sometime come wonderful serendipitous inventions. I just wanted to tell you that I loved "being died." Like "misunderestimate," that one is worth keeping and nurturing.

Re:Browser market share

[jo_ham]

My tax burden is not that high, and the UK's GDP per-capita spending on healthcare is half of what it is in the US, so my taxes are spent more efficiently (you pay twice the rate for your healthcare in money spent by government, and *then* you pay your insurance premiums).

While our taxes are comparitively higher in some areas (gasoline, diesel for one), we do not have to spend income on private healthcare (unless we really want to - there are plenty of healthcare providers here if you don't want to use the NHS, ie, choice is very high).

The real benefit to the NHS is that if you are poor, your tax burden does actually fall, unlike the US where the cost of healthcare remains pretty much fixed (give or take some of the government assistance). Even with government assistance in the US, if you are poor and you get sick or require frequent prescriptions, you are paying a large portion of your income relative to a rich person.

So, the UK transplant may like the fact that it seems she is paying less, but I will wager that it comes out even when she factors in the required healthcare costs, especially if either her or her husband require any regular medication.

The UK is no magical paradise, but it is one of the many countries in the world that has adopted universal healthcare and it works. The US is the outlier, as the only developed nation without it, and even with the insurance premiums paid by its citizens, it still spends twice the GDP per capita than any other nation on healthcare.

You're getting screwed.

Re:Browser market share

[jo_ham]

Yes, like the road system, and the fire service, and the military.

You can choose never to drive on the roads if you walk everywhere, but your taxes still pay for them since the society you live in requires certain things (like the ability for trucks to deliver things to the town you live in).

You may not directly consume the services you pay for with your "monopoly" taxes, but you surely are not foolish enough to think that no government is a better option, or a government that cannot levy taxes. Part of being in a society is that you can do a lot that helps everyone for a little input from the individual.

You can try to be isolationist if you like and live off the grid because you don't want a "monopoly" taking your money, but then don't complain to me when you can't get mail delivered to you, can't get food delivered to where you live, or electricity, or water, or education for your children. If your house catches fire, don't complain when the fire department doesn't show up to put it out, on the road that the state built, using water piped there via state-owned water pipes. Don't complain when then police don't attempt to recover your stolen car and instead tell the local private security firm you hired to look after your local community to do it.

A nation of 260 million individuals who solely looked out for number 1 would very quickly descend into chaos.

Also, your attempt to draw literal parallels between a monopoly position of a company and that of a tax is just amusing. The concepts are different, and you are being deliberately disingenuous. If you are genuinely serious, then I just feel sorry for you.

Re:Browser market share

[iserlohn]

Two words - Citation Needed..

Outside of right-wing circles, I have never heard of any discussion of the serious flaws in the OECD methodology. It is widely accepted that the US spend roughly 16% of GDP on healthcare and almost all other industrialized countries spend significantly less.

From the data available, if you look at just Medicare and Medicaid spending in the US, those programs alone would be able to pay for universal coverage in many countries with the same or better medical outcomes.

Or are you just arguing on ideology alone? If you decide to disregard good data and make decisions based on your beliefs and not on reality, there is nothing me or anyone else can say to make you change your mind. A closed mind is in effect a dead mind.

Re:Browser market share

[iserlohn]

We settled this question in the civil war once before. Is this where you are taking us?

The problem with the right-wing movement in the past decade is belief does not match up with reality.

Government may not be 100% efficient, nor is the free market. The idea is to make government work better (ie. smaller in some areas, more efficient in others). Instead of generalisations about government==tyranny and rejecting government, wouldn't your time be much better spent on how to influence government policies and legislation for the better?

If you feel that individuals don't have this power, think about where it all went. I would much rather have a government that I have some influence over by representation than have the same essential services (eg. defence, law, infrastructure) provided by a corporation that is completely opaque and driven by the profit motive.

Re:Browser market share

[iserlohn]

It wasn't a red herring, it was the "deflection". The right-wing media needed somebody to blame and with that they can paint the lenders as the victims.

In fact, these lenders know full well what they were getting into. The problem was that they were able to bundle these mortgages up and sell it on to unsuspecting investors. The returns on these products looked good with apparently low risk. But because these products are so complex, those models were proven to be made in fantasy la-la land and broke down when the housing boom started to collapse.

Re:Browser market share

[iserlohn]

First, ask yourself why is it so cheap to provide healthcare to your dog, but not for people.

1. The amount of regulation.
2. The amount of sophistication in procedures.
3. Liability in civil law.
4. Liability in criminal law.
5. Market forces, ie. people tend not let the vet put their mothers to sleep if they have a "incurable" ailment.

Most people in the industrialized world tend to expect a minimal standard of care which is unfortunately very high as people tend to not want to die. To provide this, there is a substantial amount of overhead that we have no way to get rid of at the moment.

BTW, the plural of anecdote is anecdotes, and not data. However, in your case it's not even an anecdote since you're comparing apples to pineapples.

Re:Browser market share

[iserlohn]

The top tax rate in the UK used to be 40%, but now there is an additional 50% rate band thanks to the bailout of the banks. You will need to make over 150K GBP or roughly 225K USD to get hit by this new tax band.

Taxation is unitary in the UK and you will not need to pay any state or municipal tax on income. There is an additional National Insurance contribution for social security benefits. A person earning an average wage will pay roughly a combined 25% of income tax + NI.

Not bad at all really.

Re:Browser market share

[iserlohn]

Most people in the UK have a GP (ie. a family doctor) which is paid for by the NHS and those with health insurance (many large employers provide this) go private only on specialist procedures.

In fact, usually the same surgeons performs the same surgery in the same hospital with the same staff. It's just that they get a better room and get to jump the queue. Instead of being paid by the government, these procedure are reimbursed by the insurance companies. This "dual" system has the side effect of making private medical insurance extremely affordable, but insurance companies still do it, as there is some money to be made.

Some providers have completely private facilities for everything, from frontline services to specialist procedures (eg. BUPA). However, this is uncommon and only a relatively small proportion of the population are enrolled in these plans. The reason? NHS care is very well regarded by the British and is found to be generally good despite the problems with some parts of the system. Any political party that campaigns on breaking up the NHS is in effect committing political suicide. The British would rather give up tea as the national drink than to give up their healthcare system.

Re:Browser market share

[Kazuma-san]

The fact that a breakdown has been "imminent" for more than a decade is telling.

Yes I know, and I partly quoted it for ironic value. But the reason, the system keeps dragging on and on without falling apart is, it is financed by the state. The state helps the public health care system with tax money and in turn amasses more and more debts. But the ridiculus amount of national debt in all the countries is a completely different matter. I don't think the system is inherently flawed. It is just not working right now. The recently elected secretary of health went imho in the right direction by attempting to reduce the costs of pharmaceutical products. I am not sure how good it will work, but it is a start.

Re:Browser market share

[jammer170]

Congratulations, you have a choice of health care in the United Kingdom. Here in the United States, out government healthcare system is monopoly healthcare. See, if you had actually read any of the two thousand page law passed in America, you would have read that the United States government is going to give people the "option" of accepting government health care, or else "fining" us for not accepting it (practically speaking, the government would never be able to provide funding for it unless they take money from everyone to pay for it - this must either be done through a medical care tax or a fine - but it is not a choice). Basically, either way, the American public will have to pay into the government health care system. If you have to buy it, you would be silly to not use it. So, after a time, the vast majority of people are going to use the government health care system. This in turn is going to cause a shift in the insurance industry from private health insurance to private health supplemental insurance. So because of market forces there eventually won't even be private insurance available, because there will be no demand.

So, moral of the story? America is not the United Kingdom. Government healthcare is not equivalent in all countries in all the world. Your health care system is not going to be anything like ours, so your anecdotal comments of what you have in the United Kingdom are irrelevant in discussing the American government health care. Of course, I can't really blame you for not reading the bill. After all, neither did our Congress nor our President. The only slight bit of peace I have is knowing I didn't vote for those idiots. Sure, it doesn't change the situation, but it makes me feel better.

Re:Browser market share

[Ash Vince]

Why is it that a bewildering number of smart people has been indoctrinated into believing that the "free market" is the only solution to everything?

Indeed - and it's also funny that these people seem to have no problem with the vast amounts of money the US Government spends on a socialised military.

Screw that, if the free market is so great then why did we just bail out all the banks. I thought the free market meant that businesses were allowed to fail, not come begging for tax dollars when they lost shit loads of cash on dodgy investments in overvalued property.

Re:Browser market share

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, I do not know what the system is like in all European countries, but in some (including mine, Finland), you get a certain subsidy, if you decide to go to a private clinic instead of a government-run one. The subsidy is not quite comparable to the cost of treating you in a government-run hospital, but it does mean that you don't quite pay twice. Furthermore, even if you choose to go to a private clinic, you get all the additional benefits as you would get from a government-run hospital. That is, paid sick leave as long as you need it, medication that costs nothing, free transportation and so on.

I have used both government-run and private services and IMHO private clinics aren't better but cost more to run since they have "unnecessary frills", such as one patient per room and TV sets whilst in government-run ones, you might need to share the room and have less entertainment (so all money is spent on care). However, mostly private clinics are used by those who want cosmetic surgery since that is obviously not taxpayer-funded.

Re:Browser market share

[Ash Vince]

You know what would be 'fair' to everyone. Have everyone pay taxes for healthcare and education. Just like today.
But if you choose not to use the public monopoly, you get a per capita voucher to spend wherever you want.

The new conservative government we have in the UK is looking at bringing in exactly the system you describe for education.

With regard to Healthcare though it is a little more complex as you will always be entitled to treatment under the state system, whereas private health insurers may well hike your premiums astronomically or simply refuse to cover you if you become seriously ill with something that requires long term treatment.

