Wow, this is a surprise:
Net Applications is reporting that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer dropped to a historic market share low in April — 59.95%. That is back to 1999 levels.
Google’s Chrome browser is growing at a double-digit rate — its 2% ahead of Apple’s Safari.
>
table courtesy of Conceivably Tech
Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data, ability to repeat discredited memes, and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Also, be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.
"Overall household indebtedness is up from $7 trillion to almost $10 trillion since 2000. On this sum, we estimate, the American consumer has an annual interest bill of more than $500 billion; a sum, by the way, that vastly exceeds his current income growth." —Kurt Richebacher
Knowing that the vote over the weekend in Greece was really a referendum on Euro membership, a majority of the Greek Parliament said yes to staying. European Finance Ministers meet again on Wednesday to solidify the 2nd bailout package for Greece at the same time hopefully a deal is consummated between Greece and its creditors this week. The Greek 14.5b euro bond that matures on March 20th is up by 2 pts. The optimism that all will be completed and contained AGAIN to Greece has yields lower in Portugal, Spain and Italy. The iTraxx Financial Index is also narrower by...
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May 10th, 2010 at 5:10 pm
Chrome + Linux works great….could never go back to firefox…the speed is great and everything else that I use works well.
rt
May 10th, 2010 at 5:13 pm
I downloaded and tried it. There are some usability improvements since last year, and it is now truly Hela-fast. I’m still not ready to use it every day as the GUI is not very customizable.
msn
May 10th, 2010 at 5:22 pm
My payroll software always ran on Firefox, It was upgraded and now payroll runs on firefox but reports run on IE. What a pain in the ass. I hate IE. Haven’t looked into Chrome yet.
May 10th, 2010 at 5:42 pm
IE8 has some real compatibility issues for multi-tab browsing with Windows 7. That’s one good reason for increased defections.
May 10th, 2010 at 5:51 pm
Here is a popular test for comparing browser speeds, be patient when you get to IE8 – it’s that much slower than the other browsers -it’s still running!
They all seem to leapfrog each other – except IE8 of course
http://www2.webkit.org/perf/sunspider-0.9/sunspider.html
May 10th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
Chrome is good if you think Facebook’s privacy policies are ok.
May 10th, 2010 at 6:10 pm
No Greek Tragedy today.
Set ‘em up Nick…Gyros and Ouzo for Ritholtz!
http://twitpic.com/1ms4ho
ifish.
May 10th, 2010 at 6:14 pm
The graph you provided shows proportions but not volume. Is it defections, or is it new users? The former implicates MSFT, the latter may be affected by users of smart phones.
Keeping an open mind, it could be both – especially if phoners elect to keep a compatible web interface.
May 10th, 2010 at 6:41 pm
Chrome is a faster and cleaner search engine. If you’ve ever used Chrome or Firefox for awhile and then went back to IE for some reason, you’d realize why they’ve lost so much market share. Mr. Softee’s search engine is slow and shitty.
May 10th, 2010 at 6:43 pm
I’m not sure it’s that much of a surprise. IE has been in steady decline for quite some time, initially due to Firefox, more recently to Safari (the percentage of Macs is increasing) and, especially, Chrome. Here is the year over year percent change in market share from May 2008 to May 2009, and from May 2009 to April 2010:
IE FFox Chrome Safari Opera
-10.32% 24.32% NA 29.82% 5.10% (change from May 2008 to May 2009)
-13.59% 7.48% 67.61% 21.61% 10.43% (change from May 2009 to April 2010)
Chrome had no market share in 2008, hence the NA. Firefox has lagged more recently, almost certainly because of the increasingly popular (and certainly faster!) Chrome.
May 10th, 2010 at 6:44 pm
Wow! Only 60% of the market. What a sad story of failure.
More a comment of the average PC buyer using what it comes installed with and not knowing how to download firefox or chrome.
Tried chrome. It’s fast. Hate to trouble myself with migrating over.
But am tempted.
Firefox has recently developed some very serious problems with “hanging”, as in sitting their chewing up your processor like crazy and locking you out of your system because mouse clicks don’t result in anything.
IMHO, they have jury rigged “things” that make it less painful, but they have no solution. They want to blame it on certain plugins.
Ain’t buyin’ it.
Chrome’s looking better every day.
May 10th, 2010 at 6:53 pm
I’ve been using Chrome for a while. It’s lot faster and more intuitive than IE as well as integrated google search. If i could only get RSS feed working just like IE, I’d be happy. I had to ditch IE because of multitab hanging issue.
May 10th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
Barry,
You missed the other big market share news of the day: Android phones outselling the iPhone.
http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/10/npd-android-ousts-iphone-os-for-second-place-in-us-smartphone-m/
May 10th, 2010 at 7:05 pm
Barry,
You missed the other big market share news of the day: Android phones outselling the iPhone.
—
And in both stories Google is the one taking market share.
May 10th, 2010 at 7:11 pm
Google has plenty of free money to push their products from all those ads. Their strategy seems to throw a lot of stuff against the wall and see what sticks.
