By Paul Festa, 23 November 2004 09:15
NEWS
As Firefox marks its five-millionth download and moves to retail stores, a survey showed Microsoft's heavyweight Internet Explorer slipping below 90 per cent market share.
OneStat.com, an Amsterdam, Netherlands-based provider of web traffic measurement services, said that according to numbers gleaned from two million web surfers around the world, the Mozilla Foundation's new Firefox releases appear to be cutting into Microsoft's still commanding lead in the browser market.
Niels Brinkman, OneStat.com co-founder, said in a statement: "It seems that people are switching from Microsoft's Internet Explorer to Mozilla's new Firefox browser."
OneStat's statistics, based on the web surfers' activity in 100 countries, showed that IE's market share slipped to 88.9 per cent in the third week of November, down five percentage points from its share in May.
Mozilla-based browsers, including Firefox, rose to 7.4 per cent, up five percentage points from May.
The new figures come on the heels of another survey that showed IE on a downward trend. Earlier this month, WebSideStory reported that IE was continuing to slip, claiming 92.9 per cent of web surfers in October versus 95.5 per cent in June.
Mozilla heralded its download numbers as a sign of progress for the open-source browser.
Asa Dotzler, Mozilla's release manager, said in a statement: "We're seeing a much swifter uptake for 1.0 than for the preview release, which took more than a month to reach five million downloads. We're clearly reaching a new world of users and we're doing it at a faster pace than any time in Mozilla's history."
In addition to the increase in downloads, Firefox can look forward to retail sales in the form of a new offering by Linspire, the open-source software distributor, which said Monday it had unveiled a product called "OOoFf" that combines the open-source productivity software suite OpenOffice.org with Firefox.
The software package, available now from the OOoFf website, is available for use with the Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh and Linux operating systems. It costs $29.95 when ordered online, with free shipping. It also will be sold at retail stores, according to Linspire.
Firefox advances aside, Microsoft threw cold water on the OneStat.com numbers, saying they failed to account for IE's stronghold in the corporate world.
Gary Schare, Microsoft's director of product management for Windows, said: "It doesn't jibe with what WebSideStory shows, and what neither of these count is corporate intranets where users aren't actually hitting the web."
Schare attributed Mozilla's spike in popularity to interest by "early adopters", and predicted that in the end IE would retain its majority status.
"I still believe in the end that most users will decide that IE is the best choice when they take into account all the factors that led them to choose IE in the first place," Schare said. "Meanwhile, we're happy that they're primarily [using Firefox] on Windows, and that Firefox is part of the large ecosystem of software products available on the Windows platform."
Paul Festa writes for CNET News.com.
Comments
There are 19 comments. Join the discussion
1. Roj Ash
Factors?
"I still believe in the end that most users will decide that IE is the best choice when they take into account all the factors that led them to choose IE in the first place".
Ok, let's list those factors:
1: It's installed automatically with Windows.
2: er...
2. Richard Taylor
I was one of those included in those stats - 5 million downloads... however, I downloaded FireFox to evaluate it, having done that - I am definately sticking with Internet Explorer and have subsequently uninstalled FireFox - thus I would contest that fact that 5 million downloads means Microsoft share goes down - I wonder how many of those are simply IT Managers evaluating this new software before deciding whether or not to allow its download on corporate PC's
3. Trevor Q Leaman
"I still believe in the end that most users will decide that IE is the best choice when they take into account all the factors that led them to choose IE in the first place," Schare said.
And exactly what "choice" was that then? I would suggest that anybody who has actually made a choice has moved as far away from IE as they can!
4. Alan Chandler
Well a sizeable number of the corporate users I know (perhaps 20%) have all downloaded Firefox and are using that instead on the corporate network. Of course you still have to keep IE around for the corporate applications where Firefox doesn't work:-(
I am not claiming we are typical, being in the IT business makes users more technically savy.
Interesting question is why?. Security is not so much a concern hidden behind the corporate firewalls, its more do do with those little bits of extra functionality
5. anonymous
As if the end users decided to use IE in the 1st place.
Since when Windows user had any choice in choosing to use IE in the 1st place when it is loaded and part of the OS in the 1st place?
And what compeling reason do end users have for IE. No feature update in 3 years, no pop up blocking, no tab browsing when the other Web browser have been sporting them for at least the last 2 years.
The reality denial reigns in Redmon.
Then again complecency is all you can expect from a company having a monopoly.
6. anonymous
I just love the MS comment "....take into account all the factors that led them to choose IE in the first place,....." CHOOSE?? who does he think he's kidding!! very few IE users chose to us it, it was thrust upon them. We rolled FF out to all our machines yesterday (having tested pre-release for a few weeks)and it's great!
7. Nick Weavers
You might think users would be glad to poke MS in the eye for ignoring them while there was no competition, and that the FF download figures just reflect this. However, as a web designer FF is in my opinion a far superior browser in so many ways and renders pages as the designer intends.
8. Joel Watson
I am the first one to have a pop at M$ given the opportunity. However, I really don't see the point of alternative browsers. IE is always there, you dont have to download it or make any changes in order for it to work, and if you didnt have it, there would be zer0 million downloads of firefox BECAUSE NO ONE WOULD BE ABLE TO GET IT IN THE FIRST PLACE!!
stick to what you know, and what you know works.
