Internet Explorer's Share Dips Below 90%

sheepoo writes "CNN has a story stating that, according to a WebSideStory report, Internet Explorer has slipped below 90% usage share for the first time." From the article: "Firefox, an open-source browser collectively developed by the Internet community under the Mozilla Foundation, had a 6.8 percent share as of April 29, an increase from 3.0 percent since WebSideStory began tracking Firefox separately in October."

Statistics

[LiNKz (257629)]

Googledot [googledot.org] receives a few hits everytime someone mentions it on Slashdot. I've been keeping track of the hits and such, which show 67% of slashdotters (who are willing to click a link for a laugh) are using firefox, and only 14.5% of them are using Internet Explorer. It is interesting to look at how many people still use Windows over *nix too. I guess it is all very much depending on what type of website you're counting from too.

You can look at a few statistics here [extremetracking.com] that have been collected since over a few months.

Where were the clicks from?

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

If you could track stats like whether the clicker was at work or not, you'd probably find a high correlation between work==Winshit/IE, home==*nix/!IE.

Surfing from work

[grahamsz (150076)]

It's probably based on the platform you use to work on.

When i was at school i predominantly surfed from linux, at work it's predominantly solaris, and when i change jobs i'll be back to windows.

If you are in the computer field then you pretty much run whatever OS is required for your job.

Re:Surfing from work

[Sxooter (29722)]

Hell, where I used to work, the Windows sysadmins were the ones who brought the viruses and trojans in while reading their hot mail accounts logged onto the primary domain controllers.

Tell your windows people to get up to speed!

Re:83% use firefox at Networkmirror

[winkydink (650484)]

No.

The breakdown of the top 15 is:

1 82.63% Mozilla
2 14.70% Microsoft Internet Explorer
3 0.46% Opera/8.0 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en)
4 0.25% msnbot/1.0 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm [msn.com])
5 0.25% Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html [google.com])
6 0.21% Mediapartners-Google/2.1
7 0.18% Microsoft URL Control - 6.01.9782
8 0.16% Opera/8.0 (X11; Linux i686; U; en)
9 0.10% Opera/8.0 (Windows NT 5.0; U; en)
10 0.07% Opera/7.54 (Windows NT 5.1; U

Manipulated

[Klivian (850755)]

I wonder why they have manipulated the statistics like that. They split Opera into different versions and systems, while not doing the same for IE and "Mozilla". In the case of Mozilla it's even worse, the lack of Firefox suggest they lump all Gecko based browsers together as Mozilla. Besides where are Konqueror and Safari?

Maybe it's just my surfing habits

[Gentoo Fan (643403)]

but I haven't run into any sites lately that require IE. Recent Mozilla handles everything just fine. Apart form some minor rendering weirdness on a few sites I haven't had to jump over to IE for anything.

Except...

[Mr. Underbridge (666784)]

but I haven't run into any sites lately that require IE. Recent Mozilla handles everything just fine. Apart form some minor rendering weirdness on a few sites I haven't had to jump over to IE for anything.

...for, I dunno, *this* page, which still doesn't render right in Firefox.

Re:Except...

[by Anonymous Coward]

No it's not, you fucking moron.

Every time - EVERY TIME - this topic comes up, somebody smug tells us all that it's Slashdot's broken HTML. It's not. It's a bug in Firefox.

I've tried posting links to the bug report on Bugzilla. I've tried showing developer comments. I've tried reasoning. I've tried telling them Firefox 1.1 will fix it.

Every time, somebody replies "yeah, well that may be all true... but it's still Slashdot's fault." What is it with you fucking morons? What will it take for it

Re:Except...

[forgetmenot (467513)]

No. It's the HTML.
*ducks*

Re:BULLSHIT!!!

[jacksonj04 (800021)]

Bzzt, wrong!

Firefox renders to something called a standard.

Slashdot is absolutely nowhere near any known web standard.

Thus, Slashdot's HTML is ballsed up. Firefox may stand a better chance with valid HTML, the other browsers are using 'quirks' mode and rendering what they think the page should say, not what it does.

Re:BULLSHIT!!!

[mattyrobinson69 (751521)]

firefox does not render the web according to a standard. check this test if you dont believe me:

http://www.webstandards.org/act/acid2/ [webstandards.org]

no browser renders the web according to the standards. have you ever tried writing a website to work across all browsers?

even safari (the only browser so far to pass acid2) doesn't render according to standards - they had to hack the code to make it render the parts of the standards that acid2 touched on (not the entire standard).

