IE9 passes 20% market share, Firefox falls below 20%, Chrome loses users

http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/11/01/ie9-passes-20-market-share-firefox-falls-below-20-chrome-loses-users-second-month-in-a-row/

by mkwayisi • 14 years ago

28 46 14 years ago

thenextweb.com

mtgx3• 14 years ago

I don't trust Net Application's data. They always seem to show either IE or iOS mobile share being much, much larger than what the numbers of those devices would suggest.

mindstab• 14 years ago

http://gs.statcounter.com/

Stat Counter usually seems more reliable to me

ricardobeat2• 14 years ago

statcounter puts IE9 at 17%, not that far off: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version_partially_combine...

mtgx3• 14 years ago

It also shows Chrome at double of what Net Apps says. I've been following Chrome's growth over the years, and the Statcounter number for Chrome seems a lot more likely than the Net Apps one.

jeffisabelle• 14 years ago

oh, this made me look at google analytics instantly. my blog is still safe with 6.68% `total` IE visits.

bravoyankee3• 14 years ago

Firefox is horribly slow, and I don't even mean in comparison to Chrome. It's slow in its own right.

The constant updates? I'm getting used to it (although I can't really tell a difference one version to the next). It's the slowness and the crashing that gets to me.

Chrome has me spoiled I guess.

darklajid• 14 years ago

I .. believe you, I guess. You obviously tried the current versions and they weren't for you. Still, I'm baffled.

I removed Chrome from my Android devices (what for?) and only have it on my desktop machines for tests. I start it once every fortnight.

Firefox, with its sync feature, keeps my browsing experience in order. I've to admit that I'm using the Beta 'channel' on both Windows and Android. The readability mode is amazing. My add-ons are really helpful.

Oh - and I didn't even mention that it's the fastest browser on an Android device for all I can tell (and so fast on my desktop that I couldn't give the crown to either IE, Chrome or FF - they all are plenty fast and good enough).

While I might sound a bit like a fan here (and I admit that I do like that browser quite a bit), I wonder what provoked your 'na na na na na!' Nelson style answer. The speed issue seems to be .. debatable / bad luck. Frequent updates are bad, but Chrome is good? Uhm.. Hard to take that serious.

Let's relax. I think that there's no need to argue about the value FF brought to the web. You might prefer 'newer' contestants and that's really fine! But bashing open-source projects that are alive, kicking and innovating, with some not-quite-that-creative broad 'ugh, slooow' criticism isn't .. nice or useful. In my world, at least.

bravoyankee3• 14 years ago

I'm lamenting the poor performance of the browser. I have nothing but massive respect for the developers.

But I marvel at the difference and see that even with all these updates, the gap between Chrome and Firefox gets wider and wider.

ricardobeat2• 14 years ago

http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-sa-monthly-201110-201210

zizee• 14 years ago

It would be really nice if Google published their browser usage stats based on their Google analytics data. If anyone could have accurate numbers it would be Google.

Steko3• 14 years ago

As long as we're asking, a pony would also be really nice.

alanh• 14 years ago

There’s no need to mock people.

elchief• 14 years ago

Please remember that IE6 is barely used in NorAm and Europe (0.59% NorAm from statcounter). It's mostly in China. If China is not your target market, please ignore IE6.

jsdalton• 14 years ago

This is from one of the sites (North American B2B publication) I manage that's been around a few years:

http://i.imgur.com/WADrl.png

(The top blue line is total Internet Explorer visits.)

The data backs up what you are saying. IE6 is definitely dead!

rorrr5• 14 years ago

I see tons of ads for IE. Never for FF. Microsoft's marketing is working.

FF is slower than Chrome (at least the desktop versions).

FF still doesn't have separate processes for tabs, so when one fails, the whole browser crashes.

ladzoppelin• 14 years ago

I find Aurora faster then Chrome and it displays fonts/pages better. I also think the memory use is much better then Chrome. Maybe its the Nvidia acceleration?

rorrr5• 14 years ago

Aurora is what, a pre-beta release? And you're comparing it to the production Chrome?

And who cares about memory use on the desktop? I got 8GB, and my browser never even gets close to maxing that out. 16GB can be bought for around $45.

bcoates• 14 years ago

I very rarely experience chrome crashes, but when it happens, it's always the entire browser. I'd be a lot more worried that crashes almost certainly imply security holes than how much it interrupts my browsing session.

rorrr5• 14 years ago

I get tab crashes, they look like this:

http://www.geek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Chrome-tab-cr...

