
The end of an era: Internet Explorer drops below 50% of Web usage - llambda
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2011/11/the-end-of-an-era-internet-explorer-drops-below-50-percent-of-web-usage.ars
======
jsdalton
It had been a while since I stepped back and looked at IE6 usage, so I pulled
some numbers off of a site I manage just now to see where things were.

In January 2007 IE6 represented 64% of _total_ site visits.

In October 2011, IE6 represented 1.4% of visits.

Wow.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I don't think that stat is particularly meaningful. Your FF1 usage figures
have I'm sure dropped off far more severely.

~~~
jsdalton
It's incredibly meaningful in deciding whether it makes sense for us to
continue supporting IE6 or not. And IE7 appears to be not far behind.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Here's me thinking you were commenting on the story at hand ... silly me.

------
listic
Meanwhile in Russia:

<http://www.liveinternet.ru/stat/ru/browsers.html>

IE is around 20%

I wonder why Russia leads the way moving off IE. My guess: in corporate sector
pointy-haired bosses don't actually have control over which programs system
administrators get to install, so they install (and users get to use) whatever
they know works best.

~~~
mda
In a lot of countries there are government web sites and services that forces
citizens to use Windows and specific versions of IE. Some of them used
Activex, vbscript etc, The worst example I remember is an important web
service for drugstores in Turkey that required Microsoft Java VM!

Apparently this is not the case for Russia.

~~~
damncabbage
Similar deal with banks in South Korea typically requiring ActiveX plugins and
the like: [http://blog.mozilla.com/gen/2010/04/28/the-security-of-
inter...](http://blog.mozilla.com/gen/2010/04/28/the-security-of-internet-
banking-in-south-korea/)

~~~
Tsagadai
South Korean banks seem to be oblivious to security research and best
practices. ActiveX plugins that install _several_ buggy DLL libraries are only
the tip of the iceberg. 64-bit IE fails to open most banks' websites. IE 9
does not work at all. I was even sent a codebook (it has a list of colour-
coded numbers which hash to codes, on paper!) by my South Korean bank for
internet banking. I thought it was a somewhat archaic practice but physical
books of codes do constitute "something you have" for authentication. Then I
discovered that my partner had the same book. I disabled internet banking
after that.

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bdr
As recently as five years ago, I thought this would never happen. The argument
was something like: "All Microsoft has to do is put out a good-enough browser.
Every time people buy their next computer, IE will be the default and they
won't bother to switch. The only way would be if Apple gets a big part of the
desktop market, and that's very unlikely."

Wrong in so many big ways: \- Completely missed mobile browsers \- People
aren't upgrading their desktops as often anymore \- The browser is the most
important app, so people are motivated to get the best one \- Apple's growth

I love this industry.

~~~
mike-cardwell
I'd be interested in seeing figures comparing Europe to other continents. If
you remember, Europe forced Microsoft to give the user a choice between
browsers when Windows boots up for the first time.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Europe has more Firefox usage, but the rate of change in IE (or Firefox or
Chrome) usage doesn't seem to have been affected materially by the government
intervention.

It's also quite variable within the EU, compare UK to Germany for example.

<http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-eu-monthly-200807-201110>

<http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-DE-monthly-200807-201110>

<http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-GB-monthly-200807-201110>

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ricardobeat
StatCounter (<http://gs.statcounter.com/>) paints a different picture where IE
crossed that line an year ago. It's numbers are reasonably consistent with
data from sites I manage.

Chrome is growing wildly in Brazil, envy us:
<http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-BR-monthly-201010-201110>

_edit: Russia wins :(_

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cma
This happens right as Microsoft's anti-trust restrictions are lifted and they
are forcing OEMs to make it really hard to boot Linux. Not a good omen. The
next Windows will have IE tightly integrated, but hopefully it has lost enough
ground that things won't be like the old days.

~~~
jiggy2011
Isn't this already the case with Metro in Win8? You can only use IE.

I suppose it's possible that they will try and force their market share back
similar to "must not duplicate existing functionality" with apple stuff.

The problem with this whole thing is that generally capitalism and innovation
work best when there are few restrictions on competition so I wonder what will
happen if everything becomes so locked down by a few companies who will
prioritise their products over competing ones even if the competing ones may
have something else to offer.

