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IE Drops To Single-Digit Market Share

New submitter fplatten writes "I think this is all you need to see to know what legacy Steve Ballmer has left at Microsoft, where its IE browser market share has collapsed from a high of 86% in 2002 to just 9% now. I guess this is just another in a long list of tech companies that failed to maintain its dominant market share. Also, IE may be the one product that never really deserved it, but just piggybacked on Windows, and users left in droves once decent (more secure) alternatives and standards became popular." Microsoft stockholders probably don't feel too badly about the Ballmer legacy overall, though -- browser choice is a pretty small arm of the octopus.

36 of 390 comments (clear)

  1. More reprsentative stats please by Richard_at_work · · Score: 5, Informative

    W3Schools has a very skewed demographic, I wouldn't take their figures to be a true representative across the board.

    My companies websites (Insurance) have an IE share of about 40%.

    1. Re:More reprsentative stats please by jones_supa · · Score: 5, Informative

      StatCounter's 12/2013 data shows IE being at 24.91%.

    2. Re:More reprsentative stats please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I will hazard a guess that you own neither a car nor a home, and that you don't have to worry about anyone being supported until they're 18 in the event that you get hit by a bus before then.

    3. Re:More reprsentative stats please by kesuki · · Score: 4, Interesting

      keep in mind windows 8 live tiles are all front ended with internet explorer. so they are anticipating higher ie traffic to sites that windows preloads so they can sound like they are doing something to compete with open source browsers...

    4. Re:More reprsentative stats please by Mordok-DestroyerOfWo · · Score: 5, Informative

      I keep the stats on 12 state government websites. As sad as it may be, the lowest I've ever seen IE (taken as a whole) dip was 55%. And, for the record every site is tested and compliant on a multitude of browsers and not a single one recommends IE. We're getting there, but we're not at single digits yet.

      --
      "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
    5. Re:More reprsentative stats please by magic+maverick+ · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes. Don't trust one website's stats. Always look at your own stats before deciding you can afford to not support a particular browser. Of course, you should always use progressive enhancement, so that even if people do insist on using ancient browsers, they should still be able to get the basic content. (It's a pity more people don't take the view, but considering the web was intended to be a universal, regardless of machine or software, medium, it's the view that is more inline with the intention of the web.)

      --
      HELP MY ACCOUNT HAS BEEN HACKED BY AN ILLIBERAL ART STUDENT SET TO DESTROY THE INTERWEBZ!
    6. Re:More reprsentative stats please by HornWumpus · · Score: 4, Insightful

      My first job out of school was in the insurance industry.

      There is no better example of clueless IT. The whole industry is run by and for the benefit of the commissioned salespeople.

      Because of that (and the simple computer problems faced by insurance) they get the bottom of the barrel of techs, programmers and engineers.

      Your users are so dumb (insurance salespeople) that whatever came on the machine is going to be what they use.

      Get out. The grass is greener, just about anywhere. Even banking.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    7. Re:More reprsentative stats please by skids · · Score: 5, Funny

      ...and all those reloads web developers do when trying to figure out "why the hell does this not work under IE" do add up.

    8. Re:More reprsentative stats please by WPIDalamar · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Looking at logs I have access to, I see

      Between 50% and 65% for a series of education related sites.

      6% for a highly technical site.

      Clearly what the site caters to has a big impact.

      I bet apple.com is even lower ;)

    9. Re:More reprsentative stats please by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Informative

      My hobby (veggie gardening) website shows the following, out of 7034 visits this month (per Google Analytics):

      Safari (appears to be iOS for the most part): 1,828 / 25.99%
      Internet Explorer (must be all the Surface users eh?): 1,564 / 22.23%
      Chrome: 1,511 / 21.48%
      Firefox: 1,368 / 19.45%

      Fifth place, at 5%, is "Android browser" which I'm guessing is that gosh-awful thing from Android 2.2 / 2.3...

      --
      #DeleteChrome
    10. Re:More reprsentative stats please by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · · Score: 5, Funny

      Hmm.. I can't seem to find it in the Debian/Hurd OS repos. Guess its not ready for the big time.

      --
      Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
    11. Re:More reprsentative stats please by Bill,+Shooter+of+Bul · · Score: 4, Funny

      No, Fox news has an agenda to push, its terrible on purpose. Slashdot is just terrible on accident.

      --
      Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
    12. Re:More reprsentative stats please by Anubis+IV · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I bet apple.com is even lower ;)

      You might be surprised. I seem to recall that they revealed the breakdown a few years back, and the IE traffic was much higher than you'd expect, simply because of interest from the typical, rank-and-file Windows variety of users who were looking for a change. I'll admit that I could be misremembering, however.

