IE Market Share Falls To Historic Low 472
An anonymous reader writes "Predicting that Microsoft will lose market share from month to month isn't especially difficult. Yet it is amazing to see the downfall of what was once a bastion for Microsoft. It appears that Microsoft can't defend IE against Firefox and, as it seems, Google's Chrome. Net Applications now believes that IE has a share of less than 60%, which is about the range that IE had in early 1999, when IE5 was launched. IE is now officially back in the 1990s. Chrome, by the way, is the fastest growing browser, both in absolute numbers and percentages. It is well ahead of Safari and more than tripled its share within 12 months."
Sure, if you go back far enough... (Score:4, Interesting)
There was a moment in time when MSIE had effectively 0% market share right? So this 60% is still a huge triumph if you choose to spin it that way.
But seriously, any drop in market share is a historic low for Microsoft. And here's what I love about it -- Microsoft will be hard pressed to explain why it would choose to not completely support competing browsers with its web based applications such as Outlook Web Access and the like. It has been a while since I looked at it, but OWA did not offer full functionality to browsers other than MSIE. I don't know if that is still the case, but I suspect it is.
In any case, it is in large part due to Microsoft's behavior that our next enterprise email server at the office will be anything but MS Exchange.
i develop for the web (Score:5, Interesting)
so i have ie8, firefox, chrome, safari, and opera installed on my desktop
i often find myself in this common usage scenario: 4 browsers open at the same time. ie8 opened with code being tested, opera running pandora, chrome with nytimes.com and other reading media on it, and firefox open with some online code documentation
i use those 4 browsers all the time, i don't use safari at all really unless testing code (but since its webkit like chrome, that's often redundant)
honestly, i lately have found myself prefering chrome over firefox. i love firefox, but chrome has a sleek ui and seems faster (opera's latest ui is pretty hot too, but opera has some compatibility issues, such as google map's api)
chrome just has more... chrome. consider this small bird adequately bedazzled by the shiny bells and whistles
currently i rank the browsers according to this personal preference:
1. chrome
2. firefox and opera tied for second best
3. ie8 and safari not at all
if firefox wants to win my heart back, it has to be super fast and bedazzle me with a hot ui. opera is doing a good job of that, but opera has issues
Re:soooo? (Score:3, Interesting)
Trust me, as a developer who has tried to understand the madness that is IE6, we care and we are not alone [bringdownie6.com]. The damage continues to this day [slashdot.org].
Guess I'm lucky, my last 2 jobs got to drop IE6 as a supported browser, and my current one doesn't even directly support IE7! It's standards only, and if it works on Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera, we really don't give a rats ass about IE other than that IE8 doesn't make a complete mess of the pages. In truth, IE8 does a much much better job of displaying standards so this has been almost a non-issue. Amazingly enough, almost everything works in IE7 as well.
Re:Sure, if you go back far enough... (Score:4, Interesting)
In any case, it is in large part due to Microsoft's behavior that our next enterprise email server at the office will be anything but MS Exchange.
Sadly, somehow our department has gotten it into their heads that "Microsoft is the way to go.". They had a few years when they tried to get OSS (mostly FreeBSD, but some Linux) systems working for most of the servers, and a lot of the tasks were delegated out to people who had no Unix experience at all. End result is that they became frustrated and rather than try to educate themselves, they blamed the system.
Fast forward to today. Our CentOS/Apache web server has been replaced with IIS (and that was one thing that had always worked great - they basically just replaced it because they wanted to go all Microsoft). Our PHP code on our site has been replaced with ASP.NET. Our Samba setup is being replaced by Windows + Active Directory. Our Lotus Domino server is being retired and there are plans to replace it with MS Exchange. And I just heard recently that Firefox is "just becoming a headache because there are still things it doesn't work right with. Maybe it's time to look at IE again?". Even simple stuff that it makes no difference on - for instance, just something to run VMWare server on. You never even touch the interface, but they want to waste a Windows license (and more system resources) on that because they feel that Windows is "just the way to go".
Sometimes I just want to scream.
WHAT?! (Score:3, Interesting)
Chrome has the best UI amongst all browsers, hands down. I adopted Chromium months ago and then went to Chrome, and despite minor incompatibilities now and then (mostly rendering issues), I can't leave it. I tried to switch back to Firefox for a while, but after a week or so I came back to Chrome, primarily on the strength of the UI.
