Hardware 2.0

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

IE up, Firefox down

By Adrian Kingsley-Hughes | August 2, 2010, 5:15am PDT

Summary: Web stats number crunchers NetMarketShare has released market usage share data for browsers for the month of July and the data shows a gain for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and a fall for Mozilla’s Firefox.

Web stats number crunchers NetMarketShare has released market usage share data for browsers for the month of July and the data shows a gain for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and a fall for Mozilla’s Firefox.

IE is up 0.42%, to 60.74%, its second consecutive month of gains. Firefox on the other hand lost 0.9% to dip under 23%, while Google’s Chrome slipped 0.08%.

As you can imagine, Microsoft is crowing over these gains:

Last month, we saw coverage about Internet Explorer posting a worldwide gain in usage share. That encouraging news continues today with Net Applications’ release of their July usage share numbers. Net Applications reports overall Internet Explorer share grew 0.42% worldwide in July, while Firefox lost 0.90% share and Chrome dipped 0.08% in share. Most interesting is the fact that Internet Explorer 8 continues to be the fastest growing browser with a 0.98% increase worldwide in July – and now represents more than 30% of browser usage worldwide. In the US, Internet Explorer 8 picked up share for the third month in a row.

I’m not sure how much bragging rights a 0.42% increase gives Microsoft though, considering it has some 5% more to make up to put it back where it was in September 2009.

Net Applications uses data captured from the 160 million unique visitors browsing some 40,000 Web sites it monitors for clients.

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Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Web Browser, Web Browsers, Internet, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes is an internationally published technology author who has devoted over a decade to helping users get the most from technology.

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Primarily Firefox but keep IE8 around

ncironman 16th Aug 2010

Firefox is my default browser. Mainly because of "No Script" & "Ad Block" - but also many other useful add-ons! I keep IE8 for those incidental sites that require it such as my states (NC) "Employment Security Commission" required portal, and certain IRS sites like "EFTPS" where you are required to make your monthly payroll deposits now, you can no longer make the deposits at your bank. Granted, you can do it by phone, but only after pushing 10,000 buttons and often being disconnected! A real hindrance to many small "Mom & Pop" business that don't have much internet/computer experience - if any. Alternately, I have used the IE emulator Add-On in Firefox to access these sites and it usually works.

My main reason for defaulting to FireFox is the fact that "Secunia PSI" ( http://secunia.com/ ) informs me that FireFox is the only browser installed on my system (Win7 64) that is totally secure. IE8 32bit & 64bit both have vulnerabilities that are flagged as "vulnerable - no patch available"!

I may be fooling myself, but I do feel safer with FF. But am looking forward to checking out the next version of IE when it comes out!

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The reason seems simple

Michael Kelly 2nd Aug 2010

When people upgrade to Windows 7 they look for a reason to change browsers and find none. IE8 on Win7 works just fine and is much less prone to security problems than its predecessors. The reason most people switched was because IE 6 on WinXP was a nightmare. Take that reason away and they are fine with what comes on their machine.

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The only thing IE is missing

Cylon Centurion 2nd Aug 2010

@Michael Kelly
Is Adblock Plus. If they had it, I would use IE, but not dump Firefox either. We'll see what happens with IE9, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

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I'm waiting for Market Analyst to stop by

John Zern 2nd Aug 2010

and give some silly excuse as to why it's all wrong, that IE is actually down

He's that predictable. happy

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They do...

GoodThings2Life 2nd Aug 2010

@NStalnecker ... They have AdBlock for IE now... simple-adblock.com happy

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As GoodThings2Life stated, there is a solution

Webbywarehouse 2nd Aug 2010

@NStalnecker

I use it and works quite well. Not as robust but still exceedingly effective. Can be disabled per site as well.

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RE: IE up, Firefox down

dch48 9th Aug 2010

@NStalnecker The only thing I block is popups and I allow cookies on a per site basis. I don't block ads. Sometimes they're more interesting and informative than the page itself. I have tried all the alternative browsers and none lasted more than an hour on my machine because of their layouts and feature sets. Chrome didn't even last 15 minutes because it's flat out ugly and primitive looking. In particular I don't like the download interfaces, favorites management, and cookie control of any of the IE alternatives. IE8 is fantastic and IE9 is positioning itself to blow all other browsers away in every regard.

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RE: IE up, Firefox down

TxM2xTx 2nd Aug 2010

@Michael Kelly I find Google Chrome quicker than Firefox, and both leave IE far behind. If that isn't reason enough.

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RE: IE up, Firefox down

Webbywarehouse Updated - 2nd Aug 2010

@TxM2xTx

No that is not reason enough. I observed the IE is a lot slower with JS execution, and I find it annoying. But for the corporate environment, for things such as online banking where we scan to deposits (which I do for my personal banking actually), IE interfaces with hardware.