    13. Re:More reprsentative stats please by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Informative

      I just popped up our site's stats We have had about 31,000 visits this month (according to awstats). IE comes in at 23%. The winner is Safari at 26.1%, so that tells use there are a helluva lot of iPhones out there. Firefox and Mozilla come in at 17.3% and 10%. Chrome comes in at 16.1%.

      What it tells me, most of all, is that smart devices are becoming the dominant surfing platforms, and that not just IE, but Windows in general in slipping down the list.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    14. Re:More reprsentative stats please by noh8rz10 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Tom's Hardware has a good rep, right? not a shill review site? I think it is like Anandtech.

      http://www.tomshardware.com/re...

      Results start on page 4. ie10 doesn't blow away everybody else, but it's middle of the pack on most metrics and best or near best on some metrics. notably, there's no consistent winner across the board, it's not like any one browser is the king.

      before it used to be 2x worse than the others!

    15. Re:More reprsentative stats please by amicusNYCL · · Score: 4, Insightful

      StatCounter's 24.91% is a much more impressive decline to me than W3Schools' 9%.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    16. Re:More reprsentative stats please by amicusNYCL · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I would think somewhere like google search to be a better place to gather stats for this.

      You would think, but then again most people probably don't change the default search provider in their browser. And I don't believe that IE's default search provider is Google.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
    17. Re: More reprsentative stats please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      He can't here you.

      I can't wait for transporter technology to be perfected. When I want to yell at somebody, I can "here" them, give them a piece of my mind, and then "away" them. Preferably someplace far from where they started.

    18. Re:More reprsentative stats please by kiddygrinder · · Score: 5, Funny

      i hate IE because i had to build websites that worked in IE 6. never forget

      --
      This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
    19. Re:More reprsentative stats please by LordThyGod · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Firefox was built on Netscape so given the equally terrible experience of developing for Netscape back in the IE6 days I would be surprised if you didnt hate Firefox as well. Both Netscape and IE were terrible to develop for with their proprietary non-standard extensions, Netscape just had the decency to die and be reborn under a different name to make people forget its horrible legacy, IE should have died and been resurrected under a different name around IE10 when Microsoft finally changed tact and brought standards compliance to the forefront.

      Contrary to Steve Jobs' comments the Internet Explorer of those days was *not* a very good browser, but >=IE10 is pretty decent.

      One difference is that Netscape's "proprietary" extensions included stuff SSL, cookies, and javascript. They created a lot of what the web is all about, and were successful enough to scare microsoft into retaliation for having a better idea, which led to the anti-trust suit. Netscape didn't so much die, as was stabbed in the back by a wannabe. IE10 might be good somewhere, but it sucks out loud on android, osx, ios and Linux (my preferred platforms). At best, its a niche product.

    20. Re: More reprsentative stats please by FatdogHaiku · · Score: 4, Funny

      He can't there you either...

      --
      You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
    21. Re:More reprsentative stats please by kiddygrinder · · Score: 4, Insightful

      lol, why would i hate firefox, it's the first browser that actually made MS stop pissing in their users' mouths and work on IE. you should fucking LOVE firefox, cause otherwise it's possible you'd be still using IE 6 right now.

      --
      This is a joke. I am joking. Joke joke joke.
  2. No doubt IE is losing share but.. by manquer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    w3schools.com really? That's best data set OP could come up with??

    1. Re:No doubt IE is losing share but.. by Ralph+Wiggam · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It is the best data set to make Microsoft look bad- which is the point here.

  3. W3Schools: Ubiquitous Internet Hub by gr4nf · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's a good thing there are websites out there like W3Schools that just about everybody visits on a daily basis. How would we get these statistics otherwise?

  4. Re:Does this take into account smartphones? by lagomorpha2 · · Score: 5, Funny

    "mobile devices over the last few years (hundreds of millions) and none of those are running IE."

    Well IE is the default browser that comes with Windows Phone so that's like... the 5 people that bought a Windows Phone.

  5. Re:doesn't add up to 100 by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Funny

    9.0 + 26.8 + 55.8 + 3.8 + 1.9 = 97.3

    0.7 = Lynx :)

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  6. Stock price by Dilaudid · · Score: 5, Funny

    Microsoft stockholders probably don't feel too badly about the Ballmer legacy overall, though

    He joined in January 2000 when according to that link, the stock was at 48.94. Today the stock is at 36.50. Managing a -25% return over 14 years is not a good thing.

