Firefox Passes IE6 In Browser Share 350
Jared sends word of Ars Technica coverage of Net Applications' monthly browser share numbers. What's significant this time is that Firefox has finally passed IE6 in worldwide share. "Internet Explorer remains ahead of the rest of the competition, but since month after month it continues to lose ground to all other browsers, Firefox has now finally surpassed IE6, which is easily the most hated version of Microsoft's browser. ... In October, all browsers except for IE and Opera showed positive growth. Between October and September, Internet Explorer dropped a significant 1.07 percentage points (from 65.71 percent to 64.64 percent) and Firefox moved up a sizeable 0.32 percentage points (from 23.75 percent to 24.07 percent). ... Although IE's decline seems to be unceasing, the real shame is that the old versions have more share than the newer ones (we can only hope that as Windows 7 gains popularity, this trend will reverse)." Ars presents a graph with their own site's browser share picture, and as you might expect it's very different from the general population's.
Re:StatCounter etc (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:StatCounter etc (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing is, most Americans see Internet Explorer as 'The Internet'
Fixed that for you.
No my mum is an Australian and she is exactly the same. Fortunately she has three offspring to install software for her.
Problems are still corporate users and non-techies (Score:5, Insightful)
This is great, but IE6 is still going to stick around for years. The reasons - as have been widely discussed on these pages before - are:
Neither of these situations will change any time soon. Gradual adoption of Windows 7 will certainly help in the second case, but the first one is dependent entirely on enterprise-level IT departments creating lots of work (and therefore cost) for themselves when senior management can't see any tangible benefit... And how soon do you think that will happen?
Re:The numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
What's most interesting about IE's market share is that version 6 (this oldest one indeed) is actually the most used version of Internet Explorer. Both version 7 (released 3 years ago) and version 8 (released about half a year ago) have not caught on enough to overtake IE6's position as the number one browser out there in sheer market share.
These figures are unlike all other browsers, where the more recent versions have way more market share than the older ones. The usage of Firefox 1 and 2 for example is virtually nothing, while 3.5 is the most popular version. So "all versions of Firefox" actually mean "mostly Firefox 3.5, a bit Firefox 3 and really nothing else", while "all of Internet Explorer" means "Mostly IE6, some IE7 and some IE8".
You are absolutely right that all versions combined, IE is still very dominant, but IE-users are way less inclined to upgrade to more recent versions. Just like Windows XP is still the most popular version of Windows. I wouldn't be surprised to see the same thing with Microsoft Office. Microsoft just doesn't seem to be able to sell their latest products anymore. This is why it quite significant that Firefox with it's latest product is able to have more market share than Microsoft with it's old version, because the old versions of Microsoft products are the relevant ones.
Re:StatCounter etc (Score:4, Insightful)
True. And it generalizes. The general rule is, you're 'allowed' to say things about majority-groups who are in power, that you can't say about others.
So, if you're adult, male, white, middle-class, christian, heterosexual, well-educated, you're fair game.
Whereas if you're a lesbian, jewish, old, female from Ghana, you can hardly be *described* without it being perceived as racism.
Re:Antarctica! (Score:4, Insightful)
I just wondered why the Statcounter site showed without and images or stylesheets... Then I remembered that it was completely blocked in AdBlock. Because it's a nasty dirty disgusting privacy-raping piece of shit of a tracking site!
I would see their statistics as more than useless, as everyone with half a brain already blocks them and their nasty friends.
Some comparisons... (Score:5, Insightful)
All users of every version of FireFox taken together use more than one old version of IE.
Re:StatCounter etc (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Hoping for Windows 7's success... (Score:1, Insightful)
Unfortunately many/most people do not use social networking sites
o_O
Re:IE6 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:StatCounter etc (Score:2, Insightful)
The gap between Firefox (all versions) and IE (all versions) is also rather narrower for Europe than for North America.
Yeah, but there's something worth considering. I'm from Poland, which boasts FF leadership over IE (I am an Opera user myself but still) and there's something I realized, thinking about Poland's (and other Central European countries') results and also the massive Opera market share in Russia. Thing is, these are the countries with lower Internet penetration than North America. You have considerably moms and dads online, not to mention grannies and grandpas than, say, in the States. It's only natural that a younger, more tech-savvy Internet population will boost FF (or, more rarely, Opera) usage. Consequently, this is reflected in combined stats for Europe, because it's the less-developed countries that "help" Firefox ratings. If you look at many Western European countries, you will see results similar to the American ones. Granted, that theory totally doesn't explain 60% Firefox market share in Germany :)
Don't confuse "unpopular" with "unsupported" (Score:4, Insightful)
A company I worked for had similar similar browser-share for their major web applications, and it really had little to do with Opera and Safari being niche outcast browsers. It had a lot more to do with the site being so broken as to be unusable in Opera and Safari. People would go one or two pages in, realize there was a problem, and either switch to a different browser, or as the growing fear was, switch to a different company.
It stems from the complaint above that many large corporate IT departments don't want to switch from IE6. Well, guess what the in-house web developers code for first? IE6. Then they try to tweak the design to work passably in other browsers when they should be working the other way: create a standards-based layout, then tweak for the peccadillos of other browsers.
