Early reports show IE not faring well in the post-ballot screen days

Most PC users hit the web using Internet Explorer by default, simply because that's what came along with Windows. Now, after antitrust investigations, European users get a choice of browser to install via ballot screen, and initial reports are not good for 'ol IE. According to Statcounter, IE use in France has dropped 2.5 percent since last month's implementation of the ballot, 1.3 percent in Italy, and 1 percent in Britain. It's still early days, and it'll take more than this to chip away from IE's 62 percent lead in the browser war, but it's certainly not a good trend for Microsoft. With that in mind, we're going to have to ask you to place your bets now.

[crunc Posted Mar 22nd 2010 11:57AM]

All Nintendo has to do is change the text to, "Piece of shit. Forget about it", for all except for IE8, which should read, "Free Porn!"

[crunc Posted Mar 22nd 2010 11:58AM]

@crunc "Nintendo"? Hiccup.

[leafflash Posted Mar 22nd 2010 12:08PM]

I give Microsoft two years before they can no longer say, "the world's most widely used browser," in the ballot box.

Unfair that Opera gets such a long description, and a misleading one at that (turbo doesn't speed up internet, it just overly-compresses photos and for most people slows things down).

[clarinetJWD Posted Mar 22nd 2010 8:04PM]

@leafflash On high latency connections it's much faster. On high speed connections (DSL or faster), it probably does slow things, but when you're tethering your phone, or if you're on :shudder: dialup, it gets the job done more quickly.

[HellFlyer Posted Mar 22nd 2010 12:21PM]

IE is good for only one thing! To download Firefox :D

[Gerusz Posted Mar 22nd 2010 12:46PM]

My bets: Firefox will gain the most users, Chrome will double its market share, Safari and Opera will probably triple it. IE will be the biggest loser.

[baizhangg Posted Mar 22nd 2010 1:30PM]

CHROME

the simplest and fastest browser yet. On the other hand, thanks to numerous extensions, it can be turned into very sophisticated and powerful tool.

[lennie22 Posted Mar 22nd 2010 2:30PM]

take a look at statcounter's website and you will see that IE was the only browser who's share actually went up, all the rest went down.
this article is bogus.
http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-weekly-200827-201012

it goes to show that people just take what ever they hear and don't even try to check if the news is correct or not. check for yourself you will see that IE was the only browser that actually went up.

[TimStevens Posted Mar 22nd 2010 2:45PM]

@lennie22 You're looking at the overall stats. Try looking specifically in Europe, which is what this article is about. You'll see IE go from 52.28% to 49.7% in France over the past month.

[lennie22 Posted Mar 22nd 2010 10:31PM]

@TimStevens

@TimStevens
ok, so I did that and take a look in overall EU and IE was still the only browser to have an uptick in usage:
http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-eu-weekly-200827-201012

[daewootech Posted Mar 22nd 2010 2:43PM]

I would use firefox 100% of the time if it wern't for the annoying memory issues, every since day one of using it it just likes to take my memory and use it like its the thing to do. last time i was on firefox it was hogging close to a gig of my memory, totally unacceptable. i have to rotate through opera, safari and chrome just go keep things smooth when one of em decides to be an ass. but i love firefox, its setup with the plugins that make life easier.

[shoxite Posted Mar 22nd 2010 2:50PM]

I LOVE CHROME!

[StriderNo9 Posted Mar 22nd 2010 3:17PM]

Chrome. I need speed.

[ummhello Posted Mar 22nd 2010 5:04PM]

FireFox for serious browsing and Chrome for quick browsing regular sites. Unfortunately, if you want to update windows you need to install IE anyways.....

[mkhpalm Posted Mar 22nd 2010 6:21PM]

@ummhello

No, MS made a firefox plugin for WGA. You just browse to the same url and it asks to install.

[mkhpalm Posted Mar 22nd 2010 6:19PM]

Unless MS stops adding extra horns and bling to the interface and refocuses *all* their attention to the sad state of affairs that is IE rendering, I think it will phase out of existence. More and more developers are dropping their special hacks for it so things are just sort of looking and working worse and worse for IE users. Of course, don't tell an IE user that he's missing out because he wont' believe you. Its like Plato's Allegory of the Cave with them.

[Eternal Density Posted Mar 22nd 2010 7:25PM]

I used to like Firefox but it became slow to start, and restarting it is necessary due to its munching of memory. As soon as I read that Chrome beta has extensions which include ad-blocking, I switched to Chrome pretty much full time. I have FF as a fallback, plus (or minus, depending on your point of view) IE for stuff that just doesn't work with anything else. Such as parts of SAP.

[clarinetJWD Posted Mar 22nd 2010 8:01PM]

@InternetExplorer http://acid3.acidtests.org/
Mine says 100/100. Yours?

[Pearl Jam Posted Mar 23rd 2010 1:10AM]

Lol, Microsoft is the most widely used Web Browser... Smoking is quite popular too, doesn't make it good!

Firefox for me - Chrome is great, and a lot smoother, however, I can't get the Adblock working as good as I can in FF.

[korrupt9187 Posted Mar 23rd 2010 1:22AM]

Maybe it's just me, but I don't see the real significance of this. How does a company make money from a browser? Search seems like a more important thing to focus on.

[Pearl Jam Posted Mar 23rd 2010 1:25AM]

I might add that the bookmark syncing of Chrome is magnificent

[diehard8903 Posted Mar 23rd 2010 2:32AM]

Im from the USA Im 20 years old and im a PC
Im a user of Opera, and I love it. Integrated IRC and torrent clients make my task-bar less cluttered and easy to navigate. the turbo function is great for low bandwidth users like my self. I use the speed dial every time I load up Opera its a click and go kinda thing Im looking for and Opera gives me just that with no extra stuff to make it complicated.

[MysticBronx1 Posted Mar 23rd 2010 4:12AM]

Firefox!!!
I used the new Opera recently not bad, but too slow for me...
Google Chrome will be great when it has the extions Firefox has...
they all make me go back to Firefox every time I test drive a new version of the other browsers!

[John52 Posted Mar 23rd 2010 10:03AM]

Anybody surprised by this? No? Okay, moving on.

[k7of9 Posted Mar 23rd 2010 2:20PM]

I really wouldn't call a 1% drop a big impact. Right now the more curious users might have been tempted to at least try out an alternative browser, a lot won't bother. The real test is, are those that are going to stick with the alternative browser.
It's WAY to early to draw any conslusion from this.

[guribe94 Posted Mar 23rd 2010 8:41PM]

I want this ballot screen in the US