Is IE Usage Share Collapsing? 575
je ne sais quoi writes "Net Applications normally releases its statistics for browser and operating system usage share on the first of every month. This month, however, the data has not shown up — only a cryptic message stating they are reviewing the data for inexplicable statistical variations and that it will be available soon. Larry Dignan at ZDNet has a blog post that might explain what is happening: Statcounter has released some data that shows a precipitous drop in IE browser use in North America, to the benefit of Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. At the end of May, StatCounter shows IE usage share (for versions 6, 7, and 8 combined) at around 64%; at the beginning of June it is now about 56% — an astounding 8% drop in one month. We should keep in mind the difficulties in estimating browser usage share: this could very well be a change in how browsers report themselves, or some other statistical anomaly. So it will probably be healthy to remain skeptical until trend this is confirmed by other organizations. Have any of you seen drops in IE usage share for Web-sites you administer?"
Proliferation of mobile browsers... (Score:5, Insightful)
Skeptical (Score:4, Insightful)
So it will probably be healthy to remain skeptical until trend this is confirmed by other organizations.
Especially after all the breathless "Firefox is taking over" stories on Slashdot, submitted by fanboys every time there's a spike in downloads (like after a release!) or the browser's market share gains a tiny fraction of a percent.
Mind you, I'm really glad to see that we're finally getting some serious competition in the browser marketplace. But before you congratulate yourselves too much, send a psychic "Thanks for Shooting Yourselves in the Foot!" to Steve and Bill. Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera all have real advantages, but none of these would have overcome IE's big advantage: being the default browser on the desktop OS that owns 90% of its market. The only thing that could have overcome that advantage is not the advantages of the competition, but the extreme crappiness of IE itself.
Re:It was to be expected (Score:5, Insightful)
It always takes a while to educate the whole population with regards to technical stuff, after a while, it becomes public knowledge although ;-)))
The tough part isn't making it public knowledge, the difficulty is in making it common knowledge.
To compare this to more sinister things: Notice of your house being demolished on Tuesday can be put up in a dark cellar with no stairs at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory of the planning office guarded by a Leopard. This is public knowledge.
Making a news cast on the fact a new road is being run through your neighbourhood and personally notifying everyone whose house will be demolished is much more difficult. This is common knowlege.
Re:It was to be expected (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't get me wrong, I'm rabidly pro-F/L/OSS [wikipedia.org], and nudge "ordinary" people towards it wherever I can, but I think it's a bit of a simplification to describe it as purely technically superior. When it does push the envelope, it normally drives the commercial world to react and improve, so they're usually roughly level-pegging at the feature level.
Where it really shines, I think, is in harder-to-define areas. Ethics, for one. Architectural taste, for another (debian got package management right 10 - 15 years ago - has windows caught up yet?) Social/organizational factors - the maintenance and repository models used by open OS distributions works so well that the commercial world is mimicking it with "app stores." Lastly, of course, there's motivation - I trust Ubuntu and Mozilla to fix security holes because it's the Right Thing and because they want to do a good job, and not just because they're scared of getting caught out, which I always feel is the mindset in the commercial world.
I understand these things are probably harder to explain to the general public, but can we at least be a bit more honest / precise amongst ourselves?
Re:It was to be expected (Score:1, Insightful)
You think it's EASY to get into a dark cellar with no stairs, and then leave a leopard behind to guard it??
Re:typo in summary (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ugh!!! (Score:3, Insightful)
If we're not supposed to base our opinions on a "SINGLE SITE" (which we're not, most discussion revolves around aggregate data), why should we care about your site? Also, what the hell is the topic of your site to attract such a crowd of drooling mouth breathers (as I assume anyone still using IE5 must be)? I want to get in on that action, I bet my click through rates would go through the roof.
What browsers to actively test/support is a decision best handled on a per-site basis. No two sites are the same demographic, and different demographics have different tastes in browsers. My personal site gets about 20% IE, with negligible IE6 and below. I don't even bother testing for it because I don't care. At work on the other hand, we get about 60% IE and I do test for it. What to do depends on the situation...just like it always does.
