Microsoft Says IE Faster Than Chrome and Firefox

An anonymous reader writes "According to its own speed tests, Microsoft's Internet Explorer loads most websites faster than both Chrome and Firefox when looking at the top 25 websites on the Internet. 'As you can see, IE8 outperforms Firefox 3.05 and Chrome 1.0 in loading 12 websites, Chrome 1.0 places second by loading nine sites first, and Firefox brings up the rear by loading four sites faster than the other two browsers. Also, in case you missed it, IE loads mozilla.com faster than Firefox, and Firefox loads microsoft.com faster than IE, just for kicks.'"

Oh well

[arndawg]

A more useful test would perhaps be testing firefox 3.5 vs ie8 and chrome 2.0? Firefox 3 is already getting "old".

So half the time they are better?

[forand]

How is this "good" they test 25 sites (who only views 25 sites?) and IE is faster 12/25. This doesn't seem very compelling at all. They don't even have a simple majority on their side.

But IE8 doesn't work with Slashdot correctly.

[ElSupreme]

I use IE 8. And it really is much better and right on par with Firefox ... EXCEPT I can't do online banking with Wachovia, and SLASHDOT corrcetly. I have to open a new tab to reply, or read a hidden comment.

And to comment I have to use Firefox. Which is what I am using now.

What it shows

[William Robinson]

that..Microsoft can no longer ignore Firefox, and has to come up with some such FUD. A healthy sign about status of Firefox.

Re:mozilla.com

[rvw]

Ofcourse IE loads mozilla.com faster, that's the only site you'd ever need to open with IE...

Strangely enough FF opens microsoft.com faster, and they publicly admit this.

Javascript ?

[eulernet]

And what about Javascript ?
Frankly, GMail is super slow on IE7, not because of page loading, but because any Javascript in IE is super slow.
In TFA, there is no site with Javascript !

Re:speed is everything?

[spearway]

You may want to keep up with the stats IE is fast becoming irrelevant for some segment of the Web and is down to 67% globally.
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=0 [hitslink.com]

Re:speed is everything?

[Chabil Ha']

You bring up an interesting point. It seems that we're approaching territory where the marginal increase in speed really isn't that significant. At this point the need for the greater marginal increase in accuracy would be much more appreciated than speed.

That's why I have a hard time taking *any* of these software companies seriously when the only thing they can brag about is how incremental their speed increases are.

Exploits abound

[networkconsultant]

Since IE is the "Default" browser it is the most exploited, as such it costs any organization the most money to secure. (if you have 10K workstations and new IE bugs pop up all the time, your patch cycle becomes hell even if it's automated). If you want to save your company tons of money; switch to Fire Fox with NoScript and AdBlock+ Opera is still wikked fast; and chrome is pretty neat but I "Like" firefox because of the module, Stumble Upon alleviate soo much bordem that it's worth it's weight in gold.

"Marketshare sets the standard"

[Dystopian Rebel]

Hmm, so GM, Ford and Chrysler set the standard for cars in North America?

Preponderance alone does not set the standard. If it did, what exactly would that standard be today?

MS IE 5 or 6?

There's at least one thing it does faster...

[djpretzel]

I *have* noticed that IE7 handles one very specific thing MUCH faster than Firefox - copying large amounts of tabular data. If I load up a table with ~5 columns and ~2000 rows, it takes FF3 much longer just to highlight all of those rows, and attempting to copy that data to the clipboard usually kills the browser entirely. IE7 just plains handles it, usually in a matter of seconds. Not a common use case at all, and don't ask me why I'm even trying to do this, but as an FF fan I'd prefer it do EVERYTHING better than IE, and here's one instance where it doesn't.

Re:you are not looking

[stewbacca]

IE sluggishness is so bad, that even though we aren't allowed to have any other browser on our computers, I use Firefox. That's right, IE is so bad, I risk disciplinary action to avoid having to use IE. The best part about the "You will use IE7 or higher only" mantra of our idiot IT department is that our time card website doesn't work with anything beyond IE6, so we all have to run a stupid little script that fools IE7 into thinking it is IE6.

Meh

[UnknowingFool]

Companies have always made comparisons between their products and competitors' products. Sometimes they even skew the comparison so their product is shown as better. MS is no different. First they use their unreleased future product IE8 against their competitors' current products. Second they use a somewhat meaningless metric: Speed to load. The main complaints about IE in general is that is unwieldy, doesn't follow standards, and it is slow. Ironically this test only proves that. I'm not an expert in web browser engines but it seems to me that an engine performs faster when it does not have to render. Coming across a webpage with things it can't render, it will perform faster as it ignores those elements. Mozilla.com is probably a lot more web standards compliant than Microsoft.com. So IE will load mozilla.com faster as it will ignore many things. The reverse is true for Firefox on microsoft.com as it will ignore all the nonstandard elements. In the end the comparison is rather meaningless until they change the conditions.

Re:What about rendering ?

[lhoguin]

It is indeed funny but that's quite possibly one of the reasons that makes it be faster. The more you support, the slower it gets and the more you have to optimize to get the same speed as a less complete implementation.

Their claims won't have much value until they get to the same level of standard support as the other browsers.

Re:you are not looking

[pjt33]

There's more than one way to analyse that table, and the one MS have chosen is not the most obvious one. On a simple total of the time to render all 25, it's a tie: IE at 88.30 seconds and Chrome at 88.32 seconds have a difference well within measurement error, so clearly the competitive advantage isn't as great as you think. Firefox definitely trails, but at 95.62 seconds it's only 8% behind.

Re:Really

[Mostly a lurker]

The speed at which Firefox starts and the time to load pages is heavily dependent on the extensions in use. For me, Firefox startup is pretty slow (about 5 seconds) because of my pretty extensive Adblock lists. Most pages load quite fast, helped by the Adblock lists. The speed at which Internet Explorer starts and loads pages is heavily dependent on how long ago a fresh install was done. Until the malware starts accumulating it can be pretty reasonable.

Re:"Marketshare sets the standard"

[PitaBred]

Too bad that doesn't really work. Because 5' is a subset of 7'. With browsers, you CAN'T build it one way and have everything work with it. You have to make special concessions for IE, and build things differently for every browser EXCEPT IE. And one for older versions of IE.

Car analogies are rarely accurate.

Re:So...

[mdm-adph]

You know, your argument doesn't mean anything to me, since you're apparently forgetting that the version of Internet Explorer that Microsoft's testing isn't released yet.

Let's try comparing IE7 vs Firefox 3, shall we?

Re:You can dream

[Hamish910]

On that note, has anybody seen a webpage screen shot on TV were the browser was not IE? And does it make one an official nerd when you date TV shows by the style of monitor they use and the OS they are running?

Yes, actually. On Australian news programs and infomercials that have a reason to show a web site, they will often show it in FF.
I've been noticing it for about the last year or so.