In the last quarter,
Chrome,
Safari and
Opera all set new personal bests for browser market share with 4.63, 4.46 and 2.4 percent respectively. This period marks the first time Chrome has beaten Safari to third spot, while their collective prosperity comes at the expense of IE, which continues to hemorrhage users at a rate of 0.92 percentage points a month. Microsoft's 62.7 percent slice might still look mighty, but projections from Net Applications suggest it could shrink to below 50 percent by May of this year. Unless
something magical happens. You'll probably also want to know that Net Applications monitors incoming traffic to over 40,000 websites and generates a sample size of about 160 million unique visitors each month -- making the veracity of its claims pretty robust. One hidden sign of our collective laziness: 21 percent of
all users last quarter were still fulfilling their browsing needs with IE
6. For shame.
posted January 2nd 2010 5:09PM
Google chrome ftw!!
@B3astofthe3ast
Chrome is my "go to" browser... But, It does not display all sites properly and is not 100%
I run a mix of Chrome, IE, FF... In that order.
I have a feeling that Microsoft will shortly REALLY step up there browser game. I think Chrome shook things up and we still haven't seen FF/IE "fully" counter yet
- Dan
@B3astofthe3ast
touche
@B3astofthe3ast
Think of it this way, .92% of people using the internet are getting smarter each month
@pachi72
Google Chrome also spike the 100% cpu usage for no reason on my computer... Every browser has its own quirks by they are all better than IE IMHO.
@Dan A
Sometimes thats the website's fault though, a majority of sites are designed for IE6 so... hopefully this change in browser usage prompts people to order websites be coded to follow web standards, not IE.
@B3astofthe3ast
Using safari on windows 7 x64 and it kills everything in speed and rendering quality.
@Dan A Remember, the last news about the firefox being the most-pop browser since December last week 2009? and Internet explorer as the second -- Safari 3rd.. and statcounter calling Google Chrome as 'others', Now just a span of 1 month. Chrome claims the 3rd title. And maybe just maybe a future domination starting with the IE 8. An in-depth review: http://bit.ly/firefox-most-popular-not-so-sure
Who say's chrome will be deadlast now?
@B3astofthe3ast I don't really find Chrome to be all that great on OS X. It doesn't seem any faster than Safari and it's ugly as sin. I use FF for development because of all the plugins, but Safari is my primary browser for day-to-day use. Maybe Chrome is great on Windows, but I just don't see any reason to use it on OS X. I also find that bar at the bottom that covers up some of the content until you mouse over it to be extremely annoying
@Dan A
"But, It does not display all sites properly and is not 100%"
What websites are you talking about? A website that doesn't render correctly is not the browser's problem, it's the developer. As a web developer, Webkit (both Chrome and Safari) renders things as I expect it to quite literally 100% of the time. Usually, Firefox does the same, but not to the same extent as Webkit. Hell, even IE8 usually renders things correctly, it's only IE6 and IE7 that often have major problems in following standards and require major code adjustments.
@aLFaDaRK
I have to agree completely, I hate every time that I have to bring out IE to use some of these webpages that are designed for IE rather than web standards. Many Australian government websites and banking sites only work with IE.
Hopefully we will see a shift as these browsers gain more dominance in the market.
@B3astofthe3ast
Can engadget PLEASE FIX THIS SITE. I GET A MILLION POPUPS ASKING ME TO QUIT A JAVASCRIPT SCRIPT BECAUSE ITLL SLOW DOWN MY BROWSER. I DONT GET A SUBMIT BUTTON SO I HAVE TO USE OTHER BROWSERS TO COMPLAIN ABOUT THIS. I DONT WANT TO USE MEMORY LEAKING FIREFOX.
@B3astofthe3ast
Headline failure.
The source contains no data on number of users, so you cannot say that it claims that IE is losing users.
Every other source says that IE has 70% and has barely lost 3-4% in the past 2 years. how they figure less than 40% in may is funny
@Troll
"You'll probably also want to know that Net Applications monitors incoming traffic to over 40,000 websites and generates a sample size of about 160 million unique visitors each month -- making the veracity of its claims pretty robust."
@B3astofthe3ast reliable cross browser rendering ftw, you rocket scientists.
@B3astofthe3ast
It's just a web-site browser and a couple of tenths of a second doesn't mean diddly to the non-tech user. That's why lots of people don't rush to upgrade. Only the hot-to-trot tech users are compelled to download nightly builds. Most people can wait a couple of milli-seconds for a web-site page to be loaded. IE and Firefox are well in the lead for overall usage and the rest are far behind. Any browser is useful as long as it stable and has bookmark sync for all my computers. No company is making any money from them so who cares who has the greatest browser market share.
