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IE Losing 10% Market Share Every Two Years
Posted by
Soulskill
on Wed May 13, 2009 11:20 AM
from the slowly-but-surely dept.
from the slowly-but-surely dept.
mjasay writes "Mozilla's Asa Dotzler points to some interesting long-term trends in browser market share, noting that 'browser releases aren't having any major impact on the macro trends,' which suggests that a better IE will likely have little impact on its sliding market share. The most intriguing conclusion from the data, however, is that Firefox could surpass IE market share as early as January 2013 if Firefox continues to gain 5 percent every year, even as IE drops 5 percent each year. In the past, Microsoft might have fought back by tying IE to other products to block competition, but with the EU keeping a close antitrust eye on Microsoft and the US Obama administration keen to make an example of an antitrust bully, Microsoft may have few good options beyond good old fashioned competition, which doesn't seem to be working very well for the Redmond giant, as the market share data suggests. Microsoft's loss of IE market power, in turn, could have serious consequences for the company's efforts to compete with Google on the Web."
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Developers: The More Popular the Browser, the Slower It Is 367 comments
demishade writes "Peacekeeper, the browser benchmark from the makers of 3DMark, comes out of beta and shows an interesting (though perhaps not surprising) tidbit — the more popular a browser, the worse its performance. While it should not be surprising to anyone that IE slugs at the last place, the gap between Firefox and Chrome, is. Once IE's market share goes the way of the Dodo will web developers start cursing Firefox? How long until Google comes out with a JavaScript intensive application that will practically require Chrome to function?"
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2013? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:2013? (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe that's what causes the end of the world? December 21, 2012... Firefox surpasses IE in marketshare, causing Steve Ballmer to lose his mind and launch Microsoft's nuclear missiles. Someone get Art Bell on the line, I think I've got a program idea for him
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Re:2013? (Score:5, Funny)
Everyone will find out about this seconds before impact when their TV screens (and computer monitors) go briefly snowy before a sinister super villain calling himself The ChairMan appears and says "I'M GOING TO F**KING KILL YOU!!", laughs maniacally interspersed with chants of "DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!", then throws his chair at the camera a second before impact.
Why yes, I am bored. How can you tell?
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Re:2013? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:2013? (Score:4, Funny)
I thought the world was going to end January 19, 2038?
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Re:2013? (Score:5, Insightful)
As a Web Developer, I'd have to say "me" :-)
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There's an Artificial Barrier (Score:5, Interesting)
These people will always keep IE's share above some percentage (I'd take a stab of about 66.6%). Also, and I appreciate Asa's non-profit work but I must question his for-profit source that he cited [hitslink.com]. Where and how was this data collected? It's a very difficult problem and everyone of these browser-share or operating system-share reports that hits Slashdot are ripped apart by readers as being statistically flawed. No transparency causes me to instantly dismiss these findings.
Re:There's an Artificial Barrier (Score:5, Interesting)
But even that isn't working much. I mean, I'm working with federal govt. entities, and they are mandating that you can NOT download and use IE8.
They have some apps that only work with IE, but, they allow Firefox, and from what I've seen, have no problems with letting you install and use plug-ins and update to your hearts desire. But, they have memos out saying IE8 is verboten, and will be removed from your box if they scan and find it.
Interesting I'd say....
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Re:There's an Artificial Barrier (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the reason for forbidding IE8 is more because it's quite difficult to get working installations of both IE6 and IE8 on the same computer. They have shit web apps that only work on IE6 and it's not so much that they don't want IE8, it's that they don't want to lose the crutch of IE6.
That about how things are at my work. I use Firefox, but IE 7 and 8 are blocked. I still need to use IE 6 for our web apps that don't work in Firefox.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But even that isn't working much. I mean, I'm working with federal govt. entities, and they are mandating that you can NOT download and use IE8.
I am by no means endorsing or defending IE8 but as someone familiar with corporate America, I can assure you that you are incorrect in your assumptions of motive.