Could this lead to mass stagnation like it did with IE6 but on a larger scale?

If this is the case then an open alternative such as Linux would actually
become much more attractive to independant software vendors because there they
can compete on merit.

~~~
cma
metro is what I was referring to

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j45
Someone pinch me.

Is that a light I see at the end of the tunnel?

~~~
mark242
What's your expectation? That IE < 9 will sink to a number that you won't have
to support? That clearly isn't going to happen for many, many, many years.
Microsoft could file chapter 7, today, and you'd still see IE as a large-
enough-to-matter browser share for years to come.

The really interesting piece of information is the percentage of clients that
support advanced CSS3 attributes without needing any kind of polyfills, and
have faster Javascript engines. That percentage appears to be going up very,
very quickly. We've stopped designing for "IE first", and instead are
targeting browser capabilities. Modernizr for development, then extremely
targeted Javascript and CSS for production.

~~~
melling
Why not? Google doesn't support IE7 for Google Apps. They claim that they will
only support the two most recent versions of any browser. Should we expect
that they will drop IE8 support once IE10 ships? For personal use, people need
to be nudged to use a modern browser. The average person probably just uses
the browser that ships with their machine and doesn't even know to upgrade.

~~~
mattmanser
Depends how many XP users there will be left, the '2 versions' nonsense is
just that, nonsense.

XP users can only use IE8 however. So XP market share and the number of their
clients still using XP will drive what Google does and does not support.

------
chrisbolt
Stats for deviantart.com, which skews towards a younger audience:
<http://cl.ly/1v0w2Z1H0C2E28162n3W>

~~~
asmosoinio
Do you have stats for the different IE versions?

~~~
chrisbolt
Yes: <http://cl.ly/1U0j0V2T0Q410j3J1t0O>

------
jwallaceparker
When we started developing our web-app 18 months ago we decided from the
outset not to support IE. It's just too much of a headache for a heavy
JavaScript site.

We develop to Chrome and Firefox. This basically gives us Safari and Opera,
too.

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noinput
Demographic still makes all the difference. I have one site that gets ~1m
visits/year, targeting older folks. IE numbers: 2007, 86% 2010, 67% YTD, 62%
(ie6 still 4%)

------
kamechan
Not that I'm dismissing this statistic, but android browser is included in the
pie chart so I'm guessing mobile safari (i.e. iPhone and iPad) are included in
this sample as well.

In my opinion, this is a little misleading. Sure, IE use has decreased
overall, but its deterioration is also due to a growing mobile user base. It's
worth pointing out that there are likely much disparate data for the matter, a
few of which are:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_Web_browsers>

<http://gs.statcounter.com/>

<http://www.netmarketshare.com/>

With the last one, browsers are broken down by desktop versus mobile/tablet
and desktop usage still puts IE at over 50%. I guess it just depends on where
one looks for the information.

------
sliverstorm
Eh, I'm going the other direction. I've picked up IE9. It has a few small
negatives, but it is pretty fast and light.

The irony is I occassionally have to install Firefox because some website
isn't compatible with IE9.

~~~
mindstab
... you mean that IE9 isn't compatible with a website. It's been documented
and my experience that while IE9 does fix somethings IE8 got wrong, it also
breaks on lots of things even IE8 got right. It's a huge headache and not
really any kind of step forward

------
imrehg
Just yesterday I had a chat with a guy who's an entrepreneur in tech sector,
and kept asking me: "What's wrong with IE? I'm using it for years and never
had a problem? I don't want to install Chrome unless you can tell me what is
the benefit of it." (and then he dismissed all the arguments I had for better
browsers).

I kinda gave up on such people. Life is too short to convince someone who
doesn't want to, and better spent with making awesome stuff. :)

------
raintrees
With Microsoft only supporting ActiveX technology to enable most features of
their Remote Web Workplace Sharepoint websites, IE is going to be around
awhile still. Almost one quarter of my small business clients for my service
business use Small Business Server.

And until I move away from Exchange Server (email), I still keep a Windows
virtual environment going just to run Outlook on.

------
heelhook
The web will be a better web when IE6 and IE7 don't need to be supported.
Think of all the time that was wasted working to support them. Following Steve
Jobs' analogy of saving lives through speeding up boot time a few seconds: how
many people has IE6/7 killed?

------
rhplus
The worldwide _mobile_ browser market share chart is iffy. They're suggesting
that Safari Mobile (i.e. iPhone + iPod + iPad) accounts for 62% of the market.
The numbers are based on web-page visits to sites that are part of the 'net
applications' network[1]. I suspect that Android, Blackberry and Symbian
devices are being seriously undercounted, either because they're more likely
to be sold with a limited data-plan or because they're more popular amoung
users in countries that are less likely to visit these sites. In short: I'm
sceptical that iOS is almost 2/3 of the worldwide mobile browser market.

[1] <http://www.netmarketshare.com/mobile-methodology.aspx>