You should certainly be able to get money off you private health insurance or individual treatments but having that final fall back for if all else fails does have a monetary value. It is also worth remembering that private health insurance in Britain never covers certain medical treatments like childbirth which the person has a say in whether they need. Far fewer people use private clinics as they have to cough up the cash even if they have private emergency cover.

My main point though is simple and still stands, a public health care system is certainly not a monopoly. You can always use private healthcare if you are willing to pay. What it does do though is force private insurers to keep their premiums low since they are competing with a free system. That is certainly not a free market, but since I do not work for a private health care insurer I only gain from this so thoroughly support it :)

Re:Browser market share

[Just Some Guy]

Or even put IE6 on a terminal server and publish it with Remote Desktop / VNC / whatever. Don't let a handful of apps block the rest of your corporate upgrade schedule (AFAIK you can't get IE6 on Windows 7), but keep it available until you can wean off it.

Re:Browser market share

[Ash Vince]

If you have to buy it, you would be silly to not use it. So, after a time, the vast majority of people are going to use the government health care system. This in turn is going to cause a shift in the insurance industry from private health insurance to private health supplemental insurance. So because of market forces there eventually won't even be private insurance available, because there will be no demand.

This is all speculation. The truth is that many people will always buy private health insurance so when they are ill they actually get to recover in a nice hospital with their own room. In the case of non-emergency health issues, you also get treated instantly in a private hospital but that is not guaranteed under the NHS.

So, moral of the story? America is not the United Kingdom. Government healthcare is not equivalent in all countries in all the world. Your health care system is not going to be anything like ours, so your anecdotal comments of what you have in the United Kingdom are irrelevant in discussing the American government health care.

Your right, but the comment I replied to did not say anything about being specific to the US health system. It was talking about all private health care since he was replying to a post saying "many parts of the world have universal healthcare".

I saw a large amount of republican bullshit being spouted about our health system and it is obvious that many people in the US believed it despite a large percentage being pure fiction. I did talk about the US media for this reason since that is where I saw this poorly sourced drivel being broadcast.

I have never tried to talk about the US healthcare system since I have never used it yet. If I do I will most likely have decent cover anyway since I have damn good travel insurance for when I go overseas anyway.

My main complaint about the UK system is that it does not require this and will cover foreign citizens over here who need emergency treatment.

Re:Browser market share

[csubi]

>> A lot of doctors are quitting the profession specifically because they are *losing* money due to underpaying insurance

  You are confusing things there - the doctor has nothing to do with how much I pay for bloodwork, it's between me and the company doing the analysis.
    Second thing is, I had the chance to compare prices between continents. The $50 bloodwork billed $500 can be done with profit for ...$20. And I am not speaking about third world countries ( Hungary ).

>>>I don't know where you live but where I'm at there are ~10 different hospitals choose from. 30 if I expand my search to the next closest cities. There's as much competition in health as there is for grocery stores. I think the system works just fine.

    That is why the US spends almost 2x as much per capita on health care than any other country and has a terrible life expectancy.
      Also, choice does not mean that there is competition. Just look at broadband internet ;)

>>>So stop buying insurance and just pay cash

      I cannot because once I'd become uninsured, I'd be overbilled into oblivion for the simplest thing. This is the problem I have been speaking about, hope you'll get it this time.

Re:Browser market share

[scamper_22]

Yes you gain as you apparently support the monopoly public system.
Just because you can choose something else, does not make the primary system not a monopoly.
What distinguishes an abusive monopoly is its actions make it really really really inconvenient to choose an alternative.

So Microsoft threatening to cut off PC distributors from special pricing if they install firefox... that is an abusive monopoly.
Microsoft making it hard on 3rd party companies by not exposing their interfaces... that is abuse of monopoly.

The monopoly government system taking money from all of us... even those of us who do not wish to use it... is an abusive monopoly.
It makes it really really really improbable that the average person will pay twice and thus actually use the other service.

Those of us who wish to have choice and control over our medical affairs lose out.
Which I see does not include you... and that is fine.
If you're happy with the bureaucrats and government 'panels' making your healthcare choices... wonderful. It's a load off your back.

Just give those of us the equivalent per capita spending... and let me spend it how I want. I do not wish to use the states services.
Keep a certain amount of emergency room procedures as that in uncontrollable.

unlike you, I do not see private insurance as a benefit to evil corporations. Choice in my hands is my own power. It empowers the citizen.
Most of the western world will find out soon enough the dangers of government monopolies. Europe is already finding out and those paid from the public's taxes are not going to want to cut back.

In any case, I digress... at least marx and the rest could admit their goals.
Modern socialists sit around pretending like they aren't hurting anyone else.

pretty much over the browser wars

[kiddygrinder]

as long as other browsers have a big enough market share that MS has to continue play nice and follow standards it's not even that important.

Re:pretty much over the browser wars

[xtracto]

I love it here in Europe, just the other day a colleague of mine surprised me by wanting to install Ubuntu.

People here are less resistant to change and have a tiny bit more of patience to adapt to new things. They do not equate "new/unknown" with "crap" as other countries do.

Re:pretty much over the browser wars

[kthreadd]

People here are less resistant to change and have a tiny bit more of patience to adapt to new things. They do not equate "new/unknown" with "crap" as other countries do.

Do they? I have never noticed.

Re:pretty much over the browser wars

[Inconexo]

I guess it depends on which Europe are talking about. Here in Spain, people usually think that it's better something known to be bad that something good to be discovered (Más vale malo conocido que bueno por conocer).

Re:pretty much over the browser wars

[excelsior_gr]

Heh, quite ironic given the fact that Spain is pretty much responsible for discovering the "other" half of the world...

Re:pretty much over the browser wars

[Inconexo]

Well, that's the thing about discovering and conquering another continent: you don't feel the need to make history on another 500 years.

Re:pretty much over the browser wars

[realityimpaired]

I feel the need to point out that this is mostly spin. The Chinese discovered America about 3500 years ago, the Vikings did it about 1200 years ago, the English, the French, and the Italians all had explorers reach America before the Columbus. All in all, America was "discovered" about 20 times before Columbus set sail in 1492... it's just that the Spanish were better at publicity.

It's not even considered debated in archaeological circles... it's considered a fact that America was discovered *long* before Columbus set sail.

Re:pretty much over the browser wars

[binkzz]

Unfortunately, here in Holland people are very resistant to change. Especially companies and corporations.

Holland has long been a Microsoft beacon in Europe, and I personally dislike it a lot because the main reason people here use Windows for solutions is because "everyone uses it".

Re:pretty much over the browser wars

[IWannaBeAnAC]

Yeah but that is irrelevant to his point. The Spanish were the ones that brought back all the gold and became mega-rich from it.

They also squandered it all and are now one of the poorest countries in Europe. So let that be a lesson!

Re:pretty much over the browser wars

[maxwell demon]

And when did the ancestors of the native Americans discover America? I guess that was even earlier.

Re:pretty much over the browser wars

[Hijacked Public]

Yes earlier.

We call them the Clovis Culture and based on their point making they were most likely related to the Soultrean industry, so European. Mitochondrial DNA that 'native' Americans share with southern Europeans supports that. So pre-Spain Spainards set foot in the Americas, then left or were killed off or the like, then came back and rediscovered the place. But there were probably some pre-Clovis cultures, so maybe not.

Re:pretty much over the browser wars

[orasio]

I love it here in Europe, just the other day a colleague of mine surprised me by wanting to install Ubuntu.

People here are less resistant to change and have a tiny bit more of patience to adapt to new things. They do not equate "new/unknown" with "crap" as other countries do.

Europe is not a country, yet.

About your sig: Ubuntu actually means "I can't be bothered to configure Debian". Messing with Slackware was fun, but since I was going to let apt do all the hard work for me, Ubuntu seemed like the logical next step.

Re:pretty much over the browser wars

[knarf]

People here are less resistant to change and have a tiny bit more of patience to adapt to new things. They do not equate "new/unknown" with "crap" as other countries do.

I'm a European. I was born in the Netherlands and lived there until 2001 when I went around Canada and Alaska a bit to finally move to Sweden.

This out of the way may I point out that equating Europe with 'other countries' makes as much sense as equating Alaska with Louisiana? Europe is an extremely diverse part of the world where you'll find everything from nomadic reindeer herders in Sweden and Finland - because they are nomadic they have less interest in national borders - to wheeling-and-dealing money grubbers in the City in London to subsistence farmers in several former Eastern-block countries to... well, I guess you get the hint. It makes no sense to call Europeans 'less resistant to change'.

When it comes to Microsoft and its various products you'll find them heavily entrenched in some countries - like the Netherlands - but somewhat less so in others - Germany for one. Microsoft is a US company which has flaunted just about any law - US or otherwise - they thought to be in the way of their path to domination. They seem to have learned the political game in the US quite well and managed to evade punishment there. They have had less success here in that respect. Why is that? Has Microsoft simply not had the chance to buy the right people in the right places? Since European politics is much more diverse than the joke which the US calls democracy - voters get to choose whether they'll be kicked by a donkey or trampled by an elephant - it will be much harder to make the right political purchases, especially for a non-European company... ...unless they manage to buy someone in the European Commission of course.

This does not seem to have happened yet and the recent changes to curtail their executive powers lessen the danger posed by puppet commissars.

Diversity can be a nuisance sometimes but in this respect it is a strength.

Re:pretty much over the browser wars

[sznupi]

Actually, as far as economic lessons go regarding all that wealth - they happened much sooner. Dumping locally so much gold greatly devalued it, resulting is some mess.

Re:pretty much over the browser wars

[sznupi]

Only one type of tools is quite similar; no other similarities were found. And no evidence of ice/seafaring in Solutrean culture.