Whenever a new "most significant digit" version is made in a new product, they wait until it's several subdivisions along before jumping to it. Simple reason is that in the 8.01 versions of weblogic or IE there are likely security issues. Which is why some places are still using Weblogic 8.14 or 9.XX instead of jumping to 10.1. They did the
Re:There's an Artificial Barrier (Score:5, Interesting)
Running old versions of software for improved security sounds like eating rotten food to avoid getting swine flu. You have exactly the same chance of running into some unknown virus, and you're dealing with something that you *know* is inferior and a vector for disease.
"Once it's hardened..." Software doesn't magically become secure after fifty bugfixes. Even if that were true, the security update for IE6 is called IE7.
I hope you're just informing us of this policy rather than espousing it...it makes my head hurt just thinking about it.
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Re:There's an Artificial Barrier (Score:4, Insightful)
Running old versions of software for improved security sounds like eating rotten food to avoid getting swine flu.
No, it's more like keeping the prize you have vs exchanging it for what's behind curtain #1.
People need to test important software to make sure it works well in their environment. That means not only checking for security issues but making sure something like a new browser will not cause issues for the various in-house and external web applications that are important to the organization. If there are any problems you might have to redo some code that was otherwise working fine.
Then you have to train your support staff on the new software to deal with any issues that might come up and possibly train other staff.
Add it into your change control system to deploy it to all the locked down workstations since most of your users don't have rights to install software since that can be a security and support nightmare.
That takes a lot of time and resources to do. If there's no real incentive to upgrade browsers why bother with the hassle.
It doesn't sound like you've ever worked in the IT department of any medium to large sized business.
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Re:There's an Artificial Barrier (Score:4, Informative)
I work *FOR* the government, and your statement is a half-truth. We are not allowing people to download IE 8.x because it is an unknown quantity. IE 7 is a mature product (yeah, yeah) and for all its faults, we know how it will react to our applications and internal websites.
Please keep in mind, this does not just apply to IE 8 though... any brand-new software must be evaluated and go through a shakedown process before being allowed into the general use.
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Re:There's an Artificial Barrier (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you've put your finger on the strongest barriers to entry that Microsoft has erected. However, I'd like to point out that this list is the list of barriers they've retreated to. Bundling used to work in favor of IE. No longer. IE's reputation as the most compatible browser worked in their favor. No longer. Microsoft's hold over the development community meant that applications used to target IE. No longer.
Microsoft has retreated to the safety of corporate apps. They are slow to change, and in result are dependable. Yet their market share continues to drop. And here's the catch-22: Companies who rely on IE specific technologies (and thus maintain IE as the "standard") stick with IE6. They are now experiencing pressures to change their browser standards. Eventually they will cave to those pressures.
My expectation is that companies aren't going to be friendly to another round of Microsoft lock-in. They've done this song and dance too many times. Some will fall for it, but I have a feeling Microsoft's market share will vaporize as companies make an effort to target web standards rather than IE-specific technologies.
So that evil percentage you gave won't be the stopping point for IE. It's going to the bottom whether Microsoft likes it or not.
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Re:There's an Artificial Barrier (Score:5, Interesting)
The link you provided does show IE losing between 7% and 12% per year, rather than Asa's rough figure of 10% per year.
I agree with your assessment that there is an artificial barrier to Firefox adoption, that in the current environment there is a "natural rate" of IE use. However, as Firefox and other standards-compliant browsers make significant gains in marketshare, several knock-on effects will manifest:
In general, I agree with your suspicion that simply extrapolating from raw trends four or five years into the future is not a particularly valid or predictive exercise, because as you rightly point out the sociology of different blocks of users and their needs are different. Firefox may effectively eat up certain blocks, but that's no guarantee that they can effectively appeal to others.
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Re:There's an Artificial Barrier (Score:4, Insightful)
Controlling the default browser home page is a multi-million dollar a year business. This has always been Netscape and Mozilla's main revenue source.
Microsoft also makes a crapload of money from their development tools business -- in theory, controlling the browser platform sells copies of VisualStudio. (However I wonder how well this has worked in practice.)
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Re:There's an Artificial Barrier (Score:4, Interesting)
There will be a tipping point when any new web application will have to support all the standards.