~~~
ricardobeat
It measures page visits, it can't count all those symbian/bada browsers
sitting unused in people's pockets. They're not _in the market_.

------
nextparadigms
The "browser usage" market share is a very inaccurate and pointless stat by
default. Do developers really care if a user uses 5 hours a day his browser or
1 hour? Wouldn't they care more about _how many_ use a certain browser?

Especially on the mobile side, the stats get very skewed, because browser
usage will be _much_ higher on a tablet (read: iPad) than on a smartphone
(iPhone/Android/Symbian/whatever). So say 10 million iPads could get as much
"browser usage share" as 50 million iPhones. The iPads, although much fewer
than iPhones, could easily double up the "iOS Safari" market share in this
type of stat. That's why these stats don't make any sense.

~~~
mitjak
I had to go back and re-read but couldn't find anything relating to it: why
did you assume they used hours of usage as a metric versus the number of
visits to the site?

------
dpe82
... and good riddance!

------
cr4zy
Any tips on getting friends and relatives to switch? Mentioning security
concerns seems to give the best results for me, but using fear makes me feel
dirty.

~~~
Joakal
Fresh install of whichever browser when they buy a new computer works best but
that would make you feel dirty too ;)

------
Achshar
well finally there will be some legit competition, not based on who has the
underlying operating system but on real power, speed and features :)

------
johnbender
They lead with:

"A couple of interesting things happened in the world of Web browser usage
during October."

But at the end:

"Ars Technica's unusual usage figures are not surprising when considering its
audience: visitors to the site tend to be technologists and early adopters"

Many people are likely to just assume they have a source other than their own
usage statistics and ignore the long winded explanation at the bottom. The red
flag for me was the mobile browser statistics.

~~~
WiseWeasel
That's because the bulk of the article (to which the headline applies), is
based on Net Applications' globally-captured data (
<http://www.netmarketshare.com/> ), while the last part of the article (to
which that disclaimer applies), is based on the Ars site's browser usage
stats.

~~~
johnbender
Is there another reference to net applications aside from the graph footers? I
had to go back to find what you mentioned but thanks for pointing that out.

------
rizzy
The main website I run is at 56% IE users and that has gone up in the last 4
months instead of down.

~~~
yuhong
Which version has gone up?

~~~
rizzy
IE9

~~~
yuhong
I wonder if at least some of them are enterprises who switched after the
Asa/Kaply fiasco.

------
rinrae
Glad I live to see this day. :)

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AndrewGCook
W3Schools says that IE usage is at 22.9% in Sept 2011.

<http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp>

~~~
rhplus
The bias in the user population for a site that teaches web development is
going to be huge. The link you provide states:

"W3Schools is a website for people with an interest for web technologies.
These people are more interested in using alternative browsers than the
average user. The average user tends to the browser that comes preinstalled
with their computer, and do not seek out other browser alternatives."

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dropshopsa
So many people still on IE 6, I pity you!

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crikli
I don't buy it.

My company manages a number of websites; the site with the most homogenous use
across all demographics shows IE at 80% usage.

Here's a shot from the last couple of days:
<http://a.yfrog.com/img614/5741/ls8.png>

Edit: IE usage breakdown: <http://a.yfrog.com/img612/6052/f2yf.png>

~~~
seanalltogether
Wikipedia shows IE at only 35% of it's current traffic, and they are a top 10
site.

[http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportClien...](http://stats.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/squids/SquidReportClients.htm)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
It would be interesting to know the story behind some of those stats - I
wonder why those people are using FF1.0? (or indeed if, perhaps that's just
the UA string they set).