9. anonymous
Downloaded it when I saw this article. Installed it, very impressed. Great usability and quick. Unfortunately company time recording system doesn't work. So back to IE it is.
With IE's dominance, unless they make this thing totally IE compatible it going to be a loser.
Sorry but that's the game they need to win if they're going to change that fact.
A lot of developers only test on IE these days especially for intranet type products where a browser can be specified. Which is good in one way but bad for the Firefox people.
10. anonymous
Presumably the gentleman who thinks that without IE there would have been no Firefox downloads has never heard of such a thing as an ftp client....
11. anonymous
Gary Schare is far too ignorant.
Schare attributed Mozilla's spike in popularity to interest by "early adopters"
Has he not heard that even Firefox's Preview Release hit 8 million downloads, and showed absolutely NO signs of stopping even with the imminent release of 1.0?
"predicted that in the end IE would retain its majority status."
...through illegal monopolysing tactics I'm sure.
"I still believe in the end that most users will decide that IE is the best choice when they take into account all the factors that led them to choose IE in the first place," Schare said.
Only because it is forced onto users. It's the only browser present on their computer when people start, and so they are lead into believing it is the ONLY browser.
Sun Microsystems, Novell, and Oracle had their employees switch to Firefox en masse!
12. Daniel R.
Yes, corporate users are locked into IE. It's part of my job to remove spyware that they catch. Change will come. Viva la revolucion!
13. Roy Corneloues
Joel Watson, how can you say there is no point for alternative browsers. M$ stopped developing IE years ago, however development in web standards have continued to evolve.
How can anyone take advantage of these vastly improved standards if there are no browsers out there to use them.
M$ inability do adopt these standards has allowed them to stick their heads firmly in the sand and state that IE is all you need.
STart looking out for Firefox only web sites. These will be far richer, easier to use and for the developers easier to maintain and less prone to error...
14. DarkWraith007
Not trying to advert, but...
I have WinXP SP2, slipstreamed and customized with "nLite"...free program from:
http://nuhi.msfn.org
Removed about 90% of IE with that program, only thing left is .chm file (IE-only HTML help files with the yellow question mark icon) compatibility. Been having NO problems whatsoever. Do recommend downloading Firefox BEFORE doing any customizing...and either making seperate partition or a backup to another hard drive, CD, DVD, USB drive, whatever.
Running Firefox WITHOUT IE, and I'm loving it! =D
Also testing a few Linux distros on a dual boot...hehe.
DarkWraith007
15. Dominic
Hey, to all those IE zealots who can't see what all the fuss is about: at least we have a choice now. And let's not forget healthy competition is a good thing; it promotes innovation.
So if you want to stick with the spyware/virus magnet called IE that needs to be patched every couple of days it seems and hasn't been properly updated in more than 3 years, go ahead. I'll use the better alternative--Firefox.
16. Dominic
Hey, to all those IE zealots who can't see what all the fuss is about: at least we have a choice now. And let's not forget healthy competition is a good thing; it drives innovation.
So if you want to stick with the spyware/virus magnet called IE that needs to be patched every couple of days it seems and hasn't been properly updated in more than 3 years, go ahead. I'll use the better alternative: Firefox.
17. Alan
I notice that you can't use the 'Windows Update' site, unless you're using IE, effectively this means that the average joe (me) will not be able to remove IE completely, even though I'd sooner use Mozilla Firefox.
What's the justification for that? I'd love to know... If it wasn't for that, I'd have no hesitation about removing IE.
Why are M$ STILL being allowed to get away with this kind of rubbish? They've been dealt with far too leniently and they seem to carry on regardless. The place they want us 'to go today' scares the hell out of me.
18. anonymous
We did a simple test on Firefox before using it on a network with 200 PC's.
We tracked all internet sites used on a PC for 2 weeks, once with IE, once with Firefox.
Results:
1) we needed 4 security updates in IE (in only 3 weeks)
2) ran all regular plugins (Java, Real, WMP, Acrobat). They ran on both, for the exception of Apple Quicktime that didn't work on Firefox. Pitty ...
3) we ran Lavasoft Adaware to check how much spyware had been downloaded onto the pc. Result = 180 processes by using IE, "ZERO" by using Firefox ...
So, our conclusions are:
- Firefox doesn't need any critical security updates (so we don't haver the risk of certain things not functioning all of a sudden).
- the regular plugins work fine
- no spyware, which means no trouble and no CPU-slowdown
And users get extra functionality!
Firefox is now running on all 200 and system administration spends time on useful troubleshooting.
19. DarkWraith007
Reply to: Alan
Quote:
I notice that you can't use the 'Windows Update' site, unless you're using IE, effectively this means that the average joe (me) will not be able to remove IE completely, even though I'd sooner use Mozilla Firefox.
Answer:
Go here and you can use this website to manually download whatever you need. They have special sections for Windows security updates, DX, whatever.
Note: As of SP2, if you remove IE you don't have to install ANY security updates if you have SP2 installed. Almost all the security updates are still for those using SP1. Personally I think M$ should stop supporting SP1 because if they really don't want to deal with the security center and all that they can use nLite like I did.
Conclusion: IE is absolutely, completely, and utterly obsolete and not needed for 99% of tasks and programs and websites. Those that require IE are poorly coded/designed, and there are suitable alternatives available. Lets not support the "IE-only" websites anymore. :P