Mitochondrial DNA that you think of, haplogroup X, is indeed semi-common also around Mediterranean...but not only N. America has quite distant variants, also the intermediate ones are found in Siberia. Which fits perfectly with the rest of evidence about Bering crossing.

Re:pretty much over the browser wars

[sznupi]

Vikings, sure; but the rest you mention are far, far from "not even considered debated"...

(and not even really a "spin" or "better at publicity" - it's just that few places in Europe get hungry of new realms and whole continent became better integrated, with better communication)

Re:pretty much over the browser wars

[sznupi]

I wonder what this diversity, still mostly fragmented market, will turn up with in the end. Because conglomeration of course is taking place, but in a more gradual, more organic way - which can perhaps give some valuable lessons about the same process in less local / overseas processes. Perhaps in some contrast - large US entities, originating & benefitting from one fairly monolithic market, fairly often don't seem to really know what to do with some big overseas aquisitions...

But perhaps it would be better to just stop caring about all of this and move in with Sami...

Re:pretty much over the browser wars

[Simetrical]

I love it here in Europe, just the other day a colleague of mine surprised me by wanting to install Ubuntu.

Funny thing, but as an American, I run into other Americans on a regular basis who use Ubuntu. Like my best friend's fiancée told me that her whole family uses Ubuntu, and I field questions all the time on the message board I run from people (mostly Americans) who want to install Ubuntu. Maybe it's not so special to Europe?

Take a walk, Ballmer

[water-and-sewer]

It's getting harder and harder for Steve Ballmer to point to his resume and be able to justify his work over the past decade. While Microsoft has pushed out upgrades to all its software, the big picture is gloomy enough to make him sweat at upcoming board meetings: total loss to the ipod in the music market, total catastrophe in Microsoft's internally-competing music formats and platforms (Plays for Sure?), impending catastrophe in smart phones as RIM, Apple, and now Android eat his lunch, and growing irrelevance of desktop office software. Yes, they skirted disaster with Vista and pushed out Windows 7 which is generally well liked. But Microsoft is slipping behind in key growth markets and lack of vision and leadership is a big part of that.

If I were on the Board, I'd be telling Ballmer to go work on his golf game, and bring in new leadership. Microsoft has lots of talented developers and engineers. But upper management is sinking the ship.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[allcar]

Add to this their lack of success in pushing into the Enterprise Server market. .NET never had the impact they hoped. J2EE is still king of the application servers. SQL Server has made very little impact on the DB market. Oracle is King there. Windows Server has made few dents in the domination of UNIX. Solaris is still a force to be reckoned with. Open source has made far more impact in these areas - My SQL, PHP, Linux, but for the bigger enterprises, Larry's Empire is now becoming dangerously dominant, whilst Ballmer is largely an irrelevance and McNeely has gone completely. No doubt who won the battle of the CEOs.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[Anonymous Coward]

He is also irrelevent within the company, he is a laughing stock that just sends out 2 page emails every quarter.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[Tom]

What you point out is niche markets for MS. The core business is still office, followed by the OS. The xbox is also coming around slowly, if I remember correctly it is even starting to make back its investment, though at the current rate it'll be a century or two before it breaks even.

When some other office suit tops 50% market share, that is when the Microsoft ship starts sinking. And, as it goes with ships, once it starts sinking, the rest goes fairly quickly. Losing the document format lock-in would put a huge hole in the hull. Browsers, music format, smart phones - all that stuff is just water that's come over the railing. It sucks, but it doesn't endanger the ship.

As for Balmer - MS had already lost its edge when he took over. I'm quite sure he becoming the fallboy was part of the deal. Does anyone here really think Gates stepped down because he didn't like being boss anymore? He stepped down because he knew that the star was fading, and he had to build an image seperate from MS or he'd go down with it. All the good that the Gates Foundation does has the purpose of washing his image clean. Even that idea is stolen from the robber barons. (note that I don't want to diminish the good the foundation does. I just point out it's not pure altruism but has a purpose.)

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[allcar]

Office is critical and remains a strong product for them. Open Office / Star Office never really gained much market share, but it is looming irrelevance of the desktop that threatens office. Online apps (whether Google's or any other) are the threat here, and once again, MS has been slow to react.

When some other office suit tops 50% market share, that is when the Microsoft ship starts sinking. And, as it goes with ships, once it starts sinking, the rest goes fairly quickly. Losing the document format lock-in would put a huge hole in the hull.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[Anonymous Coward]

> When some other office suit tops 50% market share, that is when the Microsoft ship starts sinking.

Why 50%? Microsoft's browser lock-in started to collapse when Firefox was only at about 15%, some years ago. It is only now that Firefox has started to overtake IE in some areas (over 60% in Germany).

In those same areas that are not so much under Microsoft's thumb as other areas of the globe, "some other office suite" has reached about 20% market share.

http://www.webmasterpro.de/portal/news/2010/02/05/international-openoffice-market-shares.html

http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?blogid=14&entryid=2778

"What's interesting about these figures – particularly the high numbers in certain countries – is that it takes OpenOffice.org into the same kind of market-share territory that Firefox occupied a few years back."

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[DMiax]

No doubt who won the battle of the CEOs.

Jobs? If I have to name a CEO that would never be replaced it is him.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[Anonymous Coward]

growing irrelevance of desktop office software

How so? Not disagreeing but frankly I'm yet to see any mind blowing changes in this area to actually get enterprises to notice.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[Richard_at_work]

What planet are you on? .Net is big and getting bigger every year (in the past year we have been approached once for J2EE work, its been solidly .Net with a smattering of PHP, and these are not small jobs), SQL Server and Windows Server both enjoy increasing market share, with Oracle above and other offerings below.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[Tanaka]

I dont agree on the .NET thing. .NET is leaving J2EE for dust, and for good reason. And thats not including Mono, which is getting some serious commercial users now.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[master_p]

The music and smartphone markets are not the main Microsoft markets. Microsoft's game is at home and office desktops, office applications, development environment, database and servers. Microsoft is by far the dominant force in most of these domains.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[kikito]

The fact that your company only has had .net offers only means what it says: that your company has had such offers. Deriving from there that ".Net is getting bigger every year" is not a valid assumption; I could give a counter example pretty easily: my company hasn't had a single .Net offering since it was started.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[Inconexo]

Is that irony? Jobs sound as one that has a not so far time limit.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[Richard_at_work]

You are making a blatant assumption that we as a business do not know the market we are operating in, and that is a bad assumption to make - being approached is just one part of where our work comes from, and even when we go out into the market and talk to people they do not want Java, they want .Net. And that is in a large UK city with a huge financial and insurance presence, as well as a thriving new media community. Java just doesn't get asked for.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[rapiddescent]

What planet are you on? .Net is big and getting bigger every year

in terms of 000,000's spent - J2EE massively outweighs .NET. I work in large enterprise systems delivery and the few financial orgs that went for .NET for truly resilient financial systems have moved away. .NET is used in places for presentation tier front end for web services but not a lot else.

The london stock exchange problems with tradelect (see article here) demonstrated that even a well funded and supported closely by top MS engineers and consultants - the system could not scale or perform to enterprise standards. This sent a real message across the financial industry (here in the UK) with many architects shunning MS. I also had to do the same when my client, a large life assurer, is having to spend over £10m to replace a perfectly functioning MS VB6/ASP sales platform because there is no upgrade path to .NET and the windows 2003 systems that it uses will go out of support soon. The last thing we're going to do is give more business to MS - so it is currently being replaced with services on an open source ESB platform (with paid support of course). The IT people here have a hard time explaining to the business why we need to spend so much money to get no new business functionality.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[Richard_at_work]

Thats all very well and good, but the very top end of the enterprise market is not the *entire* market, and we (and every agency we know and trade work with, which is a lot of agencies) have a full order book of jobs in the mid 5 figure to mid 6 figure price range (thats UK money, so add 50% to whatever figure you are thinking to come to Dollar amounts), and they are all .Net with no Java out there. Quite frankly, I am not seeing the Java demand that Slashdot keeps harping on about - sure, you can pull big stories like the LSE out for these sorts of discussions, but that demand is not trickling down to the SME markets that is the bread and butter of most digital agencies.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[Tanaka]

.NET != Windows any more. Mono is a robust, fast, and well supported system for the running on backend UNIX based servers. For example take a look at what the online gaming industry are using it for like Second Life.
Look at the popularity of C# on StackOverflow.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[Tom]

Why 50%?

Arbitrarily chosen. Once you can't say "the majority of people use this" anymore, you will have to start thinking about document formats and interchange.

People are always lazy. As long as they have an excuse they believe themselves, they won't change.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that English?

Seriously, no matter how many times I read it I cannot determine the inner meaning/

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[drinkypoo]

Note that Linux continues to erode the server market (slowly, but continually) and that the home desktop market is shrinking in favor of smaller devices and set top boxes. The only STB Microsoft has is the Xbox 360 and the only handheld they've had for more than a second (not counting the plethora of windows mobile devices, which are already one of the least-favorites of the market and likely to be further deprecated as Microsoft unsuccessfully tries to mimic Apple) is the Zune, and their entertainment division is so far a massive failure when examined financially.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[rapiddescent]

sure, the mid and high end markets are different. It's difficult to say which is larger overall.

All I know is that if I went into a big investment bank player to quote for a FIX spec trading system or a life assurance actuarial calc engine with a .NET backbone - I'd be quietly shown the exit and told not to darken their doors again. I might use .NET or LAMP for the presentation tier - but not for the expensive bits.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[Radtoo]

Windows Server has made few dents in the domination of UNIX. Solaris is still a force to be reckoned with.

UNIX / Solaris? They're both rarely chosen, by now. See WP for a handful of market research results None is bound to be entirely accurate, but I think we can agree that Solaris and even UNIX is not really much of a "force to be reckoned with" anymore.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[Anonymous Coward]

> Arbitrarily chosen. Once you can't say "the majority of people use this" anymore, you will have to start thinking about document formats and interchange.

