Microsoft IE Browser Share Dips Below 50% 297
alphadogg writes "Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which has dominated the Web browser market since blowing by Netscape in the late 1990s, last month fell below the 50% market share level for the first time in years. IE's share of the worldwide market fell to 49.87% in September, down from 51.3% in August and 58.4% a year ago. It is followed by Firefox, which increased its share slightly from 30.09% to 31.5% and Google Chrome, which grabbed 11.54% share, more than triple its September 2009 share, according to market watcher StatCounter."
Re:good riddance (Score:5, Informative)
I should have posted a link with the stats, sorry. http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2 [hitslink.com]
Re:good riddance (Score:5, Informative)
This. IE6 won't die until XP dies; even though IE7 and IE8 run on XP as well, there will always be people who Just Won't Upgrade.
Even if IE6 eventually does die before XP, IE8 certainly won't, since IE9 can't run on XP. This is why Microsoft really should have added XP support to IE9.
Re:Google Chrome Frame (Score:5, Informative)
Re:not sure if I believe (Score:1, Informative)
it depends on the site.
I look after quite a few sites and some had IE drop below 50% last year - the more creative business orientated sites - currently 30%!!!!
the last 30 days show (in analytics)
a large format printer - 52%
a dentist and a health and beauty are 63%
2 artists sites are is 53% and 50%
2 engineering sites is 63%
the trend is down and if the creatives site is anything to go by it could easily end up at 30%
All this dispite IE always being pre-installed (Score:5, Informative)
What I find most interesting about the drop in IE usage is that this is happening in spite of IE still pre-installed on every single Windows computer and not being truly uninstallable (Even if the icon and tiny iexplore.exe are removed, which is all the Win7 add/remove feature does, 99% of it is sill there and can be fully embedded by applications)
This means a huge number of people are going to the trouble of obtaining and installing a third party browser, and ignoring that a browser is already installed. It would be interesting to see some statistics on where and how people are getting them.
I also have a feeling that for at least the short term, IE 9's inability to run on Windows XP might bite into IEs usage share. Firefox 4 will still run under 2000 and XP (and unofficially apparently even Windows 98 using a special piece of kernel extending software)
Re:Google Chrome Frame (Score:3, Informative)
Lots of companies still enforce the use of IE6! All because they heavily rely on 3rd party software (like SAP), which will not be updated.
Chrome Frame works with IE 6, but only for web sites that opt in using HTTP headers or HTML meta elements. So installing IE 6 + Chrome Frame would result in IE 6 for SAP and Chrome for sites that want Chrome.
Re:Optimistic (Score:3, Informative)
The problem is that so long as IE comes bundled and is difficult/impossible to remove, the principle of minimum software will always prevent the use of any other browser on windows.
Now really this is a flaw which acts directly against the principle of minimum software, because you are forced to keep IE wether you like it or not, even on a system which is never intended to do any web browsing duties... However there is often a double standard, if anyone else pulled shit like this it would be declared horrendously insecure and avoided and yet MS can get away with gaping holes.
Look at any OS hardening guides, unix based guides will tell you to remove whatever browser (if any) comes installed and even to remove X11 if you can, whereas windows guides skirt around the fact that a gui and installation of ie are mandatory. And yet the results of both sets of hardening are considered on the same level by various government agencies and industry bodies (eg PCI regulations).
Re:good riddance (Score:5, Informative)
The CEO of Google said "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to be afraid of".
No he didn't. He said "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." That seems more like a warning to me: if you do something stupid and it gets on the internet, you've already lost. You can't complain about people reposting it, or indexing it, or emailing it; the genie is out of the bottle and it is impossible to delete something from the internet (at least if the collective internet finds it entertaining in some way).
Re:% of People consciously using IE is way lower (Score:3, Informative)
Re:quoted out of context (Score:4, Informative)
Alan Turing and Oscar Wilde had more to fear from their society than from knowledge and facts getting out. You might as well have said that the Salem women accused of witchcraft would have appreciated the advice.
The context of the question, at least as far as I can see, was people treating Google as a friend, telling it secrets and trusting it. He backed up a little and said the famous quote "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." He went on to clarify that if you do need this privacy, you need to know that the information will be retained, and is subject to governmnet sniffing.
His statement in context, and the whole answer to the question instead of a soundbite, can be interpreted as "If you need more privacy than Google can provide, don't use Google." I see his comment in an holistic sense as a simple rephrasing of "Don't do the crime if you don't want the time." Or, if you don't want to get caught, don't do it. Taken in context, he was talking more about the kind of things that end up on Failbook than anything else.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6e7wfDHzew [youtube.com]
Still, I think he's right. *Maybe* you shouldn't be doing it in the first place, and *maybe* you should try to change society's attitudes towards what you're doing so you're accepted, and *maybe* you should do it as civil disobedience.