Firefox Tops Microsoft Browser Market Share For First Time (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader writes from a report via Ars Technica: For the first time, Firefox has pulled ahead of Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Edge browsers. Mozilla's Firefox grabbed 15.6 percent of worldwide desktop browser usage in April, according to the latest numbers from Web analytics outfit StatCounter. Google Chrome continues to dominate two thirds of the market. StatCounter, which analyzed data from three million websites, found that Firefox's worldwide desktop browser usage last month was 0.1 percent ahead of the combined share of Internet Explorer and Edge at 15.5 percent. Firefox has reportedly been losing market share over the last three months, but Microsoft's Edge and Internet Explorer browsers appear to be declining faster. Last week, Mozilla launched Test Pilot, a program for trying out experimental Firefox features. They've also been fighting the FBI in court for details about a vulnerability in the Tor Browser hack, which may affect the company since the Tor browser is partially based on the Firefox browser code.

Comments

Goes to show you

[MightyMartian]

Goes to show you just what a steaming pile of shit Edge is.

Re:Goes to show you

[MightyMartian]

Who the fuck cares about extensions in this case? That isn't even the issue. Edge fucking sucks. It's an unstable pile of garbage. We have forty computers running it, and we've had to set Chrome or Firefox as default browser (and PDF reader as well, Edge is equally shitty at displaying PDFs) because of instabilities that, in many cases bring up lovely error dialogs when it tries to start.

It is a piece of worthless fucking garbage, a toy browser, built on the Metro UI, even as Microsoft backs away from Metro.

Re:Goes to show you

[mspohr]

Please let us know how you really feel about Edge.

Re:Goes to show you

[ilsaloving]

It's not necessarily that Edge is a piece of shit. It's the fact that Edge is written by Microsoft. Those of us with memories longer than 15 minutes remember the decades long clusterfuck that Microsoft caused, and I dunno about you but I will *never* give them the opportunity to do it again.

The way they're (mis)handling Windows 10 shows that they haven't learned anything, and are going to try to be as obnoxious as people will let them get away with.

I don't care if Microsoft Edge will enable me to shit gold bullion. There's still gonna be a massive catch somewhere... maybe not now, but definitely in the future.

Re: Goes to show you

[MightyMartian]

How about "year of the Android and iOS desktops... er... screens"

Let's be blunt. Microsoft is in a huge bind. Desktop sales are in the dumps, nobody feels any need to upgrade, except smartphones, which is a platform that Microsoft has been banging its head against for years.

Re:Goes to show you

[Ol Olsoc]

Please let us know how you really feel about Edge.

Actually I thought he was pulling his punches. Edge is the most remarkably awful browser I've ever tried. Might as well try to surf porn with Lynx.

Re:Goes to show you

[chr1st1anSoldier]

Honestly I have to agree at this point...initial impressions of Windows 10 in my case were great....

I was the same when they dropped the first consumer technical releases, it was great, everything Windows 8 should have been. Then Microsoft finally dropped the stable release for mass consumption and it was good. When they offered the free upgrade to Windows 10 I started moving my company over to it.

Now, after experiencing Windows 10 day in and day out at the office, and the constant bewilderment of Microsoft's decisions regarding it, I have come to like Windows 10 less and less. I am to the point now where I prefer Windows 8.1 over 10. As it stands, I intend to pitch Linux as a viable alternative for our business in the near future. About the only thing that would really tie us to Windows at this point is peoples inability to user any other mail application besides Outlook. And I desperately want to cure people of that horrid mail client. ;)

Re:Goes to show you

[chr1st1anSoldier]

Oh, the Obligatory Lynx mention!

Cool, because I am writing this in elinks.Have a gooday

Re:Goes to show you

[LMariachi]

> Might as well try to surf porn with Lynx.

https://www.asciipr0n.com/pr0n...

You were saying?

(I remember a time when some of that would have been...effective.

Re:Goes to show you

[ArmoredDragon]

Actually I thought he was pulling his punches. Edge is the most remarkably awful browser I've ever tried. Might as well try to surf porn with Lynx.

If only it were Edge that was bad, the entire UWP framework it runs on is buggy. For example, sometimes when you hibernate your system, the apps freeze upon resuming the system; a problem I haven't ever observed in win32 apps. And when UWP apps freeze, they don't behave like other apps do where the OS notifies you and closes the app. Instead they just stop responding to input while the OS pretends that they are still running just fine.