Suppose I am using OpenOffice, and I am interchanging documents with someone who is using MS Office, and we both forget to save to a common format and by mistake use the default format. In this circumstance I will receive a .docx format file and the other person will receive an ODF v1.2 format file. I will be able to read the file I get, but that other person using MS Office won't be able to read the file they receive.

Document formats and interchange are more of a problem for MS office users, and not so much for OpenOffice users.

Given a market share of 15% to 20% for OpenOffice, it has arguably reached the point even now where this is a real deficiency of MS Office, and it makes more sense in an environment where documents are interchanged to use OpenOffice and not MS Office.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[Just Some Guy]

Uh-huh. I bet you see a lot of financial organizations basing their infrastructure off Mono.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[westlake]

It's getting harder and harder for Steve Ballmer to point to his resume and be able to justify his work over the past decade. While Microsoft has pushed out upgrades to all its software, the big picture is gloomy enough to make him sweat at upcoming board meetings

You want the big picture:

MEASURED by profits, Microsoft trounces Apple and Google. In the most recent three months, Microsoft earned $4.52 billion, versus Apple's $3.25 billion and Google's $1.8 billion. Lost from view is what arguably is Microsoft's very best story -- its transformation into a powerhouse supplier of the specialized software that meets the complex needs of large corporations, what the trade calls selling to "the enterprise."

Microsoft's enterprise software business alone is approaching the size of Oracle. But despite that astounding growth, Microsoft must accept that, fair or not, victories on the enterprise side draw about as much attention as being the No. 1 wholesale seller of plumbing supplies. Microsoft won't receive the adoring attention that its chief rival draws with products like the iPad.

"Tech investors pay for growth," says Sarah Friar, an analyst at Goldman Sachs, who believes that those investors do not appreciate the durability of Microsoft's cash cows, Windows and Office. She has many positive things to say about Microsoft's ability to innovate, pointing in particular to the robust sales of server and database software, which are now almost equal in size to Windows revenue.

BRENDAN BARNICLE, a software analyst at Pacific Crest Securities...praised its enterprise software business, formally labeled "Server and Tools," as "an incredible business," accounting, he said, for about 24 percent of the company's revenue and with an operating margin of 40 percent. Even With All Its Profits, Microsoft Has a Popularity Problem

Twelve of the Top 100 Software Bestsellers at Amazon.com are editions of MS Office 2010 or the Win 7 OS retail boxed. MS Office Home & Student for the PC and the Mac are currently - and typically - #1 and #3.

There is not a single PC or console video game in the top 100 list.

These numbers are astonishing.

MS Office Professional 2010 is $10 if your employer participates in Microsoft's Home Use Program. $80 with student ID. Office Professional Academic 2010

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[Tanaka]

Why not? Plenty of C# developers around. Commercial support is available.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[Tubal-Cain]

Let me try:

It doesn't sound like Jobs has much time left.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[SmilingBoy]

Suppose I am using OpenOffice, and I am interchanging documents with someone who is using MS Office, and we both forget to save to a common format and by mistake use the default format. In this circumstance I will receive a .docx format file and the other person will receive an ODF v1.2 format file. I will be able to read the file I get, but that other person using MS Office won't be able to read the file they receive.

Unless you have complex documents, this is not true - MS Office (at least version 2010 I have in front of me right now) can read and write the ODF format. If I remember correctly, it even asked whether I want to use OOXML or ODF as default.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[shutdown -p now]

.NET never had the impact they hoped.

.NET has overtaken Java on number of job positions and/or number of new projects in many markets around the world. It might not be that way in yours, but don't mistake your local trends for global ones.

SQL Server has made very little impact on the DB market.

Actually, it's the most popular database for medium-sized enterprises worldwide (MySQL ripping everyone to shreds in cheaper segments, and Oracle holding large enterprise market securely).

Windows Server has made few dents in the domination of UNIX.

Unix has mostly been pushed out by Linux, so do you actually mean that?

In any case, you need to clarify the point of comparison. "Servers in general" is a very vague category. For Web servers, Apache, typically on Linux, does indeed have more than twice as much market share as IIS/Windows. But for Intranets, the number of AD deployments on Windows Server easily dwarf everything else. In fact, it's extremely common for companies to have internal networks on Windows, and external web servers on Linux. Best tool for the job and all that.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[shutdown -p now]

It really all depends on which market you're in, geographically. Some are leaning heavily towards .NET, some do to Java, some balance in the middle with slight leanings here and there.

In general, Java seems to be more visible in Europe, especially Eastern Europe and CIS, while North America is more dominated by MS development platforms (similar to the pattern described in TFA). I also recall .NET being practically everywhere with not Java in sight when I was studying in New Zealand. On the other hand, one place I was working at in Russia had both .NET and J2EE teams, each working on different projects, with specific technology typically requested by the customer.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[coder111]

Um, I'm a Java developer, and I had plenty of job OFFERS from various different agencies over last several years in London. It has been quieter in 2008/2009, but over last several months things have picked up immensely. So there's plenty of Java demand out there. And lots of banks and other companies I worked for (not all of them big) use java with great success. Java can be used for small/medium end of enterprise market as well.
--Coder

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[DMiax]

Agreed, but it is also the one for which shareholders would do anything... He goes down and everyone will ask himself "is Apple going to be ok?". Out of suspect of the new CEO the investments may decrease a little and with a little bad luck the company will be failing. The faith that the market has in Jobs is religious, it will be hard for anyone to replace him, no matter how smart he/she is.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[Anonymous Coward]

Ballmer becomes CEO in late 2000.

For the last full cycle without Ballmer at the helm, the fiscal year ending June 30 2000, they made $9B on revenues of $23B. http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2000/Jul00/Q00-4ERpr.mspx

In 2010 their profit is $18B on revenues of $62B. (Wikipedia)

If you showed me an organization as large and sprawling as Microsoft in 2000, then added in their antitrust woes, and told me that in a decade, they'd be making double the money selling mostly the same shit and have gotten all the legal gorillas off their backs, I'd have said you were crazy. Business isn't a zero-sum game: just because it has been a good decade for Apple and Google doesn't mean it hasn't been one for Microsoft too.

Niches, people, niches.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[kikito]

I'm sorry but I don't have the Faith that your arguments need in order to be accepted.

I'd be willing to study any piece of reliable, verifiable Evidence that you might have.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[Gaffod]

Microsoft Office is indispensable to any work place. What planet do you live on?

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[Inconexo]

Thanks. I wasn't very inspired and words didn't come. It's hard to use a foreign language at work.

Also, I think the word "sarcasm" would fit better than "irony" in that context. But I'm not sure.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[Tubal-Cain]

Also, I think the word "sarcasm" would fit better than "irony" in that context. But I'm not sure.

No, "irony" is the correct term, though I would have phrased it "Isn't that ironic?".

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[sznupi]

They were simply too late with Zune to change anything; at a time when mobile phones outsold dedicated audio players (of which, on the larer scale, iPod was never a majority, so not exactly a total loss - though it didn't matter much in regards to MS, in how they limited themselves mostly to the US with Zune) for 2 or 3 years already.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[Inconexo]

Ok. But I was not pointing the irony of the fact, but asking about the commenter being sarcastic.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[Tom]

I will be able to read the file I get, but that other person using MS Office won't be able to read the file they receive.

Unless the document is trivial, you will have trouble with the document. Remember that MS doesn't follow its own ISO standard.

Document formats and interchange are more of a problem for MS office users, and not so much for OpenOffice users.

Wrong. As long as they feel they are the majority and you are the odd one out, most MS office users will not even bother with a common format, they will simply expect that their format is "the one". If you have any troubles loading or saving it, they will see it entirely as your problem.

Re:Take a walk, Ballmer

[Tubal-Cain]

Oh. OK.

Corporate Browser

[Nerdfest]

I'm hoping the big change comes as corporations replace IE6. Moving to IE8 puts them in almost the same position they're in now 5 years down the road with respect to standards compliance, tie-in to the OS, etc, but it seems that's what most are doing. Perhaps some of them will have learned something.

Re:Corporate Browser

[houghi]

5 years? Most CEOs do not stay 5 years. So this won't be their problem. People want to make money now, not in 5 years. Shareholders want return now, not in 5 years.

Re:Corporate Browser

[JustLikeToSay]

Replace of IE6? In my dreams http://www.techwatch.co.uk/2010/08/02/uk-government-thinks-ie6-will-have-to-do/.

Re:Corporate Browser

[SmilingBoy]

It is possible to get rid of it. According to Statcounter, IE6 is at 2.18% in Germany now, decreasing steadily. I doubt any web developer targeting German users will lose too much sleep if his web site doesn't work properly in IE6.

Re:Corporate Browser

[shutdown -p now]

Moving to IE8 puts them in almost the same position they're in now 5 years down the road with respect to standards compliance

Not quite. IE6 didn't really conform to any standard, not even at the time it was released (though it was less of an issue back then). IE8 actually conforms to HTML4 / CSS 2.1. Yes, you'd want HTML5 5 years down the line, but a formal spec is still better than a bunch of ad-hoc rules and limitations determined by experiment.

Great for the competition

[Anonymous Coward]

or the other way around, who cares.

Opposite world wide trend?

[asnelt]

This is strange. A news article in Germany http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/0,1518,709769,00.html (german) which refers to Net Applications statistics states that it is actually the other way around. Though this seems to be the world wide statistic.

Re:Opposite world wide trend?

[PolygamousRanchKid]

A CEO is looking for a new CFO for his company. He invites an engineer, a mathematician and a statistician for a group interview. The CEO asks, "How much is two plus two?" The engineer pulls out his calculator, punches it in, and says, "Four!"

