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Internet Explorer use plummets
SOFTWARE FLOGGER Microsoft has seen its Internet Explorer use fall below 50 per cent of global marketshare as Chrome has continued to rise.
Research published by Statcounter indicates that the Vole's once ubiquitous web browser, what we like to fondly call Internet Exploder, has taken a massive tumble. The findings suggest that web surfers' use of Microsoft's flagship browser has dropped to 49.87 per cent. Firefox comes in second place with 31.5 per cent, while the use of Google's Chrome web browser has tripled. Chrome has gone from 3.69 per cent this time last year up to 11.54 per cent lately.
"This is certainly a milestone in the Internet browser wars," commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO of StatCounter. "Just two years ago IE dominated the worldwide market with 67 [per cent]."
The Vole had better hope that the use of Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) beta follows the promise of its reportedly - by Microsoft - high download rate. The INQUIRER reported at the end of September that Microsoft was all in a lather because it claimed to have hit two million downloads of its IE9 beta within just a couple of weeks.
If Microsoft can convert those downloads into users when IE9 comes out, that will boost numbers. However, it will need a lot more than two million to be anything more than a raindrop in the ocean of global web browser use.
Statcounter claimed that use of Microsoft's Internet Explorer plummeted because the European Commission forced the company to offer a choice of alternative browser with its Windows operating system.
The INQUIRER reported in March that the Vole was legally bound to advertise other web browsers and Statcounter's results seem to reflect this, as well as the fact that apparently people in Europe, when given a choice, make some good choices.
In Europe, Internet Explorer's market share fell from 46.44 per cent to 40.26 per cent, but it seems that US web surfers are somewhat less discerning, because IE's market share remained at 52 per cent in the US. µ
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Strange then that I seem to manage without perfectly well.
Still I'm using FF on Linux so I'd have to !
How do I search for my things?
I use 3 search places:
1) Scroogle, the "anti-Google" search which uses Google's own engine against itself
2) Webcrawler, which I have used since 4 years before there was a such thing as Google
3) 100SearchEngines.com add on for Firefox
http://addon.100searchengines.com/
haha - youve hit the nail on the head!
So Netscape was finally avenged. Unfortunately M$ has monopolized so many other things.
Now get rid of Flash and maybe we can hope to have a purely open-standards global network.
@Jared - Well then how do you search for your things? Bing?
I've used Firefox since it was Firebird, many years ago. I have found only two uses for IE:
1) it has to be used on the Microsoft web site to down any type of MS security update on those exceedingly rare occasions I need to actually go to the MS web site, and some very few and far between web sites require IE only.
2) Whenever I do a fresh install of Xp Pro, if I don't for some reason have a copy of Firefox at hand on disk or USB drive, I use IE to download it.
That's it.
I have no use for Me II (Vista) or Vista 1.1 (7), with their bloat, nagware, and horrendous system requirements, and will stick with XP Pro, which actually works, works well and uses a fraction of the hardware to run both faster and better than either of the 1 1/2 OSes which MS released afterward.
Should I feel the urge to use something different, then I will pull out my old standbys: Ubuntu, Fedora 13, and Damn Small Linux.
I will not use Chrome, simply because I am totally against Google's anti-privacy and deceptive practices, and even if the thing is, or will be, faster and run "better" than anything else on the market one day I will stay well away from any Google products purely on principle.
IE is still the most reliable way to get trojaned and become part of the glorious bot network.
Sure you can install dodgy addons in firefox, hell MS even does it for you when given a chance, but it's just not the same.
IE9 is strong improvement. thin BLACK input bar make more professional look. fII will hide that.
IE6,7,8 all had troubles with latching to internet thru broadband modem. Now IE9 Seems far improved. SEAMONKEY Is Spare to Keep. Like second Vechile.
IE9 gets user every pop up ads deserved. BP Had Browser & Cute,too. Parris Hilton has Browser, Not Shaby at ALL. In fact, theres so many Browsers, Well, just try them All. Pogo is ATT.
Some can block 100% of Ads. AOL9.5 Is Srong. Yet, when War Over, SEAMONKEY Won War. IE9 Is Diffently Worth Effort. aLL Rest Have Place,too.
vondrashek Browseologist e' Lib.
I have tested Firefox and IE with cleared cache/history and Firefox is no faster. IMO firefox and IE are equally good. They're just browsers, after all, neither one 'does something' for me that the other doesn't. Chrome is faster (but fails on one streaming site I like). If you're into pr0n but don't like to share, firefox is fastest for clearing your history. So I guess that's a plus.
