Ask HN: Why is IE8 usage growing?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9544274

by franciscop • 11 years ago

33 47 11 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

It might not be much, and it might be slow, but the last 3 months the IE8 usage is growing at a slow rate[1]. While I expected to see it dead by now [2] from the last year's decline, this is not the case.

The second part of the question is, how do we stop this or should we just ignore it? Although this is a particularly more difficult one...

[1] http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop+mobile+tablet-browser_version_partially_combined-ww-monthly-201501-201505

[2] http://ux.stackexchange.com/a/64361/19209

buster• 11 years ago

You may not believe it but there are a lot of enterprises that are still running Windows XP and just now in the process to upgrade to Windows7. IE8 is the default browser in Windows 7.

Just a guess, but for example, i know for a fact that the german telecom is doing this XP->Win7 migration in the coming months...

xmstr• 11 years ago

I work for an org that just upgraded from XP to Win7, however we went straight to ie11 as the default browser during the upgrade. However, optional use Firefox and Chrome is permitted for both XP and Win7.

engi_nerd• 11 years ago

Yup, my rather large workplace (in the Fortune 100) switched from XP to Win 7 just about a year ago. We have IE8 but they will also let us use an ESR version of Firefox. Other business units than mine get to use Chrome, too.

ryanmarsh• 11 years ago

My current client runs XP. My Java devs have to use it. Torture.

Petefine• 11 years ago

When I follow [1], IE8's numbers are (from Jan) 2.56%, 2.61%, 2.13%, 2.19%, 2.26%. So they don't look to have grown at all.

If anything they've declined a little, although this may be within the margin for error for the sample.

franciscop2• 11 years ago

2.13%, 2.19%, 2.26% is what worries me. They dropped dramatically in the same period of last year. From March, they are slowly creeping up.

Rexxar• 11 years ago

I think the most important part of Petefine comment is "within the margin for error the sample". I would be surprised if the margin of error was inferior to 0.13%.

It's an Human bias to see patterns when there are only random events.

arihant• 11 years ago

This is a pure guess - people downgrading back to Windows 7. Maybe new laptop buyers install Windows 7 because they don't like 8.1, IE8 is default on Windows 7.

Could be a lot of things, but it is a good chance that this has something to do with Windows 7.

smcl• 11 years ago

It seems unlikely to me that enough people are tech savvy enough to downgrade a version of windows but can't (or don't want to?) switch from IE8 - which we can probably all agree is not a particularly nice browser

Spooky23• 11 years ago

Corporate images are almost all Windows 7... 8 is basically son of Vista.

smhenderson• 11 years ago

You don't have to be technically savvy to take advantage of downgrading though, resellers will do it for you. If you go to CDW, TigerDirect, NewEgg, etc. they all are selling PC's now, new and referbed, with Windows 8 licenses but with Windows 7 pre-installed. All you have to know from a technical standpoint is that you prefer 7 over 8.

joshvm• 11 years ago

https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share...

Windows 7's share has increased by 2-3% in the last three months. I think it's probably upgraders since XP has decreased by ~ the same amount, and XP users are far more likely to be enterprise.

franciscop2• 11 years ago

So before we had ie8 because it was the latest supported by Windows XP, now we get it because it's the one included in Windows 7. Oh, the irony.

frik• 11 years ago

There is IE11 for Win7. Though many corporations force the "IE8" compatibility mode in IE9-11. Also IE8 was the last IE that is compatible with WinXP.

mcbridematt• 11 years ago

Guessing along similar lines - ex corporate Win7 machines hitting the secondary market?

chippy• 11 years ago

I'm thinking it's people upgrading from XP. They know they can no longer use it, so they upgrade to 7

KevanM• 11 years ago

You can see from this there is a general trend downwards in usage, but there are sudden, periodic, upswings in usage such as December last year.

http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop+mobile+tablet-browser_ver...

kellros2• 11 years ago

It must be IE gathering its numbers to face off against Spartan in the IEpocalypse.

Another theory is that corporates/governments are switching over from XP to Windows 7 (with Internet Explorer 8 as default) because XP was declared "dead" (end of life on April 8, 2014 - no more security updates) and the existing PCs aren't capable of running UEFI required for Windows 8...

Windows 7 and Windows 8 is going to get a free upgrade to Windows 10; it's not far fetched to believe some people are installing a fresh copy of Windows 7 on a clean machine to make use of the free upgrade.

brudgers• 11 years ago

Windows 8 will run on anything that ran Vista and does not require UEFI. Placing a sticker proclaiming Windows 8 certification or something like that on a new computer requires UEFI.

kellros2• 11 years ago

Good to know :)

jay-saint• 11 years ago

Has anyone considered a tax season effect on these results? I used to work for a computer manufacturer that also did re-seller / refurbishing of used computers. December was always when the seasonal tax preparation companies (Jackson Hewitt Liberty Tax), would pop up buying loads of cheap semi-reliable used systems. These tax preparers would then rent whatever cheap strip mall space was available, stick 20 PCs and a few used HP laser printers and connect them all to a decent terminal server.

The small company I worked for would sell a couple hundred of these tax prep systems a year just locally, multiply this out across the US and this could be a correlation. Many of these systems get reloaded, updated and then pulled back off the web to be resold after tax season. On company we sold them to would even let people use a part of their return to buy one of the systems.

mseebach• 11 years ago

and connect them all to a decent terminal server

Why would those systems be running IE8?

jeletonskelly• 11 years ago

Windows XP

michaelbuddy• 11 years ago

tax preparers often just use the web based systems now and I could easily see them running outdated IE dependent browser add-ons for the work too. Given the way a lot of the tax software walk-thru wizards have progressed, a web interface is likely.

mattmanser• 11 years ago

Stats of one of my bigger clients show an almost 50% drop in IE8 in the last year (UK traffic only).