The mathematician goes to the whiteboard, and scribbles down a proof, and says, "This proves that two plus two is four!"

The statistician, leans forward to the CEO, and whispers, "How much do you want two plus two to be?"

Microsolt, Sun, Oracle, IBM, Dell, HP, SAP etc. all do this: They will create a different definition for what comprises their market, and then they all claim to be the market leader.

Re:Opposite world wide trend?

[tenco]

A CEO is looking for a new CFO for his company. He invites an engineer, a mathematician and a statistician for a group interview. The CEO asks, "How much is two plus two?" The engineer pulls out his calculator, punches it in, and says, "Four!"

The mathematician goes to the whiteboard, and scribbles down a proof, and says, "This proves that two plus two is solvable!"

The statistician, leans forward to the CEO, and whispers, "How much do you want two plus two to be?"

There, fixed that for you.

Re:Opposite world wide trend?

[garyebickford]

I've seen this in action at another company - they were gradually getting behind the tech curve, and their product lines were gradually getting trounced, one by one. The mantra at the company was they only wanted to be in markets where they have the biggest share and could control the market. Instead of figuring out what had to be done to succeed in those markets - and doing that - the market droids kept redefining the markets more narrowly until there really wasn't anything else left (and I was gone by then). Then they got bought.

companies

[Tom]

In Germany, Firefox has a 61% market share, while IE has only 25%.

And a huge part of that is companies that are suffering from Microsoft lock-in. Seriously, when I see people's private computers, be it friends or people at the airport, etc. - it is probably 80% or more Firefox. In most of the companies, however, IE is still the corporate standard, and quite often the only allowed browser.

Re:companies

[AlexiaDeath]

I don't know anyone who uses IE of their own will in these parts. The last person who I know did was my father and he is nearing 70. Using IE ended the last time I had to remove porn spam from his computer 4 or so years ago. He has been using Firefox ever since and he has even learned to use the no-script extension when he ventures into the wild parts of the Internet. Not bad for an old guy. Its the sharepoint intranet sites that keep corporate users at IE. Well, the not savy ones. The rest install IETab.

Re:companies

[Elektroschock]

Firefox portable anyone?

Re:companies

[Anonymous Coward]

it will change, because people until some time ago had the same browser both at home and at work, now, they have maybe IE8 or Firefox at home, see how much better they run, and when they go to work face the IE6 frustration daily. It's not the little employees that will make that decision, but the big ones, who will share the same experience. Simple human psychology. In short, it's just a matter of time, and these market share changes only hasten it.

Re:companies

[Lennie]

This is because of the deployment system and profile-settings for IE. Official Firefox doesn't have them. They are working on MSI's for Firefox 4 though. That's the first step.

Re:companies

[Double Drop]

Two words: Group Policy. Neither Firefox nor Chrome have officially supported ADM files and without them corporates can't manage (i.e. lock down) large numbers of users effectively. Without this critical component neither will achieve widespread corporate adoption.

Re:companies

[maxwell demon]

Firefox portable anyone?

Are employees generally allowed to run random software from USB sticks?

Re:companies

[realityimpaired]

It's actually quite trivial to set up a silent proxy with firewall rules that automatically redirect all network traffic on web ports through the proxy. Once all your web traffic is going through a proxy, you can control who can view what on the web with ease.

In other words, it's quite easy to lock down users' web experiences without the user ever knowing it's happening. It just requires a little more effort than most management types are willing to put in.

Re:companies

[Anonymous Coward]

aint that the truth!

Re:companies

[Anubis350]

Have you ever actually run an AD server?

I have, albiet a long time ago. The level of fine control you have over the clients, and IE, is fantastic, and far exceeds just "who can view what on the web with ease". Now, I was running the AD server for only ~90 users using 10 workstations for a small student group at college. I am by no means a MS guy normally so I imagine that convenience goes up exponentially in large corporate settings, and with admins who are more well versed in the minutiae of windows server than I was.

Re:companies

[ogdenk]

In most smaller environments there rarely exists a policy against this.... even when they are the ones who should be most concerned.... especially the ones with no on-site IT staff.

Re:companies

[Anonymous Coward]

companies that are suffering from Microsoft lock-in

The City of Munich is going thru this. The first big hurdle (which they have cleared) was replacing M$Office macros and templates. http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2005/09/5284.ars
(The next big hurdle is getting SAP's stuff to behave with a non-M$ OS or getting a replacement for the closed, proprietary stuff.)
The city's goal is to gain control of the source code for EVERYTHING they use.
They have their own spin of Debian. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux
(Progress report there on the city's conversion to all-FOSS; they are taking a very cautious, conservative approach WRT the timetable.)

The region of Extremadura in Spain was far more bold. They first converted over to FOSS apps under the payware OS--then in a single weekend switched the whole public sector over to a FOSS OS.
http://www.osnews.com/story/12611
Their spin of Debian is called LinEx. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GnuLinEx

...and, of course, there's the classic example from the previous century of a corp getting its tit caught in the wringer with payware licenses and a BSA raid and deciding to get off that junk post haste.
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-6488047_ITM
http://news.cnet.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.html

gewg_ (CAPTCHA: ragweed; How'd they know?)

Re:companies

[Elektroschock]

In the small environments you have a PC with no administrative lockdown. When administration and software management kicks in things get complicated. And where there is real software deployment, everyone is advised to use Firefox because they don't want to deal with IE security hell.

Re:companies

[ogdenk]

I've always used group policy even in the smallest environments when stuck in Windows-land.

Had to build some MSI packages to deploy Firefox but most folks are right, it is tougher to lock down via AD. Not really the fault of Firefox that they don't want to support a deployment system used only on one of the many platforms they support.

Re:companies

[Elektroschock]

No one needs MSI packages.

opera for the win

[bakamorgan]

I use opera instead. I find IE just as much security issue prone as IE.

Re:opera for the win

[cc1984_]

I use opera instead. I find IE just as much security issue prone as IE.

To offer a counter argument, from my personal experience I've found Opera to be as much of a security issue as Opera.

Re:opera for the win

[Anonymous Coward]

I find IE just as much security issue prone as IE.

Me too.

Re:opera for the win

[SlothDead]

The first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club.

Re:opera for the win

[bakamorgan]

LOL ment firefox. oh well

Depends on the source WAY too much...

[Kireas]

I looked up browser shares yesterday, the w3schools collection of stats tells yet another story - it even shows chrome as picking up a lot recently. Personally, I'd go with "IE still on it's slippy slope, Firefox taking over, Chrome might be next".

Re:Depends on the source WAY too much...

[Anonymous Coward]

W3schools stats are only about browser usage shares of the visitors of that site. Most people don't visit their site, so the stats are fairly useless.

Re:Depends on the source WAY too much...

[Anonymous Coward]

> W3schools stats are only about browser usage shares of the visitors of that site. Most people don't visit their site, so the stats are fairly useless.

There are a number of sites that keep their own stats. Ars Technica, a fairly respectable technology site, is one such.

Ars Technica recently published this graph from Net Applications stats:
http://static.arstechnica.com/assets/2010/08/browser_share_0710-thumb-640xauto-15643.png

Ars Technica's own site traffic is wildly different:
http://static.arstechnica.com/ars_share_0710.png

Hmmmm. When a a large number of independent sites report visitors using Firefox as a much higher percentage than Net Applications figures, one has to regard Net Applications figures as highly, highly suspect.

Re:Depends on the source WAY too much...

[drinkypoo]

I looked up browser shares yesterday, the w3schools collection of stats tells yet another story - it even shows chrome as picking up a lot recently

...among web developers. There, fixed that for you. w3schools will tell you that their stats are not representative of the internet as a whole, or even as a hole.

Re:Depends on the source WAY too much...

[Kireas]

Exactly my point. It all depends on where you get the data from.

coverage, please?

[FuckingNickName]

Is this home users? Business users? How's the data collected?

My experience of home users that the majority certainly aren't downloading alternative browsers. My experience of business users is that you get some IT types hating IE but others wanting the enterprise integration IE offers, the balance being those apathetic who leave IE on. So, assuming the stats are representative, what is triggering this switch?

Re:coverage, please?

[AlexiaDeath]

IF you have a family member doing your IT support you will have Firefox. With adblock(very important, most crap happens by "OOOH, SHINY! *click**click**click*") and possibly noscript if you can be taught to operate it. Why? Because the support person values his/her free time spent doing the IT equivalent of manure shoveling. The users that can afford to go to a computer repair shop for crap cleaning stick with IE, because the cleaning guy wants to eat too and certainly is not going to tell the customer that he can be almost redundant...

Re:coverage, please?

[FuckingNickName]

I've done the extended family + friend IT support thing and left some people on IE. Neither these guys nor the ones with FF seem to end up virus-laden once I've taken over the job. They've learnt to follow my eloquent speeches about how to behave online and enjoyed an appropriate level of anti-malware installation.

Today it's almost impossible to find straight up-to-date IE on a machine with good anti-malware installed being used as a vehicle for automagic malware installation. The guys who download a trojan .exe using IE will do the same with FF. The guys who leave Javascript enabled in Acrobat Reader will find the same setting in either browser.

tl;dr User education and least privilege all the way.

Re:coverage, please?

[AlexiaDeath]

User education and least privilege do work. But Ad-block will keep them form a lot of accidental damage of the stupid class.

Re:coverage, please?

[AlexiaDeath]

Example: Those Trojan infested smiley packs.

Re:coverage, please?

[Wowsers]

IF you have a family member doing your IT support you will have Firefox.

I am the guy the family turns to for IT stuff. I installed Firefox on one of their machines, and they thought if IE works then why bother with Firefox. When they use my machine they use Firefox, because that's all I allow them to (in Linux). It is installed with Flashblock / Adblock and a few other things. They then moan that the website is broken. It is VERY difficult to explain to people that no, the web browsing experience is fixed.