@(Unverified)
True, but is is made by CrApple. What did you expect.
@B3astofthe3ast I concur, One of the biggest advantage why chrome is popular is because of its speed, if only chrome can add some nice plugins and tweaks just like the firefox, then there's no doubt that it will be a game changer for browsers. A change that can even beat FF. Another graph that tells all the hidden sauce of Chrome: http://bit.ly/chrome-3rd-most-popular-browser-details
I find these numbers could be off, because this is just tallying up what browser people have when they go to a web site. They aren't looking at the ip address, so they could be counting you hundreds of times. Now in logic, that would probably even out because it would do it for everyone, but chances are that the people with IE aren't on the internet as much because they don't know wtf they're doing. That would mean everyone on the other browsers get tallied more times than people with IE, making the numbers somewhat off. But maybe I'm just understanding how they count it wrong.
@Dan A
I must agree with you, while Chrome is nice, it is still lacking when it comes to full features.
Wow, it seems another Microsoft product fails!
@RockNStuff
yeah, they must hate having 63% market share...
@RockNStuff Right, because 63% is a failure.
Man, mindshare is way off these days... 63% is pretty big, FYI.
And I'm a Chrome user.
@(Unverified)
In some countries, IE marketshare has been beaten by Firefox a long time ago.
In Finland, Firefox is currently at 55% and IE at 30%.
You can check how things are going where you are living from here: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-FI-monthly-200812-201001
@RockNStuff - Lets put this into perspective though and say I'm Internet Explorer and you're Safari.
If my marketshare were my penis size, say ten inches, then yours being 15x smaller is under an inch long.
And no, its not all how you use it. o_O
@RockNStuff
You must have been misled by the hyperbole. I'm interested to see how usage varies between versions of IE though - I look forward to the day where we can use any browser to access our bank details, lol.
@Jonathan K
According to w3schools (http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp), IE total is about 37%, while Firefox is at 47% and Chrome at 8.5%. Just saying.
You might also be interested in this nice (albeit outdated) graph: http://www.axiis.org/examples/BrowserMarketShare.html
@Ducman69
That's exactly the perspective of a dickhead.
@gp
*rimshot*
@MacAnkka Take a look att South Koreas numbers on the same page. Interesting...
@SmilinGoat
Microsoft doesn't make money off IE so it doesn't really matter. They've been forced to abandon just about all the IE-centric "extend & embrace" tactics of the 90's and even among IE users they overwhelming choose to use Google Search. So basically Microsoft has nothing to gain or lose here. This is probably why IE is overall a pretty crappy product. They just don't care. It doesn't make them money. It just has to be good enough.
@Ulmus
wow wtf is wrong there? some kind of tampering with the stats?
@(Unverified)
"This is probably why IE is overall a pretty crappy product. They just don't care. It doesn't make them money. "
Apple doesn't make money on Safari either, but it's a vastly better browser. The lack of profit isn't a good enough excuse to make a browser as shitty as IE. I mean last I checked, nobody's browsers cost money, and Opera, Firefox, Chrome are all better than IE too.
@(Unverified) The reason for IE's high market share in South Korea is simple.
In South Korea, everything e-commerce related relies on ActiveX due to the SEED protocol being linked to ActiveX. This is due to Korean banks using a browser plugin for secure transactions that's only offered in ActiveX form (NPAPI development was stopped eons ago).
Here's a great article from 2007: http://blog.mozilla.com/gen/2007/02/27/the-cost-of-monoculture/
and its followup from last year: http://blog.mozilla.com/gen/2009/10/02/korea-paying-price-for-microsoft-monoculture/
@RockNStuff
Look at it this way... maybe 63% of all users don't know any better, or they are forced to use IE at work.
But, 100% of those who know better, or who care, *have* switched to other browsers.
This is Microsoft we're talking about here. They absolutely hate not feeling as if they are in total control of the market, capable of abusing any 3rd party provider and able to make any user of an alternative platform feel Amish or shunned.
For Microsoft, a mere 63% market share is indeed a great tragedy.
@RockNStuff
"IE could shrink to below 50 percent by May of this year. "
IE has only fallen about 5% in the past 2 years and is currently around 65% considering that other sources say its at above 70% marketshare. The notability of net applications is hurt with their "analysis" that IE will be around 40% in 5 months .
