After 100M IE7 Downloads, Firefox Still Gaining 425
Kelson writes "Internet Explorer 7 hit the 100 million download mark last week. Yet in the three months it's been available, Firefox's market share has continued to grow. InformationWeek reports that nearly all of IE7's growth has been upgrades from IE6. People don't seem to be switching back to IE in significant numbers, prompting analysts to wonder: has Microsoft finally met its match?"
If you're like me (Score:5, Insightful)
100M IE7 downloads (Score:5, Insightful)
A fair test? (Score:5, Insightful)
Please note that this isn't a Firefox fanboy post (despite my love for it), merely pointing out the facts.
How well would FF do if *it* forced itself out? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gee, perhaps that has something to do with Microsoft marking it a high-priority update, so everyone with automatic updates turned on will unwittingly get it?
Not much of a claim to success to say that 100 million people, running an OS that has automatic updates turned on by default, have wasted bandwidth on a program they didn't even choose to download.
Upgrades (Score:4, Insightful)
I switched (mostly) to Linux to get away from IE. But I still installed IE7. So no, I don't consider this news to be surprising in the slightest.
Bad Metrics (Score:4, Insightful)
It's fugly for one thing. (Score:4, Insightful)
While people might argue about all manner of things like standards support, security, and rendering speed; the initial ugliness and apparent difficulty/impossibility to configure the UI to my liking is probably going to put more people off IE7 within 5 minutes than anything else.
I presume there is a way to change the UI (hell, even IE6 could do that) and maybe it's actually quite obvious if you take the time to look, but quite frankly why should I when Firefox can do it right off the bat in an intuitive manner? I think that's the way a lot of casual users see it too.
Considering... (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering these circumstances, it is amazing to see how well Firefox is doing considering the odds.
Download != Use (Score:2, Insightful)
Not the right time for comparisons (Score:5, Insightful)
Met its match? (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, no. There will always be some microsoft tool that requires their browser causing some form of lock-in. Heck, using microsoft's action pack subscription web page to purchase software requires IE. What the numbers mean is that web designers are finally paying attention and making their sites support firefox and a few other standards based browsers or risk loosing a good chunk of their customers. And now that everyone's favorite web pages work in firefox, they can start making a piecemeal migration away from vendor lock-in. However, just because they can use firefox for most things, you can be sure that microsoft will ensure there is lock-in someone and default to their browser giving them a 75% chunk of the market for life. The next chunk of the monopoly to fragment will be office with various online tools and openoffice making advances. But, I expect that will be another 2-4 years before we see anything like firefox's progress.
Re:Yay, I'm one of those 100 million (Score:5, Insightful)
Stupid meaningless statistics (Score:5, Insightful)
- IE7's requirements say it will only run on XP or Windows Server 2003. Hence you'd expect that (most) people who downloaded IE7 are indeed on XP or Win 2003 machines.
- all XP and Windows Server 2003 computers came with IE6
I'm sure you can fill in the blanks there, because it's a simple case of "X => Y, Y => Z". If X="you upgraded to IE7", Y="you're on XP or Win 2003", Z="you had IE6". Did anyone really need a statistic or study to tell them that, surprisingly, unexpectedly, those who upgraded to IE7 had IE6 on their machine before?
Pretty much the only mildly interesting word in there is: "most". Did some people actually go through the trouble of making IE7 install on a system that doesn't run it? E.g., on Win 2000? I can only hope there weren't too many.
So basically this is such a useless revelation, that I can only hope that it was some attempt at manipulation. Because the depressing to think that someone was genuinely stupid enough to think they're onto some brilliant discovery and market trend.
So the one-word wisdom there is: duh.
Re:A fair test? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A fair test? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mozilla is NOT Microsoft's match... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Mozilla is NOT Microsoft's match... (Score:4, Insightful)
That has to be ignoring half a kazillion markeds where the leading product is a commercial product which is vastly superior to any OSS equivalent (but usually with a price tag to match). If I wanted to point out where OSS has usually succeeded, I would say that OSS thrives in markets that have stagnated and have little or no competition. Linux, Firefox and OpenOffice are all good examples of that. It seems that in these markets OSS products can improve and live where commercial products would fail to sell and die.
Both IE *AND* Firefox upgrade automatically (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Mozilla is NOT Microsoft's match... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course! Let's not count Opera because it doesn't match with our precious open source theory! Ignore tabs! Mouse gestures! All these 'innovations' that Firefox pushed! Yay puppies and kittens!
Re:Stupid meaningless statistics (Score:5, Insightful)
The article shows that, yes, people who use IE6 are now upgrading to IE7. However, it also shows that the Firefox adoption trend hasn't wavered.
In other words, people are switching from IE6 to IE7, but not from Firefox to IE7.
The story isn't that people are upgrading from IE6 to IE7 - as you point out, that's pretty much a given.
The story is that people aren't "upgrading" from Firefox 2 to IE7.
In other words, MS's attempt at a Firefox-killer is provably failing miserably in its aim, and Firefox continues to go from strength to strength.
Re:Both IE *AND* Firefox upgrade automatically (Score:5, Insightful)
IE7 is pushed to most XP users (that is probably most computer users) regardless of whether they use or ever chose to install Internet Explorer originally.
So basically, they are *totally* different since windows update uses Microsofts monopoly position in the Operating System market to push new web browser products.
If McAfee antivirus was deployed in a windows update then the number of McAfee antivirus installs would shoot up regardless of whether Symantec Antivirus has it's own auto-update system or not.
Matt.
Re:Mozilla is NOT Microsoft's match... (Score:1, Insightful)
What have you been smoking? What exactly has Firefox introduced that can be considered innovative? Tabbed windows and plugins? Those features were already available for other browsers, including IE.
Want an example of a real innovation? Try XmlHttpRequest. You know, that API that underpins practically all of the AJAX, web 2.0 innovation that is happening. Microsoft introduced that with Outlook Web Access 2000. Name one thing that Firefox has introduced that has had the same impact on the way that we use the internet.
I really like Firefox. I started using it when it was still in beta. But I switched to it because it had a simple, clean interface that did just what I needed it to do, not because it was innovative.
Met its match? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, FF is making inroads. It's my browser of choice (almost exclusively because of extensions, though, and not due to any other groundbreaking feature in FF). But to construe that "abandoning" IE is ridiculous. Both are useful.
Re:Its not a monopoly (Score:3, Insightful)
Because those OS distributions are not occupying 90% of the market, and are not essentially shoved down the throat of everyone who wants to buy a PC.
When you have a product that is a monopoly, you have additional rules to follow. It includes not taking advantage of this monopoly (the OS one) to force an unrelated product (IE) on your customers. What is so hard to understand?
Re:If you're like me (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Well being that it is part of windows upgrade.. (Score:3, Insightful)
The bigger issue, though, is that most businesses still haven't moved off Win2k. No XP/2003, no IE7.
Re:If you're like me (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I Like IE7... (Score:2, Insightful)
So it only alerts when visiting websites you don't visit?
Re:Mozilla is NOT Microsoft's match... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If you're like me (Score:3, Insightful)
Downloads != users.
Re:For me.... (Score:3, Insightful)
1:
Because there is not necessarily a 1:1 relationship between persons and user accounts, even though a lot of people seem to think this. One person can have a limited account for everyday purposes and an administrator account for administrative purposes.
2:
Because the user will then be able to call someone who has the necessary rights.