Nobody else seems able to come up with a UI that is:
- Businesslike and no-nonsense
- Small and out of the way
- Free of rendering artifacts and glitches
The default Firefox theme is just huge. Any replacement themes are buggy, loud, amateurish, and often glitchy. The "personalities" or whatever they are (you know, my web browser is now my wallpaper) are just ridiculous. There is a chrome UI for firefox, but it's not as fast and doesn't actually have all of the great behaviors of the Chrome UI, just a basic appearance.
Everybody else ought to take a page from Chrome!
Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy! (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, but had MS stuck to standards to begin with, you would have been able to just design your pages per the standard, and never had to worry about any browser. Even now, my company is just getting around to piloting IE8, and only because the inevitable rollout to Windows 7. I suspect a lot are in the same boat, where they skipped Vista, and made no effort to stay current with the browser that came packaged with XP. I don't know why my company chose to just stay on IE6 but I suspect it worked at the time, it was updated from MS so they got their security fixes in a standard way along with the other OS patches, and it was simply conveniant.
My company is usually very keen on get current stay current, but they failed miserably on IE. I can only assume that they design apps specifically for IE6 and simply couldn't break away, or didn't see any need to move on. Now that the move to Windows 7 comes bundled with IE8, they simply have no choice.
Re:No forced unbundling? (Score:1, Interesting)
Look at the graph, you'll see that the IE share has been dropping steadily from august. While the selection screen is from last few months. In the same time chrome grew from almost smallest to 3th player. Maybe the advertising google has been doing has something more to do with it?
Re:good (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:soooo? (Score:5, Interesting)
In truth, IE8 does a much much better job of displaying standards so this has been almost a non-issue.
True, IE 8 is a huge improvement over IE 6, but it still doesn't support W3C event model. For example, in IE 8, what's the recommended way to specify that a script shall run once the DOM content is ready? Or how do you attach multiple event handlers to an object, such as multiple things to run on load? IE is the only browser to support attachEvent and the only modern browser not to support addEventListener.
Re:i develop for the web (Score:4, Interesting)
I love Chrome's speed. But I miss Firefox's rich library of extensions whenever I try Chrome (or a Chromium-derived browser). Most critically, I miss Adblock Plus and Flashblock. To a lesser extent, some of the other extensions I use.
When I last tried Chrome, I believe I found that there was an ad-blocking extension for it (Ad-Sweep) but it required switching to the "developer channel" rather than the standard "channel". Rather than just downloading a beta version of the browser, there was an arcane process to switch channels that simply didn't work at the time. As in I jumped through the hoops, but Chrome never properly entered into the developer channel mode. The Channel Changer was simply broken at the time. Don't try to be too clever Google, just make a separate beta or nightly build and let me install it.
Sure, there are proxy-based solutions and the like, but I can't use a browser that I can't add ad-blocking rules to easily and customize easily.
I'll give Chrome a try again in 6 months, but it looks like for now, AdSweep still requires using Channel Changer, and unless that's been fixed I ain't screwing around with it again.
Sure, Firefox can't compete with Safari and Chrome on speed, but on a modern Core 2 Duo or Core i5/i7 machine the difference is only perceptible on the most Javascript-intensive of sites.
Re:good (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:All this despite no forced unbundling... (Score:2, Interesting)
All around me, I see the otherwise-paranoid IT administrators allowing people to install VLC, because that is the easiest way to allow DVDs to play on a Win XP laptop.
I used to think I was a snarky anarchist installing free software to people's computers, and now they have gone and taken away my joy.
Are we being fooled? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's been great to see MSIE lose its grip on the browser market, but it seems that maybe things have become more complicated.
As bad as MSIE is, the user can add whatever they want to it. For example, Flash delivers new codecs and Google was able to deliver an HTML5 compliant core that worked with MSIE6.
But one of the browsers taking share from IE is Safari on the iPhone/iPad/iPod. Those users can't try a different browser or use any technology that Apple doesn't approve it. Can a third party deliver a new codec to Safari on these devices? Does Opera Mini for the iPhone come with Ogg codecs (I mention Ogg because I'm imaging Apple would Opera mini if it did)? I really don't know the answers to these questions and I hope someone will enlighten me.