@MFfan310
A bank that relies on activex is not a bank I'd use over the internet, and preferably not at all.
@Michael Scrip
There's an element of truth there - IE6 is still used extensively in business. It's a hateful, hateful browser but, unfortunately, it's the one that all the Intranet sites are coded for.
I can't imagine many consumers use IE6 these days.
Nice to see the diversity. I'm shocked that Google Chrome passed Safari already. does this include mobile web browsing? if so i'd expect Safari to be doing a lot better than that (with all the preloaded macs/iphones out there)
either way Google Crome ftmfw!!!!
@SmilinGoat - Google Chrome FTL! IE is slow but works with everything. Firefox is quicker and has a billion plugins and works with 99% of things.
It doesn't matter how quick Google Chrome is if it doesn't work. It won't remember forms half the time, doesn't populate my ticketing system at all, several browser games crash or won't launch... an exercise in frustration.
@Ducman69 Try Google Chrome 4.0 beta. Sure, it's beta (Google keeps things in beta for ages), but it works with everything I've thrown at it and has extensions as well. For the few webpages that work better in IE (like my corporate webmail), I use the IE Tab extension. Works like a charm and is sooo much faster than any other browser!
@Ducman69
You don't seem to have a functional understanding of the word "everything". IE got a 20% rating on the ACID3 web compatibility test. Does that sound like it's compatible with "everything" to you? Safari, on the other hand, got a 100%. So did Mobile Safari. 100% sounds much more like "everything" to me.
@Jack
I have written it to you before, and I will write it again:
ACID3 is not standards compliant. For example, HTML5 is used, but HTML5 is still a draft and not yet a standard/recommendation. If any browser supports HTML5, it is not standards compliant. ACID3 requires downloadable TrueType fonts, but as of yet no existing standard nor draft supports true type font support. The spec requires a specific type of OpenType font, but if you use them the ACID3 test fails. Also, a quote from WikiPedia: "[T]he test also uses Base64 encoded images, some more advanced selectors, CSS 3 color values (HSLA) as well as bogus selectors and values that should be ignored."
Also, while something may pass a test, it does not necessarily mean that the test verifies all a browser can handle. For example, I spent hours last week working around bugs in Safari that rendered properly in IE, FF, and Opera. CSS tags that needed to be in different orders, script code that did not work in Safari (specifically finding the location of a parent element using offsetParent works in all browsers except Safari) that worked fine in the other 3, CSS attributes that worked fine in all browsers, but in Safari you needed to reorder unrelated attributes for them to be recognized (background color and position should not rely upon position), and many more.
This "It passes ACID3, so therefore it is a great browser" attitude is a joke.
But what I do think is funny, is that Engadget decides to alienate 62.69% of their possible users with piss poor IE support (javascript errors abound, invalid HTML that fails in all browsers, and more) just so they can cater to their most favored of users.
@Jack
im sorry, but as the owner of a iPhone, mobile safari certainly is NOT 100% compatible with everything.
@Jack Except bad web developers still develop for IE only, meaning Safari/Firefox/Chrome's ratings on the Acid test don't mean shit because the developer didn't use standards. It's sad, but true. Now, I use the Dev version of Chrome (Think beta of a beta) and I have very little problems with it, but there are some sites that work better in Firefox (haven't come across any that require IE lately though). Some sites still don't know what Chrome is (since its still fairly new) and just don't know what to do with it... which can cause some problems. My online college class site doesn't like Chrome just because it doesn't know what Chrome is (and I know because it tells you).
@NohOne1
"...Engadget decides to alienate 62.69% of their possible users..."
That number is for the internet at large. For sites such as Engadget, IE users are typically the minority.
@NohOne1 "Engadget decides to alienate 62.69% of their possible useres with piss poor IE support"
actually, IE users are alienating themselves for using the worst possible browser on Earth. Granted, some people don't know that there are superior browsers available so that's where we come in. We all have to pitch in and contribute to spread Safari/Chrome/FireFox/Opera awareness. Together we can liberate everyone from the horror that is IE.
@HighestRanked
"Together we can liberate everyone from the horror that is IE."
I pledge allegiance,
To the iPod
Of the Apple Computer Corp. Of America
And to the Corporation,
For Which it Stands
One Dictatorship,
Under Steve Jobs,
With Conformity, and being a Sell Out
For All
Hater
@SmilinGoat
That's nice, but where did I say it was? I said it passed the ACID3 test at 100%. And it does. Anything else I can help you with?