@Taylor - if you've introduced people to other browsers and they wanted to stick with IE, why do you have a problem with that? What YOU consider best may be different from what others consider best, don't be so judgemental.
No one needs to explain why a good beer is better than a crappy beer. A good steak is better than a crappy steak, same with good TVs and bad TVs. But there is no 'real' advantage that most browsers have over others. Is one 'bloated'? How would anyone know? Does one have better plug-ins and add-ons? Most people don't care. If you need to point to a graph someone posted on a website to explain why one is better than the other, chances are it's better in a way that really doesn't matter. For a while IE didn't have tabbed browsing, now it does. Chrome is faster than IE and Firefox.
I'm an advocate of complaining to websites through their contact forms if the browser doesn't work in Firefox.
Why should the company/government institution care? Well, everyone has heard of Macs haven't they? Well, modern Macs don't come with IE, so any site build for IE is not Mac friendly. So you need to tell them this.
Also mention the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, all these devices won't work with IE websites. They are very famous brands too, which helps to make the case for change.
You can also tell them about market share for IE declining and that about 50% or more of the people that browse the internet in the world don't use IE.
The IE browsing experience is dire, security is dire, and there are all those adverts out there. I like to push people out there with Firefox or Google Chrome and Adblock Plus installed. Change the default programs to FF and start IE. Tell it not to ask whether it should be the default browser and then 'uninstall' it so that all the icons have gone.
I find that that helps to move people away from IE.
Not my witticism, of course, but funny because true.
Opera, for all its wonder, still fails on many Web pages (some, like Amazon, do not support Opera for "look inside the book", yet they have no issue with geriatric old IE6.)
Firefox, to be honest, should be the future, but for me it isn't, simply because it crashes far, far too often. I've seen ZX Spectrums that load tapes more reliably than Firefox load web pages.
IE? It's the big elephant in the room, and it's not perfect - if you are also a diehard XP user (I just built a new Core i7 beastie and I put XP 64-bit edition on - I'm not going to waste my time or money on Vista or Windows 7.) By choosing not to support XP, Microsoft has ensured that I will be using an alternative browser - since IE6 is getting very old, and I hate IE7 and IE8 with a passion.
Up until around 2005, Microsoft used to make software that was worth buying. I do not run anything from MS that was made after this date. I don't want the new "ribbon" interface in Office - I like things just as they are in Office 2003. Ditto for Windows XP (and even then, by the time I've customised my XP installation, it looks more like Windows 2000.) I'm voting with my wallet, and my money says this: Unless you include the old user interface as an option, you aren't getting my cash.
I'm not the only one, either: When my parents need a PC upgrade in, oh, the next 5-10 years, they will also be sticking with Windows XP and Office 2003 (though to be fair, they just upgraded from Office 2000 - they're hardly riding the cutting edge.)
I can see why a lot of Americans refuse to switch. There are still a TON of sites out there that are made to work with IE but get no/little testing with any other browsers.
I complained a few years ago to a public library admin because the site was made for IE and I used Opera+FireFox.. Neither would work on the site and he told me that it didnt matter because everyone who uses his site uses IE. He nor his supervisors ever realised that the reason only IE users came to the site was that no other browsers would work!..
To this day you still need IE, and quite often I find websites to this day that need ie6 to work properly.
By the time internet explorer starts up with the home page fully intact, (even) I would also had come up with a better browser than IE.
I have not used I.E. since Firefox came out and you could not pry me away with it. Google chrome would be my second choice and would use any browser but I.E.
Many older people who use computers came to use them later in there lives like me but don't want to use all there time messing with there computer and just want it to work. They will use whatever apps come preinstalled unless someone like myself can take the time to install better and free apps.
As us older group fade so will the use of I.E. and other MS products. We know there are much better and safer alternatives.
Firefox has so many useful add on's it is hard to beat. I don't think this just applys to us Americans either.
I think many IE users in the US are people who do not know that there are alternative browsers or they do know but simply do not like change. I often do home visits to repair PCs, and what I find is many are almost clueless about PCs. They know enough to get online and do whatever it is they need to do, but beyond that, some do not know there are other browsers, or they know and do not wish to try anything because "they would have to learn something new".
IE7 and IE8 was a big difference amongst them with the interface upgrades. Some don't even take updates so are still using IE6 due to that.
I've introduced many to FireFox, Chrome, etc... and some find it a welcome change, but some are adamant on staying with IE because they do not wish to learn anything new.
What I've found is that there are very few users who try other browsers and go back to IE simply because it's better.