May 10th, 2010 at 7:24 pm
Mike…time to short Apple? :>)
May 10th, 2010 at 7:40 pm
G;lad to see these tends, and that Safari’s share is not growing. I use Safari so this lack of growth will probably continue to keep the hackers and spammers away.
May 10th, 2010 at 8:29 pm
I started out on Netscape…..as a Newbie to the Internet. When it fell apart I was still there until Firefox came along. I’ve been happy to know that I picked the “alternative to Microsoft” even though I’ve bough Compaq Computers (because of the color coded plug ins and ease of use) since 1995 when I first got on a computer…and had to learn it all.
My first Compaq Computer allowed the “clueless” to learn it all…their “help center” was great as they built their business. Once Compaq’s business in “First Time Buyer’s” was complete…they outsourced to India and you couldn’t find anyone to help you. But, by that time…Yahoo Search and the fledgling GOOGLE was online and finding help “Online” was much easier than trying to contact the Compaq “missing help.”
When Netscape started to go down..not updating Mozilla after the sell out…I limped along with crashed sites and stuff until FIREFOX came on Board! I’ve been with Firefox since then…but it still never compared to the use that I had with Netscape.
I’m more research/publishing with what I need to do and Mozilla with Netscape gave a great boost to being able to “Cut and Paste” with ease and edit your notes. Firefox has gone a different direction so one has to work around what I do for business.
Netscape was the ONE for many of us. (who don’t need to use math, calculations or the rest)…mostly publishing and such…blogs, etc.
But, Firefox seems to delete very useful stuff and go with quirky stuff……..so I’d be up for a HUGE REVISION OF…….SEAMONKEY!
May 10th, 2010 at 8:33 pm
I forgot to say that “Internet Explorer” ALWAYS SUCKED for even a NEWBIE like ME…and I’ve hoped for it’s death for a long time since it always tries to conflict with my use of alternative site.
So…I’m a traditional Compaq User who needs “easy connect” and “help” but I go with the newest? Somehow Microsoft missed the boat. They are the next IBM…where they’ve lost their business model and will have to “re-tool” in the coming years because they didn’t see the next innovations coming until too late.
But…Bill Gates has his money…….he’s cool
I’ll give some creds to Steve Jobs of Apple who redesigned it all and is still out there plugging and innovating, though!
May 10th, 2010 at 9:00 pm
greg: actually it’s close.
May 10th, 2010 at 9:50 pm
James Says:
May 10th, 2010 at 7:05 pm
Barry,
You missed the other big market share news of the day: Android phones outselling the iPhone.
—
And in both stories Google is the one taking market share.
—
From the linked article James posted:
We’re number two” might not be the chant everyone’s after, but we have a feeling that Google is more than satisfied with that in this case… for now. According to market research firm NPD, Google’s Android operating system edged up into second place in the US smartphone market during the first quarter of the year, leaving it still well behind RIM’s BlackBerry OS, but marking the first time that it has moved ahead of Apple’s iPhone OS. Specifically, NPD found that RIM maintained a strong 36 percent market share for the quarter, with Android coming in at 28 percent, and iPhone OS in third at 21 percent. The growth for Android was attributed largely to strong carrier support — like Verizon’s buy-one-get-one free offer which, incidentally, also helped Verizon maintain a 30 percent smartphone market share, which is just slightly behind AT&T at 32 percent, and ahead of T-Mobile and Sprint at 17 and 15 percent, respectively.
—-
I wonder if “NDP” isn’t “Talking their Book” in this report from them?
May 10th, 2010 at 10:16 pm
TakBak: I’ve seen other, similar figures, so it’s probably somewhere in the ballpark. Android has the advantage of not being tied to the joke service that is AT&T. See recent video posts here showing Lewis Black and Jon Stewart. Also, Google doesn’t charge royalties, which is a big advantage.
Also, beware of “double digit” market share increases such as those for Chrome. It’s much easier to have big percentage increases when you have a small share. Simple math. Not to pick on Apple (although it’s fun), but Apple fanbois have been trumpeting big percentage pc market share increases for years. Yet, Apple’s market share just topped out last fall at only about 7.5% in the US. Going from 1% to 2% is a 100% increase. Going from 6% to 7% is still 16% increase but it’s still only an share increase of 1%. BTW, they just dropped back to somewhere under 7% domestically and are barely a blip on the radar worldwide.
http://www.electronista.com/articles/10/04/14/toshiba.jumps.ahead.of.apple.in.q1.2010.results/
May 10th, 2010 at 10:43 pm
Interesting. I notice that students hate IE and have taken a preference to chrome over the other browsers.
May 10th, 2010 at 10:44 pm
Ubuntu on Firefox with AdBlockPlus and Noscript >> winning combination.
Removed Mono (Novell “Net2.0 for Linux) which is a patent trap apparently.
Chrome is fast and will probably be my next browser when it comes out of beta.
My testing so far shows a slick and fast product.
I’ve abandoned Microsoft completely 4 years ago and I do not regret anything.
