Posted on 08/26/2005 6:31:03 PM PDT by Bush2000
Firefox's 'retreat' ensures Microsoft excels
Open source web browser Firefox has lost the momentum it has steadily gained since it was unleashed last year, according to Web analysts at Net Applications.
The online portal’s unique Hit List service reveals a slump in the Mozilla browser’s market share, falling from 8.7% to 8.1 % in July.
Coinciding with its demise, was the advance of Microsoft's IE that has gained some of the ground surrendered in June, climbing back from 86.6 % to 87.2% last month.
The revival for the dominant browser comes on the back of average monthly losses of between .5 to 1% for Redmond, as Firefox started to gain acceptance among a wider audience than just tech-savvy users.
When asked by Contractor UK whether Microsoft’s sudden gains were from the unveiling of a new IE, Net Applications said a re-launch tends revive industry interest, and could have bolstered Microsoft’s market share of the browser market.
When a company launches a new product, there is always renewed interest in what the company has produced and it would also be fair to say that this may have had an effect, said a member of the Hit List team.
Although, there have been browser issues with Windows 2000 in the news, so it is possible that again you may see a dip [in Microsoft’s market share]. Right now, people are looking for security and whenever there are issues with the security of one's system, they will use what they feel will be the most secure.”
Besides Net Applications, web developer site W3 Schools, confirms that adoption of Firefox is falling, just as IE is reaching its highest share of the market in 2005.
According to W3's data on specialist users, Microsoft IE (6) enjoyed a 67.9% share in July, improving to 68.1% in August matched against Firefox’s top share of 21% in May, which has now dropped to 19.8% for the last two months.
Observers noted that both sets of analysis concur that Microsoft’s loss, up until now, has been Firefox’s gain, but over the last month roles have reversed.
Security fears concerning Mozilla and its browser product have recently emerged, coinciding with Microsoft’s high-profile trumpeting of its new safer browser product (IE 7), complete with glossy logo.
Experts at Net Applications said they were surprised at Firefox’s sudden retreat, saying they expected a slow down before any decline.
Yet they told CUK: “Whenever there may be problems with security, there always is a decline with users changing browsers.”
Data from the Web analytics company is based on 40,000 users, gleaned from their global internet operations, prompting some commentators to question the so-called ‘global decline’ in the Firefox market share.
The Counter.com reportedly finds that between June and July, Firefox actually increased its share by two points, and overtook IE5 for the first time ever.
The Web Standard Project suggests webmasters should treat data from web analysis providers with caution, before rushing to make service changes.
So what can we conclude?” asks the WSP, a grass roots project fighting for open access to web technologies.
“Not much: Mozilla-based browsers are probably used by just under 10% of the web audience and their share is growing slowly. IE5.x is probably used by somewhat less than that and its share is declining slowly. IE6 is roughly holding steady.”
Meanwhile, Spread Firefox, which measures actual download rates of the browser, reports that it took just one month for the Mozilla Foundation’s showpiece to reach 80 million downloads in August – from its July total of 70 million.
At the time of writing, Firefox had been downloaded 80701444 times, meaning adoption rates of over 10m occurred one month after Net Applications says Firefox bolted in light of the dominant IE.
ROFL, the one (1) link you guys try to put up blows up in your face. AGAIN.
Only 4 tabs? If I have less than 10 open at a time, it's a miracle.
The one in which MS says that iis is their webserver?
Because I have read several of the articles I have posted tying the DNC to open source, while obviously you haven't. You're so far behind in this discussion it's amazing you'd continue to persue it and be even further exposed as a useful idiot.
DEMZILLA? Sounds just like Mozilla, obviously. Can't wait to hear your excuse for that one. Some other time. I've had enough laughs for tonight.
what excuse, Microsoft makes communism.org possible..
IE blows.
We will bury you.
In otherwords the dems went out and foud a provider hwo happened to serve using LAMP and made a joke out of the name..
So communism.org is hosted on IIS and FreeRepublic is hosted on Linux... hmmm
Quoth Bush2000:
As long as you guys keep handing over shovelware to the ChiComs for free -- and thus alleviating them of any need to spend hard currency on infrastructure and instead prop up their military -- you're Commie sympathizers...