After explaining the point of all those blocking add-ons, they say they don't want to keep on clicking on a site to "white list" it, they just want a browser to work straight away, so they stick to Internet Exploder. I have not managed to get anyone to change their mind, they are hung up on the concept of white listing popular sites, and having to click to enable a site if it only uses Javascript or Flash.

I suspect that my family is not atypical.

Re:coverage, please?

[sznupi]

Chrome seems to be utilised more and more in that role recently...

Re:coverage, please?

[AlexiaDeath]

Flashblock is going too far for a casual user. Just like noscript, they need to understand it before they are willing to use it. Adblock is near invisible and just cuts ddown a lot of the bad stuff without breaking anyting.

Re:Europeans aren't trained well

[Anonymous Coward]

exactly!

americans are so thoroughly brainwashed by the 'capitalism is good and god created the earth' mantra, that they just buy whatever you sell them without being critical. really a paradise for someone, who wants to make a profit. you should also be thankful to america's almost non-existant public school education. people, who can't calculate are sure to be better customers!

Not such a good news

[Yvanhoe]

It is important that a bad browser has a big share : a whole ecosystem of ad-financed websites rely on people being unable to use adblock-like filters. The FOSS fan in me yays at firefox gaining more adherents but the cynical in me thinks that he may see more sites becoming less profitable.

Re:Not such a good news

[AlexiaDeath]

Those sites should not make their ads annoying. Google text adds are fine most of the time, unless page has crapton of them. Discrete page fitting ads are fine as-well. But you cant really live without an ad blocker on today's web where certain ads scream at you and prevent you from focusing on the content. It's visual mostly, but some people still haven't gotten the memo about self playing voice adds being a bad thing...

Re:Not such a good news

[daem0n1x]

I don't give a fuck. I use adblock, of course, so the Internet looks completely different to me than it looks for everyone else.

I hate ads and would be perfectly happy without them. I'm not in the business of providing revenue for websites. If there were more of me the current business model would disappear, but not the Internet. They would just find another business model.

Re:Not such a good news

[Inconexo]

Sites must find ways to profit. The mission of a browser (or any app) is providing the best user experience, and ad block is part of this. You cannot stop technology development and adoption just because some guys don't know how to make money.

Re:Not such a good news

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, then websites would end up being pay to enter.

Re:Not such a good news

[miffo.swe]

Once many of the sites started using pop-under, pop-over, site-flash, blinking ads, ads with sound and in general just plain ruined any web experience they made it almost compulsory to have an adblocker. At first because of lack of bandwidth but nowadays because they make the ads so utterly annoying.

Sadly HTML5 will make it pretty hard to block ads and easy to embed them deep into the site, one of the reasons i think corps all over the net seems to spunk their pants anytime anyone mentions HTML5.

Re:Not such a good news

[fast turtle]

Piss on them. I don't use an adblocker, I place em in my hosts file from my proxy server app called Cookie Cop. If they try to set a cookie and I don't need em, then I look into what site was trying to do that. If it's an advert or other garbage like intelitext, I block em permanently because I have no use for the idjits.

Re:Not such a good news

[daem0n1x]

I don't need Viagra. Your mother never complained.

Re:Not such a good news

[Anonymous Coward]

And what would you do, smartass ? Pay to read slashdot news ??

Re:Not such a good news

[Anonymous Coward]

If there were more of me the current business model would disappear, but not the Internet. They would just find another business model.

Yeah, probably the one where you actually have to pay for content.

Re:Not such a good news

[shutdown -p now]

IE has had adblockers since extension support was added to it - in IE7, if I remember correctly? It's just that most people using it don't know that such things exist. There's no reason to believe that a lot of those same people switching to Firefox will suddenly discover and start using AdBlock.

Re:Not such a good news

[shutdown -p now]

I think GP's point is that, right now, people using adblockers are "freeriding" in a sense that they have free access to and use resources that are primarily sponsored by ad views of those poor schmucks who use bare-bones IE. If you are one of the "freeriders", this situation is the sweet spot - you get all the benefits and no cost. But as more people discover adblockers, we'll get away from it eventually.

This doesn't run contrary to your - absolutely correct - assertion that 1) this is inevitable, and 2) it's not unethical.

Re:Not such a good news

[sjames]

I do run adblocker, but I started with nothing blocked. If I HEAR and ad or see one jumping around like a chihuahua on meth, I block the entire ad server forever. Same deal if I find an ad to be insulting, deceptive or personally offensive. Don't wanna be blocked? Be truthful, tasteful and polite. Want me to see ads on your site? Choose an ad partner that understands truthful, tasteful and polite.

I'm tired of ads and the news making me wonder if God was perhaps a bit hasty with that rainbow promise.

Re:Not such a good news

[sznupi]

That would assume /. actually has ads... (like somebody else put it once - it explains how /. can take ad offers even from MS, etc.; almost nobody will see it anyway, but the money gets paid)

Re:Not such a good news

[sznupi]

Might be not such a big of a problem - if things like UI content blocker in Opera work fine now, they shouldn't have many problems with HTML5. Especially since most people will not play with it.

Re:Europeans aren't trained well

[Xamataca]

....they immediately charge back if the service is not up to par, etc. etc. It's a hell dealing with Europeans.

bloody scrooges!!! what the hell they think they're doing with their money?!?!?!?!

FF

[Elektroschock]

I didn't want to install software on my win7 running netbook but IE annoyed me so much, it became usable and smooth only after installing Firefox.

Today the first thing you do, you simply install Firefox, don't use IE, it is a pain.

Forced Browser Choice

[Xarius]

Could this be highly related to the fact that in Europe, as part of an anti-trust settlement, when you first log into a new Windows machine you are presented with a choice of internet browsers and no longer default to MSIE?

Re:Forced Browser Choice

[Lennie]

No, this has always been the trend. The settlement didn't have a big impact as I see it.

Re:Forced Browser Choice

[dag]

Nope, the Firefox usage numbers have always been higher in Europe than elsewhere. This has been a tendency for years. And Germany also has a historical aversion for Microsoft software and was in the past a big Linux proponent (think SuSE) and StarOffice (now OpenOffice) was bigger than Microsoft Office for years IIRC. I wouldn't be surprised if also OS/2 had a larger following to elsewhere (or at least US).

All this predates any anti-trust settlement, but I am sure that change will make a difference too, but the trend was always present.

Re:Forced Browser Choice

[Kireas]

Oddly enough, in all my Windows 7 installs, I've NEVER seen that browser choice window. Ever. Once. In the UK, by the way, which is part of Europe, last time I checked.

Re:Forced Browser Choice

[CrashandDie]

How many people actually install Windows these days? Most corporations have a ghost image they roll onto every laptop, and I wouldn't be surprised most small tech firms do the same. Leaves Dell and supermarket computers, which are usually not used by the brightest of techies.

I'm guessing that I'd choose for "Microsoft" rather than "Mozilla" or "Opera" if I were to select a question I don't understand in the first place -- just because there's Microsoft branding all over the screen.

Re:Forced Browser Choice

[maxwell demon]

I wouldn't be surprised if also OS/2 had a larger following to elsewhere (or at least US).

I wouldn't be surprised either. I bought a computer with OS/2 preinstalled in Germany, in 1995. Preinstalled by default, not as special wish. From the (AFAIK) largest German computer seller of that time (Vobis). It also had Star Office preinstalled.

Re:Forced Browser Choice

[icebraining]

I installed an update once which in the description said it had the choice dialog. It didn't show up because I already used a different browser as default.

Re:Forced Browser Choice

[daveime]

Well it stopped the EU from extorting money from Microsoft. Never mind, they still have ongoing antitrusts with Google and Oracle to keep the coffers filled (and Greece in the black).

Funny how the customers / businesses were the ones who felt the pain, yet Brussels gets to keep all the money for themselves.

Re:Forced Browser Choice

[Zumbs]

More likely it is because Europeans are more distrustful of large coorperations than Americans and, thus, more likely to go looking for alternatives. Also, Europe has a significantly stronger trade union movement and politcal left, who are more inclined to use and contribute to Open Source usage and development.

Re:Forced Browser Choice

[sznupi]

Yeah, keep telling yourself that - it's not like the EC fines mostly, by far, European companies; and how fining large overseas ones gets more news coverage...

The amounts "extorted" are a pocket change even for most national budgets of EU countries, also for Greece, nvm the EU budget. But of course companies keeping more of the money obtained illegally, by abusing the market, is a fine thing - after all, the "Brussels" surely keeps any incoming funds (those from memberstates absolutely dwarfing any other) to themselves...nope, nothing happens with those funds afterwards.

Re:Forced Browser Choice

[Kireas]

Hmm. So it doesn't show if you have a default browser?

That's a workaround for the anti-trust thing then - IE is the default default browser after all...

Re:Forced Browser Choice

[icebraining]

No, it doesn't show if you have a different browser than IE as default, as I said.

Re:Forced Browser Choice

[Kireas]

Hmm. Nonetheless, never seen the stupid thing, even on fresh installs and updates WITH IE as default.

Most strange.

Only in Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you noticed that Europe has a much bigger uptake of Linux, Firefox and in the older days Amiga?
I've often wondered if this is Europe being "open minded"....

I would love to be able to say the same about Australia...

AC

Re:Only in Europe

[Rockoon]

Its that Europeans (on average) dont upgrade their hardware as often. This leads to increased specializations.

Americans jumped off the C64 bandwagon long before the Europeans did, and it happened again with Amiga and IIgs.

Re:Only in Europe

[sznupi]

Could be a positive, for once, of still fragmented market. Might be quite a bit harder to control it, independent movements more easily gaining prominence.