Janus now does this, but when I first was using them 8 years ago, they didn't support any of my browsers so I left them. Today they do, but now I use Scottrade. I think we're close to the tipping point for this particular line item, the others we're just SOL.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not convinced Firefox will make significant gains going forward, unless they can address some of the significant problems with browser
Re:There's an Artificial Barrier (Score:5, Interesting)
You have just taken away every reason that MS develops a browser.
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Listen to the Nerds (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a significant Bellwether for the future in the tech industry - find out what the Nerds are recommending! True of any industry, find out what the pros in the industry are happiest with, and you'll find the up-and-comings if they aren't already on top.
People come to the "computer nerds" in order to get advice. Sure, many sales happen at the local Best Buy with whatever's on the shelf, but the trends start with nerds who identify new technologies, use them, and then recommend them to friends.
Microsoft has had a pretty tarnished name among the nerd community for a long time. Is it any wonder that their products are losing market share? It's really only inertia that's propping them up now. ALL of the following are gaining market share at the expense of Microsoft:
* MacOS
* Ubuntu
* OpenOffice
* PostgreSQL
* Fedora
* Zimbra
* Firefox
* Chrome
* Safari
Any I missed?
What's more, these technologies represent *core* technologies for Microsoft. Windows + Office are the cash cows for Microsoft, and they are what's most under attack by the Open Source crowd.
Listen to the nerds. They are the quiet whisper that define the future of the industry!
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Re:Listen to the Nerds (Score:4, Funny)
* Ubuntu * OpenOffice * PostgreSQL * Fedora * Zimbra * Firefox * Chrome * Safari
Any I missed?
Opera!
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Re:Listen to the Nerds (Score:4, Insightful)
Nerds *do* dictate the future of the web. Which is exactly why Firefox is gaining market share.
Ha, but no. Nerds pushed the Mozilla browser for 5 years and it ended up with a 1% marketshare. Firefox was an explicit effort to de-nerdify it.
Google didn't get popular until they started returning shopping results over technical documents.
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Re:There's an Artificial Barrier (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:There's an Artificial Barrier (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand... Google's numbers are questionable being that FF defaults to Google. Yahoo's numbers are probably not great either due to the fact that their damn toolbar is bundled in everything.
To get more reliable results I would suggest popular sites such as Facebook, Twitter, NY Times. Of course, my sample is still biased towards the English language.
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Re:There's an Artificial Barrier (Score:4, Interesting)
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NetApplications source link (Score:5, Informative)
It seems this conversation might benefit from a link to the original source data:
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=1 [hitslink.com]
Date is wrong. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Date is wrong. (Score:4, Insightful)
That would be the normal way that word of mouth campaigns go. I wouldn't expect any of the alternative browsers to crack 50%. Not because they aren't good enough, but because there's competition. When IE and Netscape did it, there weren't really any other browsers available to the internet going public. It was also a smaller total market. In more recent times MS had to use it's power to force it up there. Getting above 50% is going to be tough considering the different needs of various people going online.
But that being said, even with numbers in the 30-40% range, that's much too large of a market for developers to ignore. Plus even if the figures don't get better for the alternatives, the best thing for everybody is going to be when IE 6 dies the horrific death it deserves, abomination that it was.
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Re:Date is wrong. (Score:4, Interesting)
But that being said, even with numbers in the 30-40% range.
I think it would be good to have healthy competition. 90% firefox--is it really _that_ much better than 90% IE? Won't people become overly dependent on firefox and its quirks? Won't people write web apps which only work on firefox 3.0.5?
Okay, it's a big deal better than IE, being more standards compliant.
But I'd rather see healthy competition; IE, firefox, safari, opera, konqueror, each at 10-20%, vying for people's love and affection, competing with each other on who has the coolest features, the best usability or the fastest rendering engine.
Then again, wearing my free software advocacy hat, I'd like it to be firefox vs. konqueror at 45-50% each ;) -- or there to be more free browsers.