Re:Proliferation of mobile browsers... (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the economy, stupid! (Score:5, Insightful)
The drop in IE use is probably inversely proportional to the rise in unemployment.
With millions of people being laid off work, they are surfing at home and using sensible browsers.
Only people surfing at work get stuck using IE. My current gig is still using IE6!
Re:It was to be expected (Score:2, Insightful)
In the case of browsers, it has become a technical issue. Microsoft has a monopoly marketshare, and also has several commercial products which are threatened by the new generation of online platform-independent software. This has lead to microsoft freezing their previously rapid development of IE to a snails pace, and open source web browsers (which could not keep up with IE's old development speed) have overtaken it and become much more technically advanced.
Personally, I love open source (and am involved in several projects of various sizes, some of which I created myself). But I will use commercial software over open source if it is better and reasonably priced. For example, a few years ago I purchased the OmniWeb browser, but no-longer use it because most of the open source browsers available today are better.
Re:IE on iPhone (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft hasn't released any apps for the iPhone, clearly indicating that it isn't a legitimate software company, but merely a marketing company that perpetuates the Windows monopoly.
Ogg Theora, H.264 and the HTML 5 Browser Squabble [roughlydrafted.com]
Re:IE8 likely to blame (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It was to be expected (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not him, but I'd rather have the customer telling all his relatives and friends about how good and reliable my services were. Less short-time profit, more long-time profit.
And a reputation is something you can't buy with money, on the other hand good reputation might get you some.
Re:It was to be expected (Score:4, Insightful)
> how much of the difference between commercial and OSS really is technical
If regular people are leaving IE for Safari or Chrome or Firefox in large numbers it is for technical reasons not political because even I don't understand WTF you are talking about. A recent poll showed only 8% of the public know what a "Web Browser" is. The fact that WebKit is BSD licensed and Firefox GPL probably has no meaningful impact on IE market share.
Safari, Chrome, and Firefox are all 2x-8x faster than the latest IE, and you can run the latest Safari and Chrome on mobiles also. You can run Firefox completely for free on almost any PC hardware because you just have to install Ubuntu and there you go. At the same time, IE is a disaster. An epic technical failure. The current mobile version is based on the 1998 PC version.
You don't need to look any further than technical as the IE users peel off. The contrast is extremely stark.
I'm consulting in an all-Microsoft shop right now and they have all 2003 stuff and what they want is to move to Web apps, so they are thinking of standardizing company-wide on Chrome, at first on Windows and then later on Linux or a Google client OS. Nobody talks about moving to whatever is coming out of Microsoft tomorrow or ever. Their conversation around Microsoft for years has been how to keep it all running without upgrading it any further, basically an I-T freeze. Now they can see Web apps and cheap PC clients and of course smart phones for all as the next steps, and Microsoft is 0/3 in those categories. Also, they are moving away from paper faster than ever and Word does not have a "Publish to Web" command, there is no enthusiasm for a new version of Office, which is why they're still using 2003.
Microsoft's technical problems surely come at least in part from their inability to accept that some software projects, like browser engines and operating system cores, are better done in a community way through open source and standardization. But at the end of the day if your stuff works, nobody cares how you made the sausage. IE is falling under its own weight right now, and just when Safari, Chrome, and Firefox are really shining. The new typography in Firefox 3.5 really impressed me, and I was happy to see good typography from someone other than Apple and Adobe. Safari is so easy to use and so fast, what a joy. Chrome is a great business browser that will replace IE in a lot of corporate environments over the next few years and everyone will be better for it.
Re:typo in summary (Score:3, Insightful)
WTF? How do poets afford to eat?
Re:typo in summary (Score:2, Insightful)
For a while, I thought that that was because of my custom stylesheet, but then I disabled it and found out that it was just another addition to the list of things wrong with Slashdot's layout.