This is very important. I cannot do my scan to deposit with any other browser. That is not MS's fault, that is not a limitation with Windows, it is a limitation of the other browsers.

There is something to be said for a browser that is not updated every day as well.

I use FF and love it. but with 4.0b2 being out I cannot use any of my plugins. If I update FF from say 3.x to 3.6.x then it breaks many plugins. This is also annoying.

Which is more annoying, massive numbers of updates or a slower but more reliable browser?

I prefer to "use" FF but often it just cannot do the job.

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RE: IE up, Firefox down

MikeFM 2nd Aug 2010

@Michael Kelly - Only because us developers spend a lot of extra effort on IE support still. IE8 is still a mess. It keeps us from doing a lot of cool stuff we otherwise could offer.

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RE: IE up, Firefox down

kirovs@... 2nd Aug 2010

Statscounter has it the other way around- IE dropping, FF going up. How 40000 (NetApp) sites compare to 3 million (Statscounter)? Hmmm, wonder which would be more accurate?

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You're changing the subject

Michael Kelly Updated - 2nd Aug 2010

@kirovs

I quite agree that HOW you make your sample makes a huge difference, and if you want to make that argument then I will listen. But the when arguing sheer numbers only, the sample number Net App uses is more than adequate to get a good statistical trend.

edit: sorry I really messed this up. I meant to respond, not edit this comment.

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RE: IE up, Firefox down

kirovs@... Updated - 2nd Aug 2010

...

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RE: IE up, Firefox down

kirovs@... 2nd Aug 2010

@Michael Kelly
If you have taken statistics, perhaps you would know what a sample size of 40K vs 3M would mean.
BTW, tracking in different way? Like giving bias to what you want to see?
Anyway, we all know how good Net App is
http://my.opera.com/haavard/blog/2008/09/04/why-is-net-applications-hitslink-changing-its-browser-stats-after-publishing

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RE: IE up, Firefox down

Michael Kelly 2nd Aug 2010

@kirovs

I am actually a math major and had to take plenty of statistics to get my degree. And as such I know that the smaller sample size in this case is more than large enough to get the job done. It's not like we are arguing thousandths of a percentage point.

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RE: IE up, Firefox down

kirovs@... 2nd Aug 2010

@Michael Kelly
Michael,
You are quite wrong here.
A smaller set has a much better chance you would get a biased sampling, which is really bad in statistics. Consider this (just a made up example):
Net App consists of 50% corporate sites, where statcounter is 30%. In addition Net App is 60% US sites, where statcounter is 25. That in turn over-represents sites running IE within netapp data. Since statcounter has a larger sample size it is actually closer to the true population data.
How you create your sample is not the only important thing in statistics but it is definitely a critical step.
I do not know what is the accuracy for statcounter, but 100 fold increase in sample size most definitely reduces the the chance your sample is way off.
Given the stark difference in the trend I would say one should be very careful about the conclusions like the headline we observe here...

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RE: IE up, Firefox down

kirovs@... 2nd Aug 2010

@Michael Kelly
Agreed.
I am putting the trend in doubt because it is in stark contrast to a different study. Hence, I am looking at what is different between the two sources.
I think actually statcounter could be also biased (I am close to certain Net App is) and perhaps a meta-analysis could be beneficial (I think this is what jdakula proposes). But meta-analysis is a dirty business as well, unless you get the raw data, which I am sure we will not.

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RE: IE up, Firefox down

x I'm tc 2nd Aug 2010

@kirovs@...

Bias and sample size (n) are unrelated. In terms of which survey is better, that will depend much more on the former than on the latter, as both samples have more-than-sufficient sample to produce highly consistent data, but the larger sample could very well be more biased than the smaller. In terms of the power of the statistical analysis, that is related to the square root of n. As such, even though Statscounter has 75 fold more datum points included, it has only 8-9 fold more statistical power than NetApp. Nevertheless, this is not trivial. If both are equally unbiased, then we should give the nod to Statscounter.

Ideally, of course, we should pool the NetApp and Statscounter data together. One simple way to do this would be to compute a weighted average of their findings.

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RE: IE up, Firefox down

kirovs@... Updated - 2nd Aug 2010

@jdakula
Not exactly- if you have sample size that is ~100% of population you will of course have no bias. Naturally, unless you bias intentionally (which is of course possible), the larger the sample size, the smaller the chance is to have significant bias.
With everything else you said I agree completely.
What I am trying to communicate is some caution interpreting Net App data, especially given their past performance.
In addition other web stats point to a lack of trend (Clicky).

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RE: IE up, Firefox down

johnz49ers 2nd Aug 2010

The bottom line is that the % changes were way too small to give it a mention. There is now substantial blogging occurring over a very non substantial number.