Re:Goes to show you

[LordWabbit2]

Rotation of staff. The people who were there when the previous fuckups happened are long gone. So new people in new seats and coming up with BRILLIANT ideas, which repeat the fuckups. Wash rinse repeat. I would also bet that the people doing the coding are not the people making the decisions, it's either marketing or fucking business making these asshole decisions. I would bet if you spoke to any of the actual software engineers they would say that they didn't have a choice, the decision to do XYZ again came down from the top. What microsoft needs to start doing is listening to their fucking engineers and not their fucking bean counters. They are a SOFTWARE company, and by not listening to their SOFTWARE people they are killing themselves. I have been a MS stack programmer since I left school and even I am starting to drift away from microsoft, the only PC's in my house running windows now are gaming rigs, everything else is running linux.

Re:Goes to show you

[jandersen]

Can't use anything but Outlook? Seriously? How massively incompetent are you? You should be fired for being such a useless moron. No one so pathetic and pointless in their job should be employed.

Perhaps you should have read more carefully - with a view to understanding - before you started calling people morons:

...peoples inability to user any other mail application besides Outlook.

To me, that suggests he is talking about about somebody other than himself. I expect you will now be considering your own position, if in fact you are employed.

YAY NETSCAPE!

[Anonymous Coward]

I just knew Netscape Navigator could do it!!

Re:YAY NETSCAPE!

[chr1st1anSoldier]

Don't know why someone modded you down to zero, you are techincally correct. Anyone that knows the history of Mozilla knows it was birthed when Netscape release the source code of their browser to the world. It's even the first sentence on the history page of Mozilla.org.

Pulled Ahead?

[tsqr]

Firefox has pulled ahead of Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Edge browsers

If I'm reading the graphs in TFA correctly, Firefox has "pulled ahead" of IE/Edge by losing market share over 3 months (going from 16.1% to 15.6%), but losing less than IE and Edge combined (16.6% to 15.5%). Yippee, terrific surge!

Re:Misleading Summary Title

[tsqr]

FTFY:

"Firefox 'Tops' Microsoft browser share.... if you don't count chrome which has an 60% install base"

Seriously, I expect this type of clickbait on BuzzFeed, not Slashdot :/.

Well yes, Firefox tops Microsoft browser share whether or not you choose to count Chrome, since Chrome is neither Firefox or Microsoft. In other words, Summary Title, which did not imply that Firefox had the most browser share, is not misleading at all. Unless you want to mislead yourself and then get upset about it.

Seriously, I expect this type of post from ACs.

Re:Begin rant

[MightyMartian]

For fuck's sake, I was playing fullscreen video on an Ubuntu install on a Pentium II a decade ago.

Are you a liar, or just a fucking retard?

Side Tabs

[labnet]

Firefox: Still the only browser I know of that properly supports side tabs via the TreeStylesTab plug in.

Re:Side Tabs

[AmiMoJo]

Vivaldi supports side tabs. Not sure what your definition of "properly" is but they seem to work quite well.

Re:Begin rant

[mspohr]

I just switched back to Firefox from Chrome because Chrome under OSX was burning up my laptop. If I opened a few tabs with Javascript, the machine would go to 100% CPU, the fans come on full blast and I would just sit and wait forever.
Now that I've switched back to Firefox, there is none of this drama. I can open as many tabs as I want and the CPU use stays very low. Much better.

Re:Begin rant

[zenlessyank]

He is probably both. Most peeps don't want to READ. If it isn't a shiny icon or picture then most peeps are lost. To be able to use a computer yet not be able to fucking READ is called an oxymoron. The PC was MADE to READ. Also it was made to WRITE, which coincidentally they cannot do either!!!

Re: You mean the StatCounter website I have blocke

[yuvcifjt]

He's right, statcounter by default has been blocked by AdBlockPlus for a long time (although possibly only the "easyprivacy" list).

And seeing as ABP is the most popular extension by far, and the in-built Tracker Protection in Firefox also blocks statcounter (although currently only active in private browsing mode).

... the stats could be pretty skewed.