Open Source rules.
May 10th, 2010 at 11:05 pm
I have IE, Chrome, Firefox, and Opera all installed on my main Windows 7 OS. Chrome is very fast and easy. I use it for most browsing. However, it lacks in some areas such as configurability and the whole “add another toolbar button program from a 3rd party developer to get what you want” issue. That doesn’t necessarily inspire confidence to me. Additionally, I can never get pdfs to work properly in chrome; the google docs thing times out or crashes half the time (which is a damn big issue both in work and leisure) And for God Sakes how the F@$% do you make a browser not compatible with your own google toolbar? Plus, they’re undoubtedly collecting data on everything i do. Could lead to some interesting Economics/Sports themed pornos however. . . haha.
May 10th, 2010 at 11:13 pm
Putting on the lawyer/skeptic hat here for a minute: Netmarketshare counts the browser visits to sites it services. While I have no doubt Netmarketshare provides accurate stats of the sites it services, its stats are only good for those sites. The numbers may or may not be representative of the whole web. It’s like counting cars drving down the street: in a rich area you will see more Lexus, Infinti, and BMW’s , while in a poor area you’ll see a different mix.
That said, I have no doubt IE is losing market share. With the intense competition, it would be amazing if it didn’t. A 50% share is still probably half a billion browsers thought.
I personally have a love/hate relationship with it. It doesn’t have the neat add on’s firefox has, and it’s balky, but I do love the accelerators that few people even know about. You can intall them for a wide range of engines. I can highlight a word or phrase, right click and google it, bing it, see if Amazon or Newegg sells it, if it’s for sale on Ebay, see what people say about it on tripadvisor if it’s a hotel, restaurant or travel destination, or look it up in imdb. Oh, forgot looking it up on hulu, wikipedia or youtube. All with a right click and no typing. If MS could actually get it to render pages quickly, they’d really have something. Supposedly that’s what’s going on with IE9.
OTOH, Firefox is faster and has lots of addons, including some that allow downloading videos from youtube and other sites. And, it’s likely safer, although I’ve never had an infection with IE
I ain’t never gonna use Chrome; not interested in every click being reported back to Skynet.
May 10th, 2010 at 11:14 pm
Mike…that’s it. Two negative Apple comments in one thread. I’m shorting first thing in the morning, unless it goes up, in which case I may wait a bit.
May 10th, 2010 at 11:46 pm
@deborah: correct
May 11th, 2010 at 4:56 am
greg: It’s your fault. You inspired me :)
A security tip that Diggidy’s mention of PDF’s brought to mind. Acrobat reader has a severe vulnerability to rootkit installers and they haven’t said when they will fix it. To fix it yourself for now, open Acrobat or the Acrobat Reader and find the preferences section. Believe it’s under Edit. Go down to the Trust Manager and uncheck the box that says something like “Allow opening of non-PDF files”.
May 11th, 2010 at 7:21 am
I was a Netscape girl. I despised Windows, but had to go to Windows in order to work between home and the office (stupid office). Once I left that office, I bought a Mac and haven’t looked back. I convert to PDF to talk to the Windows universe and run open source software for everything.
I always hated IE, and resented that they pushed it and made it so difficult to run anything else. I installed and used Netscape on my PC, but as we all know that just kept getting more difficult. I’ve been running Firefox for years, and can’t bring myself to give Google any more information about me than they already have. I even still use alternative search engines (anybody still remember Altavista? Sigh.) if I’m feeling conspiratorial. I don’t much like Safari, but I use it if I have to. Beats IE.
My grade-school age children all use Firefox. They have chrome available to them, but it is almost too fast for them. I expect that will change. I never let them use IE (even on their Dad’s PC) as an extra layer of security against malware: no matter how often you tell a 9 year old not to click on pop ups, you can never really feel secure.
May 11th, 2010 at 9:05 am
Firefox will hold its market share until one of the other browsers gets an ad-blocker that works as well as adblock plus does in Firefox.
May 11th, 2010 at 9:40 am
Those of us who do web development have learned to hate IE 6 with a passion that is rare even for software developers. I truly loathe it and anyone who dumb enough or captive enough to still use it. And millions of people still do! Idiots!
Truth is, however, that later versions of IE are good.
I use both Chrome (to post this) and IE. Firefox long ago lost my interest – it’s the dog of the big three, imho.
May 11th, 2010 at 10:36 am
Good morning.
Mike in Nola, have you looked at http://www.scroogle.org?
Mars10, amen to that. Makes the shortcomings of Firefox bearable for this old man.
Best regards,
RF
May 11th, 2010 at 10:36 am
Actually, it shows how far behind a majority of computer folks (ordinary people) are – in change. It use to be that having all MSFT products (Search, E-mail, Office) enabled seamless working conditions – but it turned out that MSFT is slow at whatever it does. In moving my “all in one using” Chrome, G-mail, Search is super fast in transitioning. I think all forward looking users are waiting to plug in Anderoid into their seamless working conditions. Google is the “Porsche” of working systems.