Firefox has a bug, deal with it.

Re:Maybe it's just my surfing habits

[kemapa (733992)]

but I haven't run into any sites lately that require IE

While casually browsing the web I have noticed the same thing. But a dependence on IE is still very much alive in a corporate setting. Take the company I work for, I've wanted to deploy firefox ever since I've been around, but I can't because a lot of the websites the brokers and agents use are IE only. Like the MLS... and several other sites. One of the sites they use (I believe it's SABOR) actually requires a 'patch' to be installed that runs at

Weight Watchers blocks Firefox users

[doublem (118724)]

You haven't visited http://weightwatchers.com [weightwatchers.com] have you?

I went there with Firefox 1.0.4. If you examine the URL they forward you to and the site itself you learn that their web masters assume Firefox doesn't support JavaScript or Cookies, and there's no "Click here to use the site anyway" like button.

I had an exchange with their customer service a month or two ago about this, and their reply amounted to saying they wouldn't support an "unpopular" browser.

I sent back an article about Firefox having more users than all non IE browsers combines, and they sent back the same form letter about not supporting every browser.

Funny thing is, if I spoof my browser string as Internet Explorer 34691.0.45.72.22222 running on Windows THFFFT, the site works fine. I haven't signed up yet though, since I won't spend my money on a site that require me to futz around with obscure browser settings to work.

I also found it odd that their email replies seemed to consider Firefox to be an Opera variant.

Re:Weight Watchers blocks Firefox users

[plague3106 (71849)]

Or when you get their page saying it won't work, just scrool to the bottom and click Home, and it will load just fine..

Re:Weight Watchers blocks Firefox users

[Jeremi (14640)]

Maybe once FireFox gets a bit more bloated, they'll let it in.

Monopoly no more! - Well, not really..

[TheCeltic (102319)]

Now "only" 9 out of every 10 systems uses IE. Hopefully FireFox will continue to grow and IE will continue to shrink.. of course that will be tough when Microsoft copies all of Firefox's features in the next release of IE.

The monopoly aint over till the fat geek sings!

[EmbeddedJanitor (597831)]

The only reason IE has 90% market share is because of the monopoly. If it was a level playing field with unbundled browsers, IE would be very lucky to make 10%.

That IE has 90% is a clear demonstration that the DOJ anti-trust stuff is having no real impact on slowing the Microsoft monopoly.

Re:Monopoly no more! - Well, not really..

[croddy (659025)]

Well, Opera's tabbed interface was copied from Windows 95 itself ... which ganked it from OS/2 v3 -- the original tabbed interface.

Let me know when Opera has something in the same league as XUL and we'll talk about innovation.

Opera is always going to be a fringe browser.

Who measures and how measures?

[by Anonymous Coward]

What does 90% market share really mean? I use both IE and Firefox on the same machine. Do they both get counted?

I love vague facts and figures

Re:Who measures and how measures?

[bunratty (545641)]

What does 90% market share really mean? I use both IE and Firefox on the same machine. Do they both get counted?

It's not 90% market share. It's 90% usage share [wikipedia.org]. If you use IE half the time and Firefox half the time, they are both counted equally. If you have IE installed and never use it, it's not counted.

No, wait!

[danheskett (178529)]

Oh my god! Microsoft's monopoly level has fallen from "complete total dominance" down to "utterly terrifying massively overwhelming" in web browsers.

But, wait, actually. Seriously for a second. Isn't this exactly the type of competition that the DOJ argued would/could never happen as long IE was integrated into Windows? Wasn't the argument that IE was illegal tying because there would not be competition due to MS's dominance with Windows?

Firefox has managed to take ~7% of the market in a short period of time from a massively well-funded competitor on an ultra, ultra, ultra shoestring budget. This kinda proves what MS was saying, and disproves what the DOJ was saying.

Re:No, wait!

[Joe the Lesser (533425)]

Just imagine what the market would be if every user were presented with a informed opinion about each browser without having any of them installed yet, when they first connect to the internet and need one.

Re:No, wait!

[Ironsides (739422)]

Just imagine what the market would be if every user were presented with a informed opinion about each browser without having any of them installed yet, when they first connect to the internet and need one.

Ummm.... How would they connect to recieve the information in the first place? IRC? FTP? TelNet? HTTP sure seems to be out since they won't have a browser...