Re:Only in Europe

[Simetrical]

Have you noticed that Europe has a much bigger uptake of Linux, Firefox and in the older days Amiga? I've often wondered if this is Europe being "open minded"....

I would love to be able to say the same about Australia...

Or maybe it's just because they're anti-American and anti-corporate. Microsoft, Apple, etc. are American corporations, while Linux, Firefox, etc. are not-for-profit and thoroughly international. The seventh Halloween Document is the results of a survey conducted by Microsoft, and one of the findings is that a major reason for favoring Linux is as "an alternative to Microsoft". 61% of French respondents, 37% of Germans, and 35% of Swedes gave this as their top reason for supporting Linux. Not that it works better, or costs less, they just hate Microsoft.

Americans, on the other hand, are much more pro-corporate, and (duh) pro-American. This open-source stuff sounds suspiciously hippie and foreign. Australia is a pretty conservative and pro-American nation too, so the same might apply.

In fact, what's possibly the most pro-open source country in the world? Venezuela. You know, run by Hugo Chávez, who doesn't get along well with America. Is it a big surprise that they don't want their entire computing infrastructure dependent on Americans?

The next time anyone comes up with an explanation that makes them or those they admire (e.g., Europeans) look good, try thinking up a more cynical explanation. It will probably be more correct.

Re:Europeans aren't trained well

[Jedi Alec]

Really, selling online I've noticed that Europeans are terrible consumers. They don't listen well to our support staff, they immediately charge back if the service is not up to par, etc. etc. It's a hell dealing with Europeans.

If you're looking to make money, honestly, invest in US consumers first. Much easier to part them from their money and to convince them not to cancel/buy more.

So what you're saying is that we're less gullible and more demanding? Why thank you, that's really nice of you.

I'll let you get back to assraping ignorant 'merkins now ;-)

If it didn't happen in America, it didn't happen.

[Colin Smith]

Simple.

Ok, so Americans only make up 5% of the world population, they make up for it in consumption.

 

Firefox market share drops as IE makes slender gai

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/08/02/browser_market_share_july/

Mozilla's Firefox has lost market share against Google's young pretender Chrome browser for the third month in a row.

According to NetMarketShare's latest stats, Firefox's share of the global browser market slipped under 23 per cent in July.

  Meanwhile, Microsoft's Internet Explorer saw its usage share rise a slender 0.42 per cent last month. It's up about one per cent since May, the stats firm noted.

"This is the second month in a row of global gains for Internet Explorer and the third straight month of gains for Internet Explorer 8 in the United States. The gain comes at the expense of Firefox (-.9%) and Chrome (-.08%)," said NetMarketShare.

Apple's Safari broke the five per cent barrier for the first time this year after languishing around the 4.5 per cent mark for most of 2010.

Internet Explorer, down some five per cent on September 2009 figures, topped out the list with a 60.74 per cent worldwide market share for July.

Chrome saw a small dip in global usage last month, and currently stands at 7.16 per cent of browser usage globally.

But Google's own surfing tool's popularity has blossomed in little over a year since its launch. The browser jumped ahead of Safari to take the number three spot in December last year.

In effect, the current state of play in the browser wars remains pretty much unchanged, then. Down the line it's fair to surmise that Chrome will make some gains, perhaps at the expense of Firefox. At the same time, it's unlikely that IE usage will see any major drops or jumps either

related to spam levels

[Ptur]

Could the browser marketshare be related to spam levels? US is a much bigger spammer, meaning more zombie computers. Easier hacked due to running IE?

And that is going to get worse

[Sycraft-fu]

If Oracle keeps acting like retards. I work for an engineering college at a university. If you know anything about engineering they it'll come as no surprise we are a Solaris and Windows shop. Solaris has a heavy legacy, it was doing high end work before other things could, and even today there are products that are Solaris only (though they could be ported to other OSes, they just aren't). While I won't say Solaris is problem free, I see the value in it. There is a difference between a real enterprise UNIX and Linux, loathe though Linux heads might be to admit it.

However we are currently in the process of getting rid of as much of it as we can. We are cutting it down to 4 essential servers and that number will likely go down further, perhaps to just one. Why? Because Oracle has decided to be complete fucks when it comes to licensing. So you already pay heavy maintenance on these SPARC systems. We could buy a new x86 server per year for the cost of maintenance on most of these things. Now that's not enough, they want to charge for Solaris patches, and they want to charge a lot. Oh, and should you ever stop paying they not only do you no longer get patches you are required, and I'm not making this up, to UNINSTALL all patches you've installed.

That's right, they are extorting you: You have to pay a yearly per server fee, or have a vulnerable system.

Well fuck that. We are getting rid of that shit post haste. Going to be Windows and Linux for as much as we can do. In the end I expect we'll need a single SPARC system to run the few apps that run on nothing else but that's it.

Guess what? If Oracle continues strategies like that with regards to other products, you'll find that MS will just gain more marketshare.

Re:And that is going to get worse

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like Oracle is really changing their business model from a forward-looking one to the Computer Associates model: a legacy system that you pay through your nose to run until you finally make the effort to change to a more reasonably priced environment.

What about the holidays ?

[dag]

How about taking into account the holiday season ? I'd be interested to compare this with the trends for June, July, August and September the previous years, as I expect that browser-usage depends on sunny weather conditions, holiday-trips and people in the office browsing more with less work on their hands ? Maybe ?

On a global level this may mean not that much, but a 1% to 2% fluctuation could be addressed by this. So maybe we should wait until September or October before making any conclusions...

Change happens when people are unhappy enough

[erroneus]

Seems clear that the people of Europe are generally unsatisfied and I am willing to bet that other changes, not related to Microsoft or MSIE are occurring at the same time and I would venture to guess that it is anti-American at its hearts. Not that I blame the people of Europe in the least. In a way, it might help the people of the U.S. become better people.

Re:Change happens when people are unhappy enough

[icebraining]

If my experience counts (I live in a small country in Europe), people are not anti-US, not by a long shot. And if they were anti-US, they'd use other OS, not just switch browsers.

Re:Change happens when people are unhappy enough

[moronoxyd]

You really shouldn't try to pin everything on anti-Americanism.
If anything, people here in Europe like the US more since the end of the Bush era (even if many of us probably expected mor from Obama than he delivered).

If we shun the products of American companies, it's not because they're American, but because their products or their attitude sucks.

Re:Change happens when people are unhappy enough

[shutdown -p now]

Coincidentally, Linux is more popular in Europe than it is in US.

Re:Change happens when people are unhappy enough

[Radtoo]

I believe that politically, the average European indeed does not like many of the things the US government (most strongly the legislative branch, but also the executive and judicative) did in the last decades. I might also add whatever US government decisions are disliked by Europeans, the sentiment is generally in line with the rest of the World, often including the majority US citizens at a later point in time. But I do not think this affects consumer behavior very much, because overall, the USA producing useful things and trading them with the EU is perceived as a very good thing and in no way necessarily tied to things that cause offense. Specifically, I simply see the relevance of this change in the browser market this way:

The EU, taken as a whole, is the worlds largest economy, the largest trade partner of the USA, and its consumers have very similar needs. The "product" Firefox became more popular there for what I think are very often practical reasons (features provided by the browser or plugins), so I say there is a really good chance the same will happen in the USA.
Granted, Microsoft does probably suffer from image problems, but it is surely not simply because they're an US American corporation. All other US corporations -even the ones in the same industry sector- seem pretty much unaffected.

Re:Change happens when people are unhappy enough

[bartok]

Except that Mozilla is a US company so your theory doesn't make sense.

That and IE is just old

[Sycraft-fu]

Well, old in the computer world at any rate. IE 8 came out in March of last year. It more or less has not been updated since then. It's been patched, of course, and gotten some compatibility view updates and such but the browser, the rendering engine, all that is nearly a year and a half old.

Lot has changed since then, there are new features people want that IE does not offer. Stagnation can cause people to switch. I switched from Netscape to IE back in the day for that reason. Netscape hit 4.7 and just stopped. IE continued rapid development. Same reason I switched to Firefox.

So we'll see, this may change back when IE9 comes out. Depends on when that makes it out, how good it is, what FF is doing then and so on.

It also may depend on if they introduce an easier plugin architecture. One of the things people love about FF is the plugins you can get. IE is just as extensible, possibly more so, but much harder to do. As such, less people actually make the plugins and they are harder for users to manage.

If IE9 is a good browser with a good plugin interface, it may win converts back. It is going to support hardware acceleration, which is pretty slick. FF is too, of course, but who knows when it'll be final, or how good a job it'll do.

Re:Europeans aren't trained well

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you seriously suggesting the reason Windows is so popular amongst regular users is because it's not free?

IE up, firefox down

[shird]

And on the same day is this story about IE share going up, and firefox down:

http://www.neowin.net/news/ie-usage-grows-in-july-firefox-share-declines

Goes to show you really can't take any of these findings seriously.

Re:IE up, firefox down

[tenco]

Goes to show you really can't take any of these findings seriously.

No. TFA is about market share in Europe - yours is about worldwide market share.

Re:Europeans aren't trained well

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason Windows is so popular is because you cannot legally get it for free, yet you can get it illegally for free. The former gives people a sense of quality (ha!), while the latter ensures they actually go get it.

Mod parent up please

[Anonymous Coward]

Oracle is seriously screiny us around as well.
I hate to say this but DB2 looks more attractive from a pricing point of view every day.
That coupled with the insance price increases in WebLogic and Solaris, makes us seriously consider not buying anything more from Oracle/BEA/Sun.

We are already moving many critical systems to Linux on X86-64 Blades (Currently HP but maybe IBM in the future).

Oracle don't give a toss. All they want is more and more every month.

Enemy

[nOw2]

So when does Firefox become the big corporate enemy that everyone hates?

