
Since March, IE Lost 11.4 Percent Share To Firefox, Safari, And Chrome - vaksel
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/05/since-march-internet-explorer-lost-114-percent-share-to-firefox-safari-and-chrome/
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buugs
It looks like a lot of IE 7 went to IE 8 not the "new browsers" maybe IE6
users are switching over though.

I still know plenty of people who won't switch because they like the way ie6
looks and plenty more who don't know firefox is a browser on campus computers.

edit: Most of those people don't even know what a browser is and if you tell
them to open up their browser they say "do you mean the internet?"

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vaksel
Since January IE7 went from 53.7% down to 30.79%. For a net drop of 22.91%.

In that same period IE8 went up from 1% to 15.23%. A net gain of 14.23%.

So the upgrade there cost Microsoft 8.68%. And then there is an extra 10% drop
for IE6

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chaosmachine
It would be nice if they could pick colors that aren't almost identical for
their graph lines.

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pedalpete
Great to see IE7's significant drop, should make life easier on developers.

Does anybody know how these stats are gathered, or what they mean when they
say 'market share'? Is it % of internet traffic requests by browser? or % of
downloads/installs?

I'm wondering if browser market share is based on users primary browser, using
stats from companies like compete, or if it is based on downloads or some
other metric.

I have IE, Safari And Opera only for testing purposes, I do most development
in Firefox due to firebug, and use Chrome as my main browser. So how would I
be counted in this survey?

I think this is important because if it is based on % of traffic, non-OEM
browsers (Firefox, Chrome) could appear to have more traffic than default
installed browsers (IE/Safari) simply because the users of Firefox & Chrome
spend more time on more sites.

Thoughts?

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seldo
At Yahoo our "browser share" stats mean "unique visitors using this browser".
A certain amount of effort goes into de-duplicating users to get the "unique"
score, but there's a pretty big margin of error.

Page views are not taken into account, and downloads/installs are absolutely
not considered (because nobody has reliable numbers on those anyway, not even
the browser makers).

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echair
Looks like just since January the combined market share of IE versions has
declined from 73% to 55%. That is a dramatic change. More significant,
probably than a temporary spike in search share driven by ads.

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snewe
In fact, IE's market share fell 17% (65.8-55.4)/65.8. Oh Techcrunch.

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barredo
11% of the total, right?

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snewe
Yes, but suppose it fell 11 percentage points from 90%. That would be a
smaller real drop.

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michaelawill
Looks like Microsoft is going to have to come up with a new angle of attack.

Hiding $10,000 on an IE-only website doesn't seem to have cut it.

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SwellJoe
I bet hiding $100,000 on an IE-only website would totally do the trick,
though.

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mikedouglas
What about a website that only vomits on IE users?

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jpcx01
This will accelerate greatly if Microsoft doesnt get IE9 out the door with
comparable javascript speeds. It took Firefox a while, but its finally
performing as fast as Safari & Chrome. Lots of people use apps like gmail and
google maps, and if they see one browser running them silky smooth, while the
other is a jerky mess, they'll be compelled to switch.

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sho
The really, really good news is the fall of IE6. Currently 7.6%. 5% should be
an important milestone in its decline into irrelevance. Hopefully when that is
attained - and it looks like it could be soon - we can all kiss that nightmare
of a browser goodbye for good.

~~~
vaksel
I say kick it now. Only 9% of people use IE6, that # will continue to dwindle.
The current rate of drop for IE6 is 2% a month. So it'll probably go down to
5% within 4-6 months.

No sense in supporting a browser that will become irrelevant in 6 months.

~~~
dandelany
Depends on who your client is. If you're running a tech-y website/blog and
most of your users are running Safari or the next FF beta, you're generally OK
not supporting IE6, and can probably even pull off a snarky message that pops
up alerting your IE6 users that they're using a crappy browser. If your client
is a financial services company that mandates its employees use Win NT, your
cries of "but IE6 is dead!" will be drowned out by angry shouts of "our
interwebs site is broke!"

Charts like this are helpful because they give us a sense for the current,
global browser-usage climate and trends. However, _global_ statistics alone
should never be used to determine which browsers your site should support, as
a cross-section of your niche of users may vary widely from this data.

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derefr
I really wish Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and everyone else who controlled a
decent portion of the net would all just agree to simultaneously put up snarky
messages. What if the _entire_ internet _did_ break for IE6, all of the
sudden? Given a long, fair warning--perhaps even a TV ad--it could be similar
to the analog switchoff.

~~~
martey
This is super unlikely to happen.

Google's snarky messages would invite people to download Chrome, while Apple's
would try to convince people to download Safari. Combined with the fact that
people still using IE6 of their own volition would be most likely to blame
Microsoft for "breaking the Internet" and switch to a different browser, it
would not be in Microsoft's best interests to coordinate something like this.

In addition, television advertising made sense for switching off analog
television, since the people most likely to be affected would be watching.
Even if even one of the three companies you mentioned put up money for
television advertising, it would be a waste of resources. Targeted banner ads
would be better.

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dandelany
> Google's snarky messages would invite people to download Chrome

Actually, I'm surprised Google hasn't tried anything like this yet. Given how
many ie6'ers use Google everyday, I bet a nonintrusive, hide-able message on
search results pages encouraging them to 'upgrade' to Chrome would go a long
way towards increasing their marketshare.

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param
This could probably be considered anti-competitive (using their search
monopoly to push their other products). Even though the courts may rule their
way, why should they bother?

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cabalamat
> _This could probably be considered anti-competitive_

It could be, but I don't think it is. Every other browser supplier has the
right to -- and does -- put up web pages suggesting people use their browser;
they also have the right to put up other content on their websites, which may
or may not drive traffic to them. I note that the Microsoft home page has an
ad for IE8 on it, and this isn't anti-competitive either.

Jusdt because Google is successful, doesn't mean they're anti-competitive. Now
if they fiddled with their web site so other people's browsers didn't work
properly, or fiddled with their browser so other people's websites were poorly
rendered, that would be uncompetitive.

