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IE9 May Not Be Enough To Save IE
An anonymous reader writes "The October market share numbers are in and Net Applications' numbers show a surprising drop in IE8 market share — the first time since the browser was introduced. Strangely, IE9 has not gained much and IE7 as well as IE6 are losing as well. The only two browsers gaining are Chrome and Safari — and both browsers have hit new record market shares. The frenzy around IE8 may have subsided already, and Microsoft is under tremendous pressure to roll out IE9 soon. StatCounter's numbers indicate that Firefox is close to surpassing IE in Europe."
Since when was IE9 actually launched? Are we seriously predicting the doom of IE because not so many people downloaded a browser that isn't even released yet?
There are legitimate concerns for web developers about how widely IE9 will be adopted, not least the operating systems it will run on (or not), but for goodness' sake, this whole story is just premature.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
They've to 60% of the market! Are they losing market share? Definitely. But to claim it needs to be "saved" is ridiculous. When they're at 2% market share, then we can discuss whether or not the product will actually die and possibly go away. I realize this site likes to hate on MS, but can we be just a *BIT* less biased in the story summaries?
Also, they're under tremendous pressure to release IE9? By who? The public? You can't say people are fleeing because IE9 isn't a big deal, and then turn around and say they have to get it out because all these people are waiting for it. Reality is, the average Joe has no idea that IE9 is in development, has no idea when it will be released, and *DOESN'T CARE*. They click the blue E, and they get to the internet. And every couple years, the window looks a bit different and they don't really know why, but it still works so that's good enough. *THE MAJORITY OF WORLD ARE NOT TECH GEEKS*.
Gee, I wonder why a beta browser from Microsoft isn't gaining market share. Don't predict any death knells for the browser until it's actually, you know, released. Geez.
And yet just last week, a friend told me he couldn't make a filing with the Georgia Department of Revenue because "his browser was insecure." Nevermind that he was using the latest version of Safari, which is likely more secure than any version of IE.
What they actually meant was "we are too lazy to program for anything but IE... but that's OK, because 99% of the world uses IE... right?"
Now that's interesting because they are making a positive claim about browser security. They are not merely saying "at this time we only support Internet Explorer," which would be completely different.
Since we like to solve problems with litigation in this country, to the point that there are often few or no effective alternatives, I have an idea. Why don't the makers of Safari and other browsers sue the State of Georgia for libel? They are making a claim of insecurity. As evidence, save the snippet of code/markup that checks the user-agent string and produces the message stating "your browser is insecure". Claim that the message is libel because it is based on merely not being IE, not on any rigorous study of browser security, and therefore cannot use "truth" as a defense. In fact it would not be hard to come up with evidence contradicting it. Therefore, intentional or not, it amounts to an attempt to coerce users to use IE and therefore Windows for no good reason.
The point is to make it more expensive to defend such a suit than it would have been to make a standard, browser-agnostic site. A government agency in particular has no excuse for not making their sites as accessible as possible. They are not like private companies where you can just go to a competitor if a given company refuses to be reasonable.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Talk about jumping to conclusions:
This is not the result Microsoft would have hoped for, but the writing was on the wall when we heard last week from CEO Steve Ballmer that IE9 was downloaded only 10 million times within 6 weeks after launch. That is a big number, but given the expensive marketing campaign, Microsoft surely needed much more. We remember: Apple got 11 million Safari 4 downloads within one week and with a simple press release.
Err, that's 10 million beta downloads according to the linked article, making it the most popular IE beta ever(according to Ballmer). That's in contrast to the Safari number which was a regular version launch.
And the drop in IE8 numbers was:
This trend is even more puzzling as IE8 shed market share for the first time in its history and fell from 29.06% to 29.01% (a number that does not included shares of IE8 fragmented versions as Net Applications recently decided not to publish this data anymore.)
A drop of 0.05%? That seems to be well within the margin of error and might have to do with the non-inclusion of IE8 fragmented versions.
The article is bad and the title and summary of the Slashdot are even worse. Lets save the news of IE9's death after it has been released(in Spring 2011), okay?
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