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IE Usage Falls Again, Firefox Gains

Time: 11:15 EST/16:15 GMT | News Source: BetaNews | Posted By: Chris Hedlund

Use of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser has fallen for the seventh straight month, and the decline is beginning to accelerate, according to new data from research firm WebSideStory. Usage of IE stood at 90.3 percent, a one month decrease of 1.5 percent. Meanwhile, Firefox usage rose nearly a full percentage point to 5 percent of the market. WebSideStory also showed gains in Apple's Safari browser and Opera Software's flagship browser. The original Mozilla browser showed some weakness, falling slightly since December. Other browser usage surveys, however, show Internet Explorer to have already fallen below 90 percent. Rival OneStat.com in November said IE's share stood at 88.9 percent. OneStat.com at that time pegged Firefox usage at 4.58 percent.

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Displaying Comments 1 through 31 of 31

This is an archived static copy of ActiveWin.com.

#1 By 1401 (69.40.35.229) at Friday, January 21, 2005 11:52:20 AM

If IE wasn't built into Windows it would have 5% market share at best...

#2 By 37 (67.37.29.142) at Friday, January 21, 2005 12:13:30 PM

This article is more FUD, and impossible.

#3 By 143 (68.248.128.57) at Friday, January 21, 2005 12:21:04 PM

I thought this site was called ActiveWIN not ActiveFOX?

This is worse than Home Land Security trying to cause panic.

#4 By 1401 (69.40.35.229) at Friday, January 21, 2005 12:38:00 PM

We are slowly migrating to become ActiveLinux...

j/k :-)

#5 By 23603 (66.130.147.103) at Friday, January 21, 2005 12:53:01 PM

I predict firefox will get not more then 7% of the market (in the next 4 years)

....And yes I have tried Firefox...

I still like IE6 with SP2. It does all the job. The new pop up blocker is very nice.
I don't get any spyware cause I don't surf xxx site and warez site.

So can any firefox users tell me why should I choose firecrap?

By the way, what the yell are you firefox losers doing here anyway?

#6 By 15406 (216.191.227.90) at Friday, January 21, 2005 01:00:06 PM

Man, some people are stupid. You are all aware that Firefox runs under Windows right? It's not a LINUX thing, right? And although I'm used to this place being a hotbed of raving MS fanboys, getting your shorts in a knot about which browser one runs under WIndows is about as pathetic as it comes. Here's a tip for some of you: just because it comes from MS doesn't mean it's good, and just because it's doesn't come from MS doesn't mean it's bad. Unreal.

#7 By 1401 (69.40.35.229) at Friday, January 21, 2005 01:12:15 PM

yes, this space is a hotbed of MS fanboys (read #2)

#8 By 1401 (69.40.35.229) at Friday, January 21, 2005 01:14:14 PM

Every Windows enthusiast surely realizes that the browser wars are a hot topic right now. Personally, I have stopped using IE and have switched to FlashPeak's Slimbrowser. I don't see myself ever going back to IE. But, with that said, I still like MS products...

#9 By 2960 (68.101.39.180) at Friday, January 21, 2005 01:27:19 PM

Wow. Parkker didn't even make it in the first 10 posts on this subject. He's slipping :)

#10 By 37 (67.37.29.142) at Friday, January 21, 2005 01:53:02 PM

#9, it's FUD, cuz it's impossible.

#11 By 2960 (68.101.39.180) at Friday, January 21, 2005 01:54:39 PM

Anyone else had problems with XP/SP2 IE crashing on the front news page when it reloads ?

Happened to me about 6 times already today.

I don't have Firefox installed on this partition yet.

#12 By 7797 (63.76.44.6) at Friday, January 21, 2005 02:01:18 PM

"#9, it's FUD, cuz it's impossible."

Whats impossible? Why is it impossible?

#13 By 7754 (216.160.8.41) at Friday, January 21, 2005 02:34:18 PM

Hahaha, TL... you're right, where is Parkker???? Oh, nevermind, there he is. Must have been in the restroom....

I've said this before, but I think it needs repeating, since no one else seems to want to touch this aspect of the "browser war." I like FF and use it more and more lately... however, it will not be a program that I will roll out to other users (a sentiment confirmed by many of my IT colleagues).

In my case, the main failing of FF on its own merit is the lack of an admin-grade patching utility (to my knowledge... if there is one, please let me know). This is huge. I will not rely on users going to "check for patches" on their own time. It has to be something that can be controlled centrally. SUS and SMS do this nicely for IE, among other methods.

Furthermore, yes, there are a few compatibility problems with a few websites that will require us to keep IE. But this itself is a problem for FF, even though it really isn't a FF software issue--if you're already keeping IE, rolling out FF means patching TWO browsers and having TWO sets of vulnerabilities to watch (plus all the time and effort spent in maintaining/testing two applications rather than one). In some sense, you double your "attack surface." In addition to that, you end up with support issues such as, "Why are my Bookmarks different (or NOT THERE) when I go to 'the Internet?'" and "Why does xxxxx site look funny?" and so on. It's just not worth the expense.