IE is not good

[Archfeld]

IE is not good, but EDGE is awful. I've got Win10 on a laptop I use quite often and after doing some damage control, e.g. taking control of the update process, I found it is quite useable, not my favorite but far from the worst OS I've ever used, but EDGE is hands down the worst browser I can actually recall using in more than 15 years. Edge is ugly, slow and cumbersome, and lacks basic features that nearly every other browser on the market commonly supports.

Re:IE is not good

[Shados]

I don't really find Edge slow, but the fonts just kill it straight up for me. Unless you have a 4k display, the grayscale antialiasing they use make my eyes bleed.

Default search provider

[tepples]

Google Chrome development is subsidized by Google Search revenue. Firefox once was as well until Yahoo! offered a better deal to be Firefox's default search provider.

What is it about the UK:

[whoever57]

It'a [sic] also worth noting that StatCounter's Web browsing data paints a different picture in the UK. While Chrome was an obvious leader on the desktop in April with a 54.2 percent share, IE and Edge accounted for 21.8 percent of the market, with Firefox trailing a distant third at 13.2 percent in Blighty.

What is it about the UK that Microsoft usage is above average? The UK had shockingly high sales of phones running Windows Phone (or whatever it was called at the time).

Umm

[Ol Olsoc]

As both Internet Explorer and Edge, and Firefox are heading towards the Netscape dungheap. it's good news the FireFox has 15.6 percent of the Browser market?

And why does Firefox now install tracking cookies?

Re:Pale Moon skews the numbers

[Ol Olsoc]

hah, no. I find forking has provided a desktop environment for everyones' tastes instead of a one size fits all in the commercial world.

Linux hasn't been accepted as a desktop platform for the masses because it isn't run by a bunch of sleazy CEOs and marketing firms shoving it down people's throats. The only thing major Linux distros are missing is a modern office suite, and no... Libre Office doesn't even come close unless your definition of modern office suite is 1996.

My definition of the number 1 need of an office suite is cross platform compatibility. Of the two platforms you can get the Microsoft suite for, it doesn't even have that. I can take a file from PC to Mac to Linux and all is good. Microsoft doesn't even come close.

Re:Pale Moon skews the numbers

[Mashiki]

Forking is the answer. When closed source developers decide to turn around and make their product into a steaming pile of shit, and your options are steaming pile of shit and nothing. This is where OSS shines, especially when OSS devs decide to make their product into a steaming pile of shit, there is someone out there turning around and fixing it. That's what Palemoon has done for Firefox.

Sad to see Chrome so far ahead

[AbRASiON]

I suppose it works mostly well and it's fast but as a nerd who's been on Firefox since before it was called Firefox (I've finally forgotten the other name) I prefer FF.

I mean, ok, google don't want me to skin Chrome? Ok fine, fine - but do you think I can find a decent tab mix plus alternative? I *NEED* tab mix plus, I utterly need it.
I 'learnt' tabbed browsing with NetCaptor (skin over the top of IE, added tabbed browsing, it was very good for its day) and I found and still find the tap ordering the most logical with it, by far.
Tab Mix Plus provides incredibly powerful tab control options, so I can replicate NetCaptor under FF.

My firefox does this:
*Middle click a link*, open in the background, one tab slot to the RIGHT of the current tab (inserting itself)
*CTRL N* (new tab) opens a tab, one tab slot to the RIGHT of the current tab, in the foreground
*Close tab*, closes tab and takes you to the tab to the LEFT of the one you just closed.
Duplicate tab (CTRL-ALT-T), same as middle click, opens a copy of the existing tab to the RIGHT of current tab and in the background

Now I suppose if you're not used to that system and you're used to chrome, that probably sounds awful? For me, I find it immensely logical. I NEVER want a new tab or duplicate tab or middle click tab to open right at the very end of my tab grouping, why would I want that? I want this new piece of data, right next to me, where I'm working.

I don't know if finer tab control options are blocked in Chrome or not but no such addon yet exists, built in ability to do this doesn't exist. Considering the age of Chrome and the popularity of TMP, I can only guess Chrome has simply not go the option to do it.

I do use chrome but it's relegated to be my 'second monitor, good at youtube / flash video' browser while I use FF for my main work.

FWIW I'm ... an extreme browser, likely extremely addicted to the web. Right now I've managed to close several hundred tabs this week and I'm down to about 200. I like to be as low as possible of course but right now I have 200 open, it's just how I browse.