Quick, someone tell JimRob he's a gawddamn commie sympathizer. LOL!
I knew it was worth staying up for. The old "joke" excuse! The only thing that's a "joke" are these excuses.
So communism.org is hosted on IIS and FreeRepublic is hosted on Linux...
But only one seems to publicly endorse an operating system as consistent with its beliefs, and that is communism.org endorsing Linux as a perfect example of it's philosophy. Time for you to deal with it, and quit the shifty excuses.
Better get on the horn to some more of your comrades then, according to the article your numbers are declining. All you boys have done to push this crap on us, and now this. Must hurt, to be stuck over on that side and now left with almost nothing to show for it.
The machine is connected to the net with 802.11b wireless that connects to my router and DSL line. I have the original disks and keys for the install. After the 5th rebuild of the computer, the activation over the net stopped working. I had to call support and have them dictate a string to initiate the activation. Every crash/rebuild since that time has required the call to MS support. My office laptop and the other XP Home have never needed a rebuild, so it hasn't been an issue.
BTW is MS office running on mac a Microsoft Office Suite or Apple?
Most of which Firefox had over a year ago. As for security, well, given how tightly woven IE is into Microsoft's operating systems (try getting an OS update without it), it's now too critical to be used for daily browsing. And of course, its security sins are considerable versus some of the minor things I've seen in Firefox.
I started out on NCSA Mosaic (that was after being around the Internet for about a decade), then MCC/Netscape. Switched to IE at version 3, then switched to Mozilla/Firefox about three years ago. Why would I want to switch back? Firefox does everything IE does -- except talk to Microsoft websites for their OS updates.
Tabbed browsing is great when you have a lot of regular search queries that you do on a regular basis, for eBay or Google or whatever. It's also dramatically more memory efficient -- I have some preset bookmark folders that instantly create more than 30 tabs. Can't do that to IE without crashing or thrashing.
Not all Open Software is "there yet", but Firefox and Thunderbird definately are.
Actually, I'm in a hotel room in Maui, just got out of the shower after my run, and my wife of many years is snoozing on the bed in front of me. Not that it's any of your business.
I've worked on the Internet, specifically protocols (my dissertation topic), for 21 years now, and networks for about a decade before that. And, for all that time, the operating system of professional use has been Unix, and I go way back to V6, and made the East Coast - West Coast transition in 1986 to working with Stanford's network-hacked version of BSD. I spent several sleepless days cleaning up after the Morris Worm, and later worked in the group that produced the first Internet firewall as well as what we now call VPNs. I'd tell you about the businesses I've founded and now consult with, but somehow I get the drift that you are unable to see beyond the "communist martyr" label. Shoes for industry, Compadre?
Anyone who trusts the security of code which he cannot see, or an operating system that was never designed for source-level control, is a fool.
You have some serious issues, son, if you are reinstalling Windows five times on the same machine and are not a software developer.
I built a machine with a defective SATA cable and lost the installation several times. If you don't swap motherboards or hard drives, the activations can be done any number oof times.
Can you (or anybody) explain the use of tabs versus just having more than one broswer open? In effect, having, e.g., five IE browsers open shows "tabs" representing each browser in IE6, although this is not true "tabs" but just looks like a tab when the browser is minimized.
What is a "tab", and what advantage is there to "tabs" in IE7 vs 6? I assume there is just one open browser with "tabs" but I do not see the difference.
A completely unscientific review of hits at my sites show IE with a 69% share, FF/Moz/Netscape gets a 24% share.
It basically just saves space on the toolbar.
In Mozilla you can even bookmark a group of tabs. For example when you click to open FR you could have separate tabs for "Latest Comment", "Latest Articles" and "My Comments" open all at once.
I also have a colleague who is totally stuck in the 60's. Problem is, he was born in the early 70's.
As we get older, it's sometimes hard to let go of things in our lives that become obsolete.
Hilarious, considering the benchmarks posted above show IE and Opera smoking Firefox on performance. But don't let those pesky little things known as facts get in the way of you pushing it on us.
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