This post was edited by bluvg on Friday, January 21, 2005 at 14:37.

#14 By 37 (67.37.29.142) at Friday, January 21, 2005 02:38:55 PM

tgnb, it's impossible that Firefox has even remotely close to 5% of the web browsing share worldwide. Internet Explorer not only had a supposed 90%+ marketshare for the past whatever number of years, but they continue to sell about 12 million pc's per month with IE on them. If there have been 19 million downloads of FF (that doesn't account for those who download them multiple times onto multiple computers or those that uninstall them after testing/trying it) since November, and on average 12 million new IE purchases per month, that would mean that since November, every single user that has bought a new pc is not using IE and is downloading Firefox instead. We know THAT isn't the case. And since THAT isn't the case, and most likely, more than 90% of those 12 million pc's sold are indeed users who are using IE, I find it unlikely (impossible) that there are 24 million people per month who have stopped using IE in favor of FF.

In addition, these onstat.com and websidestory do NOT monitor all internet traffic. It's just impossible.

If there is only 19 million users of FF 1.0 as of today, and you take away 19 million IE users, 19 million isn't even remotely close to 5% of the number of people/computers surfing the web today. There are 934 million people online worldwide in 2004. Back in 2002 there were 500 million computers surfing the web. (from Nielsen netratings)

http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/geographics/article.php/5911_151151

Projection for 2005:
1.07 billion (Computer Industry Almanac)
http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/geographics/article.php/5911_151151

Which would require FF to have about 53.5 million users to obtain 5% of the end of 2005.

I just say that it's impossible.

#15 By 7754 (216.160.8.41) at Friday, January 21, 2005 02:51:21 PM

AWBrian, I see what you're saying... but just to play devil's advocate, you're comparing users, whereas I think these statistics were for total web traffic (is that correct?). Is it possible that a relatively few number of FF users were doing a relatively large amount of browsing?

#16 By 9589 (68.17.52.2) at Friday, January 21, 2005 02:52:41 PM

I just checked WebSideStory's web site for their latest press releases and the last time they posted an article about Firefox was 13 December 2004. There are news story about their story since that time, but nothing new has been posted.

So, we have another Munich is going *nix story. In other words, BS.

Good point, AWBrian.

By the way, some of our web designers and coders have downloaded FF to ensure that our web sites would run on it and in anticipation of enough of a percentage of our customers (numbering in the millions) would use it. Sorry, less than 1% of our users use it according to our web statistics over the last three months, Oct - Dec 2004.

#17 By 7797 (63.76.44.6) at Friday, January 21, 2005 03:10:45 PM

Its funny how you guys use these statistics when they are in favor of your opinion and try to discredit them when they are not.

#18 By 37 (67.37.29.142) at Friday, January 21, 2005 03:16:07 PM

tgnb, i can say that i don't think we will EVER know the actual numbers from either side.

#19 By 415 (199.8.64.204) at Friday, January 21, 2005 03:48:38 PM

Good points, Brian. You're one smart cookie. Can I be your friend? ;-)

#20 By 2960 (68.101.39.180) at Friday, January 21, 2005 03:54:36 PM

#13,

Yeah, that's true :)

TL

#21 By 415 (199.8.64.204) at Friday, January 21, 2005 04:06:06 PM

HAHAHAHA! Man, I haven't laughed my ass off this good over a post here in a while...

"Jim@xugle.com (don't bother spamming... I use thunderbird)"

I could try to make fun of this, but I can't think of anything funnier to say!

#22 By 7797 (63.76.44.6) at Friday, January 21, 2005 04:10:09 PM

Simdude90015 Grow up! You have a lot to learn.

#23 By 37 (67.37.29.142) at Friday, January 21, 2005 04:29:22 PM

"if your car crashed as much as your windows"

My Windows doesn't crash, nor does my car. So what is your point?

#24 By 23275 (67.32.52.11) at Friday, January 21, 2005 05:34:07 PM

Over 28 million users a day here... less than .7% on FF across everything from F&A processing to aesthetic practices.

No one, and no company stating FF, Opera, Mozilla, or Safari is the platform of choice has ever paid us a dime for either dev or managed hosting - not once!

XP and IE 6 ?, well over 95% of all users [Web Trends Enterprise 7]. The rest are on W2K and 5.5 - mostly.

Linux actually scores higher than FF at .8% and declines a small amount each month.

Safari is so seldom used, despite the ad agencies that we support, that it is insignificant.

#25 By 3339 (64.160.58.137) at Friday, January 21, 2005 06:09:25 PM

The lunacy that is AWBrian:

"12 million new users a month..."

Huh? You think every PC sold is a brand new user? You don't think a single PC replaced an older PC? You don't think some older PCes are being "killed" without being replaced?

So... clearly there are not 12 million new users per month.

Second, Mozilla is counting downloads from their site. But thanks to Open Source, many, many more people are distributing it themselves. I know I have send the installation rather than pointing to the web site for over 20 people.