Re:Enemy

[correnos]

It won't be becoming corporate in the foreseeable future, but if IE really bites the dust then Firefox could be seen in the light of slow and memory-leaking. We'll see if FF4 fixes this.

I'll stick with my chromium and see what happens.

Re:If it didn't happen in America, it didn't happe

[commodore64_love]

And debt. $130,000 per US home. Is there any country higher than that?

Re:If it didn't happen in America, it didn't happe

[PseudonymousBraveguy]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but Europe is a bigger market than the US.

Re:If it didn't happen in America, it didn't happe

[Chrisq]

Is that just personal or sum of state and personal debt. If its the latter then we can

Au contrair, mon ami!

[pizzach]

I believe the slashdot crowd has already debunked these people effecting the numbers numerous times. People who don't have a browser can't get a browser to get on the internet. Furthermore, this must have caused all of the nuclear plants in Europe to blow up leading the continent to a fate not unlike Atlantis.

And even in the unlikely event a there were number of refuges... the sample group would be too small for anything meaningful plus correlation does not necessary equal causation. Many would be likely using other people's computers that have had less radiation seep into them.

In conclusion, I think I can modestly speak for all of slashdot when I say 'hogwash'.

Re:Au contrair, mon ami!

[Anonymous Coward]

> People who don't have a browser can't get a browser to get on the internet.

I had a system once that came without a browser.

I overcame it by opening a command prompt and typing this (without the quotes): "sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install firefox".

It took just a minute, and my browser-less system now had a great browser.

Neat, hey!

If this doesn't work on your system because it is a less powerful Windows system, here are the slightly more complicated steps required for you to do something similar:

http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/browser/installfirefoxwithoutie.html

Europe for Freedom...

[Anonymous Coward]

... and self solving of problems. Whereas America relies on outsourcing to India/China even to choose a dress or book a plane, the average European seems to like do more and more by itself.

Whereas America prefers complete, external made solutions that 'just work', Europe like the freedom to tweak the details. Think of not only IE vs Firefox but also Gnome vs KDE for example, or iPhone vs a self installed Android.

It goes about trust, the one side trusts to leave too much in the hand of others and on the system (think of courts of justice), the other side doesn't but looks more critical to others and less naive about the system. I'm talking of course about mainstream people, not the niches or all the exceptions.

What above all is in the center of everything is freedom. True freedom also from marketing, not the one advertised on the media.
Firefox is more free. Plain and simple. Who chooses that on the one side of the Atlantic knows that concept.

Already there

[synackpshfin]

That happened a while ago in Slovenia.
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.iprom.si%2Fnews%2F2086%2F25%2FBrskalnika-Internet-Explorer-in-Firefox-po-priljubljenosti-izenacena.html&sl=sl&tl=en

Re:If it didn't happen in America, it didn't happe

[commodore64_love]

$130,000 is the public debt of the government.

The average personal debt is about $80,000 per US home. Total would then then be $210,000 public plus personal debt. That exceeds the UK and probably every other civilized country.

And MSSQL is a real contender too

[Sycraft-fu]

You can get some amazingly high end MSSQL servers these days. I've never had occasion but I do have a couple friend who work at places that do. You can get an HP Superdome 2 with 2TB of RAM and MSSQL will use it, given a large enough database. When you get the Datacenter versions of Windows and SQL Server you find that it has all the heavy hitting features you expect from a high end database. It scales to obscene levels and can handle massive reliability requirements.

I'm told that Oracle can go further still... But then how many people need that? For most people, even though with very high end needs, MSSQL is a real contender. Nobody is going to call it cheap, but then it is cheaper than Oracle and MS doesn't fuck you on pricing or support. You pay a hefty fee for Windows and MSSQL, but that's all you have to pay and you are guaranteed updates for a certain period of time, which they may choose to extend (Windows is generally supported for 10 years minimum from release, SQL server for 9 years).

Of course as you noted there's also DB2, and for lower end applications free stuff like MySQL and Postgres.

ah

[buddyglass]

Way to look on the bright side, Firefox.

Theory

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it that a bewildering number of smart people has been indoctrinated into believing that the "free market" is the only solution to everything?

Maybe those people are just quicker to realize (or admit) that government is nothing but a glorified business, and like any other business, their primary goal is to generate profit for those with a vested interest in the business. Maybe they've actually been following the money, and observed that government is motivated by profit every bit as much as a mega-corporation. Except, of course, that no mega-corporation holds the unique ability to employ coercion as its means to generate profit.

Is it any wonder they don't trust government?

Have you ever set up a transparent proxy?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever set up a transparent proxy? No need to configure each machine individually. Just all port 80 traffic is routed through to your proxy.

Such work is simplicity itself as well: set up your DHCP to return a set of variable/value pairs and you can set your network however you want.

NOTHING to configure for each installation. Just set your server with the right rules.

AD server is a hammer looking for a nail. And you're getting screwed.

Re:Have you ever set up a transparent proxy?

[Anubis350]

You do realize you can configure more than just web traffic with AD, right?

Re:Have you ever set up a transparent proxy?

[realityimpaired]

You do realize that using a transparent proxy in no way actually precludes using AD to set up fine-grained policies for the actual system use, and only addresses the Internet part of the equation?

You still want to set up system policies, roaming profiles, etc.. I'm simply pointing out that, for the Internet/Intranet side of things, there are less intrusive ways of accomplishing the same task, and ways that would allow you to let your users have the freedom to choose which browser they want to use.

Re:Have you ever set up a transparent proxy?

[Anubis350]

Heh, trust a /. thread to put me on the side of defending MS ::rolls eyes::

I think the point all the way up above that Double Drop was trying to make, the point that I was trying to make as well later on, is that having everything easily centrally configurable makes things *easier*. Why else do you think PITA software like Centrify is so popular (which, btw, uses AD as it's backend, and exports to everything else from that AD database)?

Yes, you can deal with web traffic at the proxy/firewall/gateway, and you should since in a large environment your network *is* going to be to some extent heterogeneous, but configuring it in AD is another tool in the arsenal, and being able to do *scriptable policies about specific users* without playing annoying games with a proxy box is useful too, as is customizing look and feel, enforcing search engine pref, etc. All from one centralized location, conveniently the same one that most of the rest of the network is probably configured from.

I'm kinda annoyed I ended up in the position of MS shill here, most of my work is on large linux clusters, my workstations are either osx or linux and my laptop is a macbook pro, I avoid using windows as much as possible BUT, they have their strengths, particularly in corporate deployment. And firefox, without AD integration, can't compete there.

Re:If it didn't happen in America, it didn't happe

[Chrisq]

OK you've got us beat. Ours is only £ 113,742 which is 181 202.38 US dollars

Actual StatCounter data says different

[kubajz]

I actually cannot see how the author made his point based on available browser usage data. TFA uses two sources:

1. Net Applications: "So please take the NetApplications data with a grain of salt, especially as far as the market share of Internet Explorer is concerned."

2. StatCounter: " IE is listed with 40.89%, Firefox with 39.47% (the trend indicates that Firefox may jump past IE next month)..."

As much as I'd like, I cannot find the evidence on StatCounter for FF overtaking IE in Europe this month. Although the usage of FF jumps on weekends and FF may overtake IE for one day soon, it is not closer to that goal than several weeks ago: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-eu-daily-20100701-20100803 . And the longer-term trend without weekends is even less exciting: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-eu-weekly-200827-201031

Now, I didn't mean to disturb, please feel free to resume discussing this historical moment and its profound ramifications :o)

Firefox icon

[R.Mo_Robert]

I know this is a small issue, but can Slashdot please update their Firefox icon? The one they are currently using has not been in use since before version 1.0 and it has undergone at least two revisions since then See this creative brief for more. You can always root out this ridiculously old icon by the lack of outlining and gloss on the globe.

Plus, I think the new one looks better, anyway. :)

Firefox overtaking? More like Chrome eating IE

[blind biker]

Firefox's usage share has been stagnant for about a year. Chrome's, on the other hand, has been steadily increasing. Add to this the steady (though not as fast as Chrome's) increase of Safari's usage share, and you get a pretty clear picture where IE's usage share is going. Firefox's is not increasing, though, even if it becomes the dominant browser. It will be a dominance of limited impact, as Chrome will overtake it in a year or two.

Re:Europeans aren't trained well

[Anonymous Coward]

wow... that is strange. My experience is exactly the other way around. Damn, again a lawsuit. In europe (at least in The Netherlands) business is much more relaxed

Re:Europeans aren't trained well

[sznupi]

Lawyers are the ones who primarily benefit from lawsuit, not consumers.

StatCounter = PrattCounter

[Anonymous Coward]

What utter smeg! I have several Europe based websites all stats indicate that FF has 50% less hits on a site than IE 8 and 7 ...

They're out to spread FUD and misinformation Rich

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject-line above Rich: You've got to remember this place is /. - home of the "Pro-*NIX" fanclub, and they'll do ANYTHING to promote Open SORES and LINUX or BSD versus Microsoft (to serve their own interests of course, and all because they chose the inferior losing team).

21

[Anonymous Coward]

Now it is official, Europeans have the highest average IQ.

Re:Europeans aren't trained well

[Simetrical]

Really, selling online I've noticed that Europeans are terrible consumers. They don't listen well to our support staff, they immediately charge back if the service is not up to par, etc. etc. It's a hell dealing with Europeans.

If you're looking to make money, honestly, invest in US consumers first. Much easier to part them from their money and to convince them not to cancel/buy more.

Maybe this is related to the fact that the European Union has per-capita GDP of $32,600 (#42 in the world), while the United States has per-capita GDP of $46,400 (#11 in the world). As people get richer, it's less and less worthwhile to spend time being picky about what you buy. I bet Europeans are a heck of a lot less picky than Middle Easterners, say.

IE 9 is coming...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope IE9 will turn that around.

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