Re:No, wait!

[m50d (797211)]

Imagine if there was a way we could communicate without the internet. Waves travel well through air, perhaps we could make them somehow, and then have others interpret them and understand what we were saying.

Re:No, wait!

[arkhan_jg (618674)]

Same way they always managed before IE being a mandatory unremovable part of the OS; get a browser by other means.

ISP's still give out CDs with a browser and an account setup script. That browser could just as easily be firefox as internet explorer. Flash drives, network installs, isp ftp setup script, hell even a custom front end that not only lets you choose your ISP but your browser too.

But nobody does any of it, because there's already a browser built into the computer. Why bother supplying a second o

Re:No, wait!

[overbom (461949)]

Ummm... why would they need to connect to the internet to be presented with a choice? OEMs bundle 2nd and 3rd party software along with Windows. Just about every software OS / distribution vendor that I can think of has distributed 3rd party application software with their OS. What makes Microsoft any different, besides your perception of what they're willing to do to ensure the implementation of standards and interoperability with the rest of the computing world... oh, wait.

For example, Opera / Firefox

Re:No, wait!

[kin_korn_karn (466864)]

And just imagine what it would be like if every user cared.

Shoestring? Not quite

[sjbe (173966)]

Firefox has managed to take ~7% of the market in a short period of time from a massively well-funded competitor on an ultra, ultra, ultra shoestring budget.

"Ultra shoestring budget"? Relative to Microsoft sure, but the vast majority of Mozilla development occured with the direct financial support of AOL, Sun and what was left of Netscape after the buyout with numerous other companies contributing. The Mozilla foundation was given millions of dollars to get started. While none of that in any way detracts from how impressive their accomplishment is, I would hardly describe them as working on "an ultra, ultra, ultra shoestring budget."

Re:Shoestring? Not quite

[grotgrot (451123)]

Also add in that Microsoft pretty much disbanded their IE team for several years, so that meant there was no improved competition for Firefox. If Microsoft had continued to work on IE (adding tabs, anti-popup, more security etc) then I wonder how much market Firefox would have now.

Re:No, wait!

[KillerDeathRobot (818062)]

The problem was never really that IE was bundled with the OS. The problem was MS forcing vendors NOT to bundle Netscape with Windows, which they could get away with due to the Windows monopoly. Thus they were illegally leveraging their monopoly.

Re:No, wait!

[killjoe (766577)]

"But, wait, actually. Seriously for a second. Isn't this exactly the type of competition that the DOJ argued would/could never happen as long IE was integrated into Windows? Wasn't the argument that IE was illegal tying because there would not be competition due to MS's dominance with Windows? "

That's right. And you yourself admit that 90% is dominance. Why don't we wait till MS share drops below 50% before deciding who was right and wrong. As of today it looks like the DOJ was 100% correct. Due to bundling of IE a superior, more secure and free product is not able to get even a 10% share.

Re:No, wait!

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (813746)]

This kinda proves what MS was saying, and disproves what the DOJ was saying.

Lets see an obviously inferior product maintains 90% market share through leveraging another existing monopoly even thought they add basically no new features for years and despite a competitor who gives away a superior product that is written by people who are so fed up with how broken the aforementioned product is, they make it for free. Yeah, I'm sure that monopoly isn't being used unfairly and bundling has nothing to do with

Re:No, wait!

[timeOday (582209)]

No. Antitrust law is supposed to preserve the possibility of competing businesses, which FireFox is not. If you have to literally give away the product for free to "compete," something is wrong.

If IE were unbundled and it had to stand on its own, Netscape would still be in business, and Opera would have much more of a chance.

Microsoft has effectively cut off the air supply of the competition, which is illegal. Think what a dump the Internet would be by now if business and individuals hadn't donated a top-quality browser. That shouldn't be necessary.

I show 15.52%

[QuietLagoon (813062)]

I run a website for information about a certain stock that I follow. Most of the people visiting the site are individual investors. The site is about a company in the drug testing business. I say all that, because I wanted to note that the people visiting the site are not what I would consider to be technical people or so-called early adopters.

FireFox has tallied up 15.52 percent of the hits to my site since May 1.

first time?

[spoonyfork (23307)]

Internet Explorer has slipped below 90% usage share for the first time.

First time? Was the author born after 1998?