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browser wars are old news (Score:3, Interesting)
and no one cares anymore
MS pushed IE because they were afraid another browser would kill Windows as an app platform. it's already happening anyway and MS is content to license ActiveSync to Apple and Google, FAT32 to GPS makers, Virtual Earth and other cloud/SaaS services they have that don't rely on browser or OS
Re:browser wars are old news (Score:4, Insightful)
and no one cares anymore
Actually, there are plenty of developers who would love to be able to stop supporting IE. The amount of times things have to be tweaked and hacked just to please Internet Explorer, when the web site already works on most everything else (everything else: Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Opera).
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And Razors, (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And Razors, (Score:5, Interesting)
Could be, but could also be that what will happen is that by the time they get to ten blades or so, they'll introduce the revolutionary technology of the new single blade razor, complete with marketing hype to ridicule the fact that you need ten blades to shave, when one works better and more effectively.
Of course, the price of the new single blade razor will be roughly similar to the 10 blade one -- if not slightly more expensive. Rather than one tenth of the price like it should be.
The best use for the single blade razor however, would be to cut the throat of every marketing droid in existence -- sadly, few of them will suffer that fate.
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Re:And Razors, (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:And Razors, (Score:4, Funny)
I might as well duct tape the cat to my face then jump in the cold shower.
Make sure you post that to youtube, please.
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Re:And Razors, (Score:5, Interesting)
I am told that circa 1998, Adobe had posters up in their offices that said something like:
"In 1975 there were 20 professional Elvis impersonators. In 1995 there were 30,000 professional Elvis impersonators. By 2035 one of every three people will be an Elvis impersonator. Our job is to capture that market."
Which I thought was funny on at least two levels.
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The Obamma administration looking at Microsoft huh (Score:5, Insightful)
Bottom line: Politicians lie all the time, this is not news, this is normal operations. Look for the actions to back up any words. Given Microsoft's encamped army in Washington I doubt that sentiment will amount to much.
A big surprise for me today... (Score:3, Insightful)
While at school (kindergarten) I overheard a teaching assistant say, "When I opened my Firefox, it still could not work..."
"I then called my sister who told me to install a new extension..."
I did not expect to hear this from the assistant more especially because it's IE all through at school and it's been since time in memorial.
Re:A big surprise for me today... (Score:4, Funny)
I must say, you are doing very well with your letters.
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The elephant in the room for Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
Often they will feel more for their new browser because they CHOSE it and make it their default, so when an updated IE comes in as part of an automatic update they may not even know it, as they will already be using a different browser. For many people, their memories of IE are loads of pop ups crashing the fucker, toolbars installing themselves and their home pages being changed without their permission. This is NOT a warm and fuzzy feeling to give any "new and improved" IE a second chance.
People who are already awakened to the fact that other browsers exist and almost all of them are better than IE will happily jump between different browsers, perhaps start with Firefox then try out Opera etc but they are not likely to go back to IE. IE is a one-way exodus and there's nothing Microsoft can do to stop it, all they can do is try to slow the flood by actually making a good product people WANT to use.....for once.
Don't you just love karma? This is what happens when you let your product stagnate and your users suffer for years because they have nowhere to go. As soon as they do have an escape vessel they rush for it and you're left trying to lock the doors to keep them onboard.
Re:The elephant in the room for Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was young the paradigm was big iron, as this is what everyone learned in college. For vertical applications there was some variance, for instance there might be an Apple ][ running visicalc. A generation later, around the early 90's, it was MS Windows because that is what everyone used in college, especially the marketing people, which meant that all the grunts and executives had MS Windows machines, the rack was mostly mS windows machines. Again, for special applications there might be a different type of machine.
MS Windows is not necessarily the cheapest simplest solution, and IE is not necessarily what people use. However, the paradigm of MS/IE is not going to change until the current generation of managers is replaced with a more up to date generation, and the paradigm is allow to shift, so to speak. Cost will likely not play a huge role. New managers and technicians familiar with Firefox and Linux will make the choice. Unfortunately schools are still teaching MS only, on the whole, and managers still tend to be of limited technical education.
Of course, it will change. A generation was born that did not automatically buy cares from Detroit, so Detroit fell when they had to compete. Same thing for MS.