I don't remember the last time the whole browser crashed, and I do web development.

Mythbusters• 14 years ago

It was chrome's marketing earlier now it's Microsoft's. I think they are both great browsers on their own. I find IE10 to be even better and so much faster though.

w1ntermute2• 14 years ago

> FF is slower than Chrome (at least the desktop versions).

This is a misconception held by people that haven't used Firefox as of late. I actually frequently encounter crashes in Chrome, whereas I do not with Firefox.

jimwalsh• 14 years ago

Not it's actually still very slow. Theres a JS demo ever 3 days on HN that runs terribly in FF. Plenty of other 'pushing the envelope' demos do the same thing to FF. To their credit the FF team is usually here, or finds them, and bugs are quickly reported.

rorrr5• 14 years ago

It's not a misconception. Here's a website owned by Mozilla, and even they admit it:

http://arewefastyet.com/

eli• 14 years ago

> I see tons of ads for IE. Never for FF. Microsoft's marketing is working.

Are you using FF while browsing? Because I'm pretty sure those MS ads are using User Agent targeting. I would not expect you see any IE ads while already using IE.

subsection1h• 14 years ago

    FF is slower than Chrome

This isn't the case for me when I have a couple of hundred tabs open, which I usually do.

neoswf• 14 years ago

Paid article by Microsoft.

jeremyjh• 14 years ago

I have to use IE 9 some at work and lately I've not been opening Firefox unless I'm debugging a website. IE 9 is just pretty decent most of the time.

At home I switched back from Chrome to Firefox this spring. I think Firefox performs better on Ubuntu. On the Win 7 netbook I share with my wife we run only Chrome.

So uhm, I guess my story is that all three of those mainstream browsers are totally decent these days.

sharkweek• 14 years ago

I forgot who talked about it (one of the leads from one of those three) and he said long gone are the days of seeing browsers massively outperform one another.

For the internet savvy, it's more a feature competition at this point mixed with user loyalty (Firefox, you'll always have my heart, even if Chrome is better)

jamesbrennan• 14 years ago

Does anyone have some insight into why IE6 has a greater marketshare than IE7?

shardling3• 14 years ago

Because more intranet apps were written using IE6 specific technology, and that's basically the main reason anyone would still be using either.

sek• 14 years ago

China, it's almost non existent anywhere else. Even the "enterprise" upgraded to IEX but they probably skip IE7 when they do that. For intranet stuff maybe still some IE6, but not much left i guess.

paupino_masano• 14 years ago

I actually do most of my debugging in IE now - and I've actually come to like the devkit they've got going. Ok, I am developing for internal intranets which of which my primary is IE, but they've actually come a long way. In terms of PC browsers (Mac is a different story) I'd probably put Chrome first, IE second and Firefox third.

I still prefer Chrome, but partly because it is my preferred browser on Mac too - I like consistency. I also think that their devkit is ever so slightly better... but in saying that I'm not unhappy with IE - it does what I tell it to do, it's fairly consistent and feels quite light (compared to Firefox which still feels heavy to me even after their improvements...). Admittedly there are some tricks you need to learn in the IE devkit (e.g. add an attribute of style to create new CSS definitions) but all in all I think they've done a pretty good job at cleaning up their act!

PS: I used to do ALL my development in Firefox with Firebug and the Webdev kit. I find now that Chrome/IE handles things very well: though Chrome still allows me to install the Webdev kit if I need it (e.g. rulers, security checks etc). I guess I switch browser camps often based on my needs :)

iamleppert• 14 years ago

How can you possibly say IE's F9 Developer Tools are anything more than barely workable? Ugh.

FrojoS• 14 years ago

"[..] IE6 fell 0.37 percentage points (losing everything it somehow managed to gain the previous month)[..]"

And whats their error margin? Sounds like bad journalism to me.

leeoniya• 14 years ago

every time these statistics come up, i will post the last 2 weeks from my own server. pretty much 100% US/CA audience. site category is home remodeling, DIY, contractors.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgXFz9xLvI4UdHp...

IE9 passes 20% market share, Firefox falls below 20%, Chrome loses users

Related Stories