Gates should be wetting his pants

[Jesus IS the Devil (317662)]

See this is a new type of business model that Microsoft can't beat. It used to be that when they decided to bundle or bully, competitors are dead.

No more. Firefox doesn't need to make $ to survive, so M$ can't beat by price. Bundling won't work either because broadband is everywhere.

Now, the killer app (analogy) is reputation. IE has been branded as spyware/exploit-ridden. People want an alternative. IE has lost its credibility.

For the first time?

[Limburgher (523006)]

So, even before it was writte^H^H^H^H^H^Hcopied from Mosaic, it had 90% market share? That's AMAZING! :)

how much is FF saying it's IE?

[yagu (721525)]

Okay, just curious, but wondered how much of the traffic measured accounts for, knows about, figures in, etc., for Firefox "reporting in" as Internet Explorer so as not to get rejected from using that site. I have mine set to be "Internet Explorer" for my on-line banking (go figure). Think it would add any significant usage for Firefox?

Fewer MS-only websites, I hope

[G4from128k (686170)]

I hope that this data will motivates webmasters and site designers to create more universally viewable sites.

For the first time?

[JudgeFurious (455868)]

It had less than 90% long ago, in the before time...

IBM jumping on Firefox

[unk1911 (250141)]

In related news, according to this story [informationweek.com], IBM employees (numbering +- 300,000) are urged to switch over to Firefox. That should help the numbers even more

I'd bet...

[Samurai Cat! (15315)]

...if Firefox (or any other browser) were installed with Windows machines by default like IE, said browser's share would be much higher. MUCH higher.

People use what's put in front of them. IE's 90% share doesn't mean it's that much better than the alternatives.

"Averse to Microsoft products"?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Why do people assume that the only reason for not using Microsoft products is that you don't like Microsoft?

I don't use Cubase because I hate Emagic, or PSP because I don't like Adobe.

I do use Firefox because it works fine, and I have not had any spyware since I started using it. It's quite simple really, and if Microsoft comes out with a better browser, I'll use that. They are both 'free' as I got explorer free with Windows.

Useless Metric

[NaugaHunter (639364)]

How does it count people using a browser that reports it is a different browser to not be blocked from content?

*Cough* [msnbc.com]

I don't have anywhere to host pictures, but using Safari just changing the User Agent gets you different style sheets. Net effect is some stories render horribly when it serves a Safari page, but fine when it serves an I.E., both in Safari. I'm not going to accuse them that that is their goal, but it has definitely happened and changing the User Agent reveals no problems that required a separate style sheet.

90% share?

[payndz (589033)]

Bill Gates: "The iPod has fallen below a 90% share of the music player market! Apple are doomed! Buy Windows Mobile 5.0!"

Bill Gates: "Internet Explorer has fallen below 90% of the browser market! We still have total dominance! OSS is a dismal failure! Buy Windows XP!"

For those who HAVE to use IE...

[inkdesign (7389)]

I'm forced at work, and now use the Maxthon browser which is based on IE, but has features like tabbed browsing, mouse gestures, RSS and more. It's free, btw.

http://www.maxthon.com/ [maxthon.com]

Really makes the switch from browsing at home to work alot smoother, even if it isn't a perfect solution. What it really makes me think though - if these guys can get tabbed browsing and whatnot into the current IE, why is MS not doing the same thing to slow lost market share to more usable/secure browsers???

Not sure about that

[by Anonymous Coward]

f(x) = number of user
f'(x) = growth = growth rate
f''(x) = grown increase rate

So
Decrease in growth rate == decrease in growth

Re:Tell me when

[geoffspear (692508)]

Wow, mods. Way to moderate a statement that couldn't possibly be more obviously false as "Informative".

Yes, a decrease in growth does exactly equal the decrease in the rate of growth. That's what growth means. The rate of increase. The rate of growing.

Did you mean to say that a decrease in growth isn't the same thing as a decrease in the number of users? That's true, and maybe not as obvious to a lot of people as it should be.

Re:Not enougth

[diegocgteleline.es (653730)]

(answering myself) - maybe lobbing to the windows 98 users? AFAIK people using windows 98 makes around 50% of the people who uses internet. Internet explorer 7 will not be released for windows 98 and in fact Microsoft should already have stopped updating it with security fixes (windows 98 is 7 years old)

May be we could use a catch phrase, say "the one secure option for windows 98/me/NT 4.0" "Microsoft forgot of your Windows 98 box? Try firefox". Or something like that.