    1. Re:Stock price by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      100 shares purchased on January 3, 2000 would have cost $11,656.00.

      With stock splits and dividends, current value is $9,941.88 for a minus 14.71% return.

      http://www.microsoft.com/investor/Stock/StockSplit/stockcalc.aspx

    2. Re:Stock price by nedlohs · · Score: 4, Informative

      No he isn't. Microsoft's own calculator ( http://www.microsoft.com/inves... ) says that if you invested in MS stock on 1/1/2000 and reinvested all dividends back into them then you've managed a -14.71% return (ignoring inflation).

      If you had waited until 1/1/2001 on the other hand you would have managed a 129.18% return (again ignoring inflation).

      Of course I'm sure that has nothing to with the dot.com boom and bust or anything...

  7. Serious sample bias by linuxwrangler · · Score: 4, Informative

    The statistics are "collected from W3Schools' log-files..." So an English-language site for people interested in web development is now considered an accurate proxy for browser usage? I think not. Predictably, the results are way out of line with, well, pretty much everyone:

    http://www.netmarketshare.com/...
    http://gs.statcounter.com/
    http://www.w3counter.com/globa...
    http://browsermarketshare.com/
    http://clicky.com/marketshare/...

    --

    ~~~~~~~
    "You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
  8. statcounter numbers by Cyko_01 · · Score: 4, Informative

    IE at 22.82% and falling
    chrome at 43.67% and rising
    firefox at 18.88% and falling slightly
    safari at 9.75% and rising slightly

    there is a strong correlation between chrome and IE in both gains and losses

  9. I do not mind IE by Billly+Gates · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What I do mind is old IE and wanting that to go down to single digit marketshare.

    Why can't we all have nice websites that look as good as your apps on your phone? IE the fact that users never ever upgrade!

    Shit IE 8 is 5 years old now and we can't have HTML 5 outside our crappy tiny phones. Inexecusable. Let this dinosaur die and I hope the intranet developers die a horrible death who still do not know what ECMA script is and think Jscript is javascript. ... and that statistic is BS. If IE 9 and early hits single digit it is time we stop making business sites that work in HTML 4 and CSS 2. They wont upgrade until websites stop working and websites wont stop working until users upgrade. Now it is 2014 and we are living 10 years in the past due to the same old BS.

     

  10. Re:15% of my customers are IE7 or below by Todd+Knarr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's a vicious circle. At my former employer we were on IE6 because several of our critical Web applications only worked correctly with it. And since we were locked into IE6, any new Web applications had to work with it as well which removed any pressure to update. The only way we'd've gotten resources allocated to update those few ancient Web apps would have been if some other business-critical Web app had abandoned IE6 support entirely and said "IE 8 or later or we don't work". Which they won't do because they don't want to risk losing their IE6 user base. And round and round it goes, like a pair of orbiting black holes.

  11. And Slashdot goes to zero by recoiledsnake · · Score: 4, Insightful

    W3Schools is a site for web developers and does not represent the web despite the three W's in the name.

    Net Applications(which measures visitors instead of page views like Statcounter) has it at ~50%.

    Story brought to you by the same geniuses that brought you the following stories:

    "Draconian DRM Revealed in Windows 7"
    http://tech.slashdot.org/story...

    "Microsoft to abandon Windows Phone"
    http://mobile.slashdot.org/sto...
    (As an aside, the above story was submitted by the zealot megalomaniac symbolset).

    Milking views by trolling only works for so long.

    Thanks to zealot posters like bmo, symbolset, Zero__Kelvin, LordLimeCat, Jeremiah Cornelius, UnknowingFool, rtfa-troll, binarylarry, MightyMartian, drinkypoo, pieroxy for karmawhoring the groupthink and slowly ruining the site by spewing lame shill accusations. Oh and thanks to moderators for marking them insightful and modding down any posts that go against the groupthink.

    When the beta lands and is the default without a way to go back to the old layout is the day I remove Slashdot from my bookmarks and unfollow on twitter.

    Last one out turn off the lights.

    --
    This space for rent.
  12. THen they are idiots! by Dcnjoe60 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Microsoft stockholders probably don't feel too badly about the Ballmer legacy overall, though -- browser choice is a pretty small arm of the octopus.

    Microsoft's stock is 20.89% higher than it was on this date in 2002. That is an average yearly increase of 1.74%. US Savings Bonds had a greater return over that time period! So, if their shareholders aren't upset, they should be.