While Safari supports HTML5, times changes, and other things like codecs are becoming more important.
So perhaps now we are looking at a much more fundamental threat.
Re:Every month, this is posted (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy! (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, but had MS stuck to standards to begin with
Actually, that's *exactly* what they did. They stuck with the same standards as were around in 1999, and didn't improve ;) You may not recall this, but in 1999, they were the browser with the best standards support. So perhaps you'd care to rephrase that ;)
Re:good (Score:2, Interesting)
IE did not deliberately break standards, it didn't even ignore standards. What it did was fail to update for 10 years. Every single browser contemporary with IE 6 was an even worse than it was and in most cases even less standards compliant. People don't seem to remember that IE 6 predates the Mozilla foundation let alone any Mozilla product. It was released in 2001 ffs.
I'm not saying that keeping IE 6 around as long as they did isn't something I may never forgive Microsoft for(the only thing that makes up for it at all is the fact that they're now suffering as much as we all were trying to get rid of it), but they really didn't ignore standards, they ignored IE.
Re:The great thing about this: MS doesn't know why (Score:3, Interesting)
Obviously Microsoft is doing this in an attempt to gain some market share again.
If that were entirely true, then the browser would be made to work on XP systems. XP is still the most widely-used operating system on planet earth, remember, at least for a few years yet. I understand that Windows 7 is the best OS they've come out with and all that, but a lot of people aren't looking to upgrade to 7 any time soon. Desktop users and businesses alike. It's hard to see how much marketshare they can claw back by making it Vista+ only.
Re:It is impossible to get rid of MSIE on Windows (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:as a web developer, i hate you fucking ad block (Score:2, Interesting)
as a web developer, i hate you fucking ad blockers
Tough shit, asshole.
If you want someone to blame, go blame the website operators, who've forced users to block ads because they got steadily more and more obnoxious, until they were simply too unbearable to endure any longer.
And yes, I block ads, asshole. I block ads as a big "fuck you" to you to all the douchbags out there that made browsing the web a fucking nightmare without it. Does that mean I end up punishing the "good" websites, too? Yup! Tough shit.
Meanwhile, if these sites have decent content, people will pay for it. If they don't pay for it, then evidently it's not worth the money. But if your little fantastical nightmare scenario comes true, all the good content will be hidden behind paywalls, and so if we really want it, we'll pay for it anyway. Which is fine by me, as long as I don't have to put up with pop-ups, pop-unders, overlayed ads, interstitials, flash ads, and all the shit that comes with them (including drive-by virus infections, among other things).
So, in short, fuck the website operators, and while I'm at it, fuck you too.
Re:good (Score:3, Interesting)
Think of Open XML... Nuff said.
Re:good (Score:3, Interesting)
By the way, I know you were being sarcastic, but ActiveX is actually a standard maintained by the Open Group.. The same people that maintained X Windows for years (not sure if they still do). And ActiveX had all the same problems that Netscape plugins had, although those had to be manually installed (there is nothing in ActiveX that requires automatic installation, that's just something IE did).
The fact is, ActiveX (or something like it) was needed back then. Less so, now.. but many corporate environemnts continue to need additional functionality that's not available in the browser. For the internet, ActiveX is (and should be) largely dead, though plug-ins are still needed for things like Flash, Silverlight, even things like the Chrome Frame and SVG plug-ins would not be possible without such an interface.
It's simply impossible to make a native plug-in interface that's secure. The best you can do is make it so difficult to install that most people won't bother unless it's really really important.
Re:good (Score:3, Interesting)
Really? What standards does OOXML break? Geez people, seriously? Does blind hatred of Microsoft make you stupid? Does this argument even make ANY sense?
Re:good (Score:3, Interesting)
ummm. Rather than use existing standards, OOXML creates a whole new set by simply anointing existing Microsoft technologies as new 'standards'. If you don't think using monopoly power to prevent existing standards from taking hold is equivalent to breaking standards, then you deserve a job in the MS PR department. What is the purpose of standards beyond the goal of multiple implementations? That is definitely not Microsoft's goal, though. So unless you think it's appropriate to redefine what a standard is and is for, don't assume criticism == hatred == stupidity.