Don't believe everything you read. Also, who actually uses statcounter?

josefresco• 11 years ago

I picked a client at random (typical small business in the US) and see a 54% drop in IE8 and a 32% drop in IE9 usage year over year.

IE11 represented the most traffic (for IE users) and it grew by 346%.

Sessions from IE users overall were down 15% for the same period.

Source: Google Analytics

interdrift• 11 years ago

That's because IE is unpredictable in every aspect ! :D

taf2• 11 years ago

It is most likely because you're including May and this month is incomplete. In June, it's possible when you run the numbers again it will show a different picture, similar to if you review the months past. That is what I've observed at least when using gs.statcounter. Hopefully this is the case.

ck2• 11 years ago

Bots like the IE8 user agent.

peter303• 11 years ago

Much of the corporate utilities in my company seems to only work in IE. There is a whole ecoculture of business software that ignores any other browser. I have bring up a VM to complete some of required paperwork.

fideloper• 11 years ago

No one's mentioned China yet? Perhaps they're finally updating from IE6 over there.

itsbits• 11 years ago

Probably many filing up Taxes

mixonic• 11 years ago

IE8 is coming out of the Trough of Disillusionment and finally reaching the Plateau of Productivity. Obviously.

mchanson• 11 years ago

IE 8 gets, for the most part, to end of life next January. So it should go back into shrink mode as those IT departments get with the times.

Roboprog2• 11 years ago

Thanks for that info. Verified it on the MS support site and emailed the link to work.

I am working on a project to be delivered to CA Dept of Public Health around January. We were told to target IE 8 as our minimum browser (as well as FF/Chrome/Safari). Seems a waste, given this news. Time to push for IE 9 or better.

acdha• 11 years ago

Browser stats are noisy – if you look at a larger timescale, you'll see this is actually somewhat lower than December:

http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop-browser_version_partially...

The first thing I'd do is check to see whether the apparent trend is supported by other data sources, particularly traffic to the sites you care about. It's worth poking around somewhere like http://stats.wikimedia.org/archive/squid_reports/ or http://akamai.io to see if other they're seeing the same trend.

darcyparker• 11 years ago

It's an interesting trend that I have seen among my company's user base. It could be real, but it could also be an increase in false positives.

A possible explanation for the false positives:

Many large companies are seeing more and more machines moving to IE11, but have websites/tools that require IE8. Ideally each web site should explicitly declare compatibility/standard modes they require in their HTML. But for older enterprise software, this is not an option, so companies take the 'easy' approach of enabling compatibility mode for all sites and/or all intranet sites. A better approach when you can't edit the html of the web app is to use the group policy editor and set compatibility mode on a URL by URL basis. But many companies take the easier route. This is my theory that may explain the false positives.

If they aren't doing so, tools that aggregate browser usage should be doing additional analysis on the user agent string to get a better sense of the 'true' IE version. Perhaps using methods like ie-truth [1]. When I see trends like increased IE8 usage, it doesn't make sense to me... so I have doubts that these tools are testing the browser type accurately.

[1] https://github.com/Gavin-Paolucci-Kleinow/ie-truth

JimA2• 11 years ago

It's because Windows 2003 support ends on July 14th, 2015, and Microsoft is enforcing a browser upgrade to the latest available version (IE8) even for Custom Support Agreements that take effect after that date. So in order for any customer to continue to get 2003 OS support they have to upgrade to IE8.

On the server side, we will see some similar micro-effects as we get closer to January 1, 2016, where IE7 will go down and IE9 will go up due to 2008 having to upgrade, and IE9 will go down and IE11 will go up due to 2008 R2 having to upgrade.

mahouse• 11 years ago

How many people actually browse from server editions of Windows? I remember that I skipped XP because I could not stand the Play-Doh interface, so I went from 2000 to 2003.

Roboprog2• 11 years ago

I configured my XP machines at work to use the win 9x appearance. Of course, those machines are long dead now...

JimA2• 11 years ago

You would hope zero, but there are many Citrix or Terminal Services applications and virtual desktops that give remote users a limited (at least as much as IE6/IE8 allows) browsing experience.

JohnTHaller• 11 years ago

According to NetMarketShare (which has much better stats than statcounter which excludes most corporate users, hardly any of which use Chrome), IE8 was down to around 15% share of desktop users back in November but spiked up to 19% December through Feb. It's now trending downward again at 17% in March and 16% in April.

korvenadi• 11 years ago

Many organizations, still use IE8. IT Support in those organization either don't care to upgrade or their internal products just don't work on any new versions.

noodle• 11 years ago

IE8 is growing because people are moving off of IE5/6/7. Soon they'll have to move off IE8 as well, but I imagine that IE8 is the logical stopover since apps that only ran in older IE versions don't require a lot of work to run in IE8. Getting them up to modern browser standards, though, will take time.

Example: many many years ago I worked on a project that used XML Data Islands as an early form of AJAX-like functionality. You could fairly easily modernize it up to IE8 without major changes. But to go beyond that would require heavy rewrites.

meishern• 11 years ago

Its growing because of China and India large populations of primarily young people whoh every 6 months add tens of millions of internet users who become of age for middle class parents to buy them a computer, or in other cases scrape enough money to purchase the cheapest clone (the very machine which would have a pirated os and ie8).

Ask HN: Why is IE8 usage growing?

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