Re:StatCounter etc (Score:4, Insightful)
I go a few steps further. IE skin, Adblock with all malware sites, silent upgrades. They won't notice the difference.
Re:Antarctica! (Score:3, Insightful)
This article/summary/whatever seems much ado about nothing.
Saying that Firefox beat IE6 is like bragging Mac OS X surpassed Windows 98 in usage share. oooh.
Re:StatCounter etc (Score:4, Insightful)
And I resent being called the cause of some other group's problems, simply because I look like someone who might have done something bad to their ancestors.
Re:StatCounter etc (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:StatCounter etc (Score:3, Insightful)
Versions of IE before IE4 were actually called "The Internet" on the desktop and had an icon of a globe and a magnifying glass.
No other major browser has the word "Internet" in its name, and if it did Microsoft could probably sue for trademark violation. No doubt calling their browser "Internet Explorer" instead of "Web Explorer" to take advantage of the then-more-well-known term "Internet" over "Web" worked out well for them. They may have actually propagated continued confusion of the two terms by doing so.
Re:Antarctica! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Problems are still corporate users and non-tech (Score:2, Insightful)
I predict that the issue with large corps not wanting to change will resolve itself sooner than you think.
Many corps have been sticking to WinXP for some time now because of Vista's reputation, and the fact that MS has continued to make new XP licenses available to them.
This situation will have to change at some point -- MS cannot continue allowing new XP licenses for ever, and corps can't resist upgrading to Win7 forever. At some point, those corps who have been holding out will be forced into an upgrade cycle. At that point, those old web apps that only work in IE6 will have to updated or replaced.
With the IE6 lock-in effect removed, corps will be free to use any browser they like. I suspect almost all of them will standardise on IE8 (because corps tend toward making the same mistake twice), but that's still a heck of an improvement on IE6.
There's only two things that will delay this: Firstly, the global financial situation is making companies hesitate before spending money, so normal upgrade cycles may be delayed. And secondly, when will Microsoft stop offering XP licenses? That will really force the issue, because even if you're not doing an upgrade cycle, you still need the occasional new PC.
Re:StatCounter etc (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay,
Here's one. How would you explain the same exact situation in one place where it is seemingly blatantly by color of skin, where there is no significant differences in color of skin?
Poverty and slums and ghettos are fairly universal thoughout the world, and very rarely does it matter what color of skin one has, compared to others.
In Africa, there are whole regions where black on black power struggles occur, and the minority is not that significantly different than the majority.
The point I'm making, is that it isn't color of skin that is the cause, it is just something to distract from the REAL cause, man's inhumanity to man.
The worst propgators of this are not the white Anglo Christian heterosexual males (Most aren't Anglo btw), but the self hating race baiters like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Jeremiah Wright.
They do nothing to resolve the issue of man's inhumanity to man, and turn any dialogue into self fulfilling prophecies.
Whenever you have people pitting one group against another group, it is nothing short of hatred. PERIOD.
Yes, I've been to slums around the world. They are all around the world, and the only thing in common is that you have one group of people being pitted against another, without regard to individuality, and rarely does it have anything to do with "race".
Libertarians don't care about power, or authority, except for that of the individual. Power accumulated into groups is where the problems truly lie. The problem with people like yourself, is that they see power in terms of groups of people, and yet seek solutions by grouping people for power consolidation, which really is the problem in the first place.
True libertarians realize the catch22 nature of using groups to isolate individuals from the power of self.
THAT is why libertarianism is popular around here, as it is about liberty of all people, not just the groups you belong to.
Re:StatCounter etc (Score:3, Insightful)
Poverty and slums and ghettos are fairly universal thoughout the world, and very rarely does it matter what color of skin one has, compared to others.
And that right there is where you lost me. This statement is utterly absurd. Poverty is very often linked to ethnicity *specifically* because ethnic groups are targeted. Are are you going to try and convince me that ghettos in the US aren't predominantly non-anglo?
In fact, that's the whole fucking point. As a white person, your parents, and their grandparents, and so on, haven't been subject to the legacy of US slavery and ongoing racism. As a consequence, you have wealth and power that individuals of those groups don't... hell, the very fact that you've supposedly "been to slums around the world" is proof of that fact (last I checked, the poor and downtrodden can't really afford to visit international slums).
As for your claims of traveling the world, if that didn't open your eyes to the wealth and power you possess, then, frankly, you're an idiot. If anything, such experiences should've highlighted to you the sheer level of wealth, freedom, and power you enjoy, which would never have been available to you had you been born a minority in a St. Louis slum.
THAT is why libertarianism is popular around here, as it is about liberty of all people
No, libertarianism is about liberty for those who can afford it. Fortunately, Slashdot is overwhelmingly dominated by middle to upper-middle class nerds who think that they're downtrodden because the government wants to take away their right to mod their Xbox. But they have no idea what real poverty is like, and as such, they lack the vision to understand just how much power the wealthy have over the poor thanks to their possessing the lion's share of the world's wealth, despite making up a fraction of the world's population.
Re:StatCounter etc (Score:1, Insightful)
So, basically what GP said is true: "very US and English language generic".
English speaking (millions): 1300 + 240 + 160 = 1700,
Non-english: 570+280+260+250+240+180+140+109 = 2029
45% English language speaking...