What you are doing, Brian, is taking extrapolated data and applying it against other extrapolated data which was collected by completely different means for completely different purposes (computer sales does not indicate user numbers, nevermind what browser they use, and neither do download stats indicate user numbers). On the other hand, each of these different data sets had a particular methodology to extrapolate the final number because it is an unknown number (except for FF downloads).

WebSideStory is simply looking at the data of the websites it montiors. We are getting usage stats and percentages of each different browser. And 5% of it IS FireFox traffic. That is undeniable and entirely POSSIBLE. They explain their methodology and we know which sites they monitor. You can't say: "That's impossible." What we can say is: there are margins of error in all statistical analysis, but statistical analysis can still be usefull particularly over the long term when observing trends. No matter WebSideStory's sample pool, if that sample pool remains constant, and continues to show IE usage dropping and FireFox usage gaining, then it is a real and OBSERVABLE trend.

This post was edited by sodajerk on Friday, January 21, 2005 at 18:12.

#26 By 3339 (64.160.58.137) at Friday, January 21, 2005 08:38:02 PM

Parkker, you are stuck in ParkkerWorld again... PCs shipped. Not PCs with Windows shipped. Hence, the 12 million figure. Macs and Linux machines are included in the 177 million number.

No, any sane person would guess there are much fewer than 12 million new users per year.

From August 2004: "A little more than a 152 million PCs will leave factories this year, and that tally is expected to grow over time. With about half of these going to new users, IDC believes that the PC user population will grow to 1.2 billion by the end of 2009, a 79 percent increase over six years." IDC and Gartner both believe it will be about 6 years for the PC industry to grow by 350 million users. Which equates to about 4.8 million per year... but they also expect the most growth to occur in 2008-2010 in China so the number currently is probably lower than 4.8 million.

This post was edited by sodajerk on Friday, January 21, 2005 at 20:44.

#27 By 23275 (68.17.42.38) at Friday, January 21, 2005 11:36:08 PM

#36 - Yup. We have 7 in our home of different types and most people we know have at least 3 or four. Many, especially those with hifgh school and college age children have at least one for each child and often times a home worstation and a laptop.

Also, as we recover older PC's from locations, they are rebuilt and sent back into the field performing less strenuous tasks, or as second less used PC's. Of hundreds we have seen this year alone, only 6 have been a partial loss and were gutted for parts.

It is rare to see a PC that is less than 5 years old abandoned - we just have not seen it, and
most are upgraded with more RAM and a new copy of Windows XP Pro.

#28 By 20505 (216.102.144.11) at Saturday, January 22, 2005 08:09:43 PM

if i were ms gentlemen i would be plenty worried about firefox.

i believe most business software will run on remote computers when very fast data lines carry all information into and out of an office (phone/computer/television/etc).

the local machine will run a few programs that will work like an appliance and will itself be remotely administrated.

the os will make no difference and the basic software will be trivial and inexpensive.

why not firefox on top of any platform. remember faster, cheaper, better.

#29 By 8062 (68.107.20.152) at Saturday, January 22, 2005 10:29:25 PM

Firefox...no should be named FireFarce. This POS browser is made only for MS (that's m$) haters and open sores (bozoes) lovers as it offers nothing more than more irritation that the latest version of IE.
Want a real life...forget FireFarce I mean FireFox.

#30 By 13030 (198.22.121.120) at Monday, January 24, 2005 10:48:58 AM

#17: it's impossible that Firefox has even remotely close to 5% of the web browsing share worldwide. Internet Explorer not only had a supposed 90%+ marketshare for the past whatever number of years, but they continue to sell about 12 million pc's per month with IE on them. If there have been 19 million downloads of FF...

In his argument, AWBrian just assumes that every new PC sold is connected to the internet. Internet usage is 68.3% of North American population and only 12.7% globally. I suspect that a significant portion of computers sold each month are not browsing the web. 12 million PCs with IE means is vague since all Windows versions now are bundled with IE including server editions which may never need to have a browser invoked on them. Many companies restrict web access, so it is meaningless to make calculations based on a highly variable number.

(Since my wilda55 guess is as good as anyone's: I would place the number of new PCs browsing the web wordwide at about 30%.)

#31 By 3339 (64.160.58.137) at Monday, January 24, 2005 01:18:27 PM

"That's unpossible."

Brian you are starting to get more pathetic than Parkker.

New computers are not new users, Brian. Even if 90% of those computers are Windows machines, you cannot assume they are using IE or that they aren't replacement machines.

You canb't use number of internet users because half of the world primarily surfs through internet cafes. You can't take browser usage numbers and subtract them from a number larger than the estimated number of personal computers in use today.

Nor can you claim that the only possible source of FF is from the site, and therefore, it has to be 20 million or less.

You have no logic to your argument. You are simply stringing together several, completely unrelated bits of info not related to this story.

Yes, Websidestory and onstat.com do not scan the whole internet, yet they do not claim to. What they do say is: this is our sample pool, these are the trends we see.

What is impossible is your insisting on this absurd position with a straight face.

"The doctor said I wouldn't have so many nosebleeds if I kept my finger out of there."

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