Re:as a web developer, i hate you fucking ad block (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, the reality is that people don't want to pay for it - at least not as much as advertisers.
Let's take a brief math example: The superbowl had 62 ad slots which averaged 3 million dollars in 2008 and 98.7 million watched it. That's 1.90$ per person watching, but since it was only 48.1 million households a PPV licence would have to work out to about 4$. But that is assuming there'll still be 98 million viewers and 48 million households, which is unlikely - it's RIAA/MPAA math. First of all, many people just casually interested might not watch at all, those that do would be gathering more and you might see maybe 60 million viewers on 20 million households. Then it's a 9-10$ / PPV license which drives away more people and the numbers work out even worse and so on.
If advertising is simply made unfeasible, there will have to be large cutbacks all around. It's not just that people can get the same thing for free as they get behind the paywall, it's that people value the content much less than the advertisers value the eyeball time. I think this whole scenario that everything will be behind paywalls are ridiculous, the harder it becomes to get eyeball time the more it'll be worth - it's basic supply and demand. Eventually when enough content is behind paywalls it will again be profitable to run ad-based sites. Which I don't even think will happen in the first place.
Re:Firefox's usage share is stagnating (Score:3, Interesting)
Agreed - I use vmware-server, and it is annoying that their remote console viewer plugins don't work with chrome.
So, the firefox people will just say "install firefox!" So, that's wonderful until you discover that their plugins don't work on the most recent release of firefox either. You need to install some old v2-based firefox browser to get it to work.
A standards-compliant plugin that works in all browsers also will tend to work across browser versions. That's why I don't want to see majority market share in this area. If there are 5 major browsers then everybody needs to figure out how to make their stuff work with all of them, and that means standards.
I feel the same way at work - I don't like Oracle-only applications even though we run Oracle. Why? Simple, an Oracle-only application is likely to choke every time Oracle changes any detail in their implementation. An ANSI SQL-based app already needs to be flexible, and that means that you're less likely to have it break every time a vendor releases an upgrade because those basic standards don't change much.
Re:P.S. NEVER start a sentence with "but" (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, you can use a comma and have it be an additional clause. That is perfectly valid. It's also valid to start a new sentence with "but". It retains the same concessive semantics, but can be used in situations where you don't want two clauses to be joined to each other in a single sentence. Consider the following example:
"We have developed all kinds of advanced technology and because of that, we consider ourselves to be the greatest species on the planet. But without that technology, we are as
fragile, if not more so, than many other species."
You can't convert the period before the "but" to a comma without creating, at best, a run-on sentence. You also lose the strong contrastive force. If it were an additional clause, it would be a concession as a mere afterthought ("I would go, but I don't have time"), perhaps even just a clarification. At the beginning of a new sentence, however, it says "what I just said is about to be seriously questioned or refined". It applies instead to a whole string of thoughts, not just to the clause preceding it.
You might say "however" or "yet" would be better. They sound a bit stuffy and perform the same function as "but". Thanks the flexibility of language (which pedants, such as yourself, seem intent on needlessly stamping out, lest people be able to express themselves in anything but sanitary prose), the word can be used as a plain old coordinating conjunction, or it can be used as a sentential adverb (or even as a preposition -- gasp!).
The point is, there's no good reason to avoid putting "but" at the beginning of the sentence, and there are actually very good reasons *to* put it at the beginning of a sentence. In light of that, I will gladly put "but" at the beginning of sentences where appropriate.
Ours is 50%:) (Score:4, Interesting)
www.pcc.edu for the last 30 days.
Internet Explorer 532255 50.94%
Firefox 334610 32.02%
Safari 119225 11.41%
Chrome 53363 5.11%
Mozilla 1922 0.18%
Opera 1463 0.14%
SeaMonkey 578 0.06%
Mozilla Compatible Agent 482 0.05%
Camino 377 0.04%
Opera Mini 306 0.03%
Re:as a web developer, i hate you fucking ad block (Score:2, Interesting)
Meanwhile, if these sites have decent content, people will pay for it. If they don't pay for it, then evidently it's not worth the money.
I see you posting all over the place here, but there's no little asterisk next to your name showing that you've paid. I find that an interesting juxtaposition with your claims.