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Extrapolation? (Score:4, Insightful)
From Life On The Mississippi:
One of the Mississippi's oddest peculiarities is that of shortening its length from time to time. If you will throw a long, pliant apple-paring over your shoulder, it will pretty fairly shape itself into an average section of the Mississippi River; that is, the nine or ten hundred miles stretching from Cairo, Illinois, southward to New Orleans, the same being wonderfully crooked, with a brief straight bit here and there at wide intervals. The two-hundred-mile stretch from Cairo northward to St. Louis is by no means so crooked, that being a rocky country which the river cannot cut much.
The water cuts the alluvial banks of the `lower' river into deep horseshoe curves; so deep, indeed, that in some places if you were to get ashore at one extremity of the horseshoe and walk across the neck, half or three quarters of a mile, you could sit down and rest a couple of hours while your steamer was coming around the long elbow, at a speed of ten miles an hour, to take you aboard again. When the river is rising fast, some scoundrel whose plantation is back in the country, and therefore of inferior value, has only to watch his chance, cut a little gutter across the narrow neck of land some dark night, and turn the water into it, and in a wonderfully short time a miracle has happened: to wit, the whole Mississippi has taken possession of that little ditch, and placed the countryman's plantation on its bank.
Pray observe some of the effects of this ditching business. The Mississippi between Cairo and New Orleans was twelve hundred and fifteen miles long one hundred and seventy-six years ago. It was eleven hundred and eighty after the cut-off of 1722. It was one thousand and forty after the American Bend cut-off. It has lost sixty-seven miles since. Consequently its length is only nine hundred and seventy-three miles at present.
Now, if I wanted to be one of those ponderous scientific people, and `let on' to prove what had occurred in the remote past by what had occurred in a given time in the recent past, or what will occur in the far future by what has occurred in late years, what an opportunity is here! Geology never had such a chance, nor such exact data to argue from! Nor `development of species', either! Glacial epochs are great things, but they are vague--vague. Please observe. In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. This is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi 173-6 (1883)
Ignorati. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's utterly ignorant to believe trends will continue indefinitely in a linear manner. We're in a global recession caused in large part by this destructive thinking. People saw a couple years of double digit returns and assumed they'd continue indefinitely.
Firefox will rise at a linear rate until it captures its natural market share. After that point, it'll quickly level out. It's a basic first order process.
Firefox is a quality product, but acting as if the current meteoric rise is sustainable is to join the ignorati who have forgotten history, time and time again.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why do you assume linear change? In my experience, once products reach a critical mass over the competition, they tend to "hockey stick". Which is to say, they make sudden, explosive gains, leveling out near their natural market share.
I think the 2013 number is bogus, but only because I'm guessing we'll see a hockey stick sometime within the next year or so.
The browser is infrastructure (Score:4, Interesting)
"Microsoft's loss of IE market power, in turn, could have serious consequences for the company's efforts to compete with Google on the Web."
Um, Internet Explorer loads google.com just fine. Chrome loads microsoft.com just fine.
It doesn't matter what their market share is, Microsoft already lost. The web is now firmly based on open standards, not proprietary technology tied to a specific operating system.
What we should be more concerned with is the fact that everything depends on Javascript.
Developers anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
If these trends continue... (Score:5, Funny)
"Did you know that disco record sales were up 400% for the year ending 1976? If these trends continues... AAY!"
It's just overpriced, is all. (Score:4, Funny)
Clearly, people don't feel the price Microsoft asks for IE is reasonable. They should lower it a bit.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It was to sell Windows and development tools and IIS
If you developed for Windows/IE/IIS then you use those, and people you sell to use them etc ...
You make Windows cheap to companies, make IE free, so they will pay to use MSSQL/IIS/Sharepoint and not use alternatives
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
FF's memory usage patterns seem to be very dependent on the user and his luck.
I'm running FF 3.0.10 on Linux, and this is what top says:
(I'm so glad slashcode collapses spaces like that. Point being, FF is taking multiple hundreds of megs. This is with 20 tabs open. (Part of this could be flash's fault). Also, FF has been behaving very poor lately in general, so I'm often restarting