FireFox Burns Internet Explorer’s Market Share

Earthtimes.org ^ | 2004-12-22 | Giri. A

[holymoly]

Remember those days back in 1995, when Netscape Navigator was synonymous with internet? That was the time when Microsoft’s Internet Explorer entered the market for a head-on collision with the Netscape Navigator. That was Browser War –I. Now the battle was reignited by the fire of FireFox, internet browser of Mozilla. This is the beginning of the Browser War –II. And it appears that this time Microsoft is losing it.

Internet Explorer is rapidly losing market share. OneStat.com a company in Amsterdam had conducted a worldwide survey in late November. The survey shows that Internet Explorer's share dropped to less than 89 percent, 5 percentage points less than in May. FireFox now has almost 5 percent of the market, and it is growing.

Net surfers are opting for FireFox to Internet Explorer due to security concerns. FireFox offers much more security from worms and viruses than IE. FireFox 1.0 was released for free on the web on Nov. 9. Within just one month 10 million copies of the browser were downloaded. It is an open source software which improves with time as bug-reporter and bug-fixer community grows.

Mozilla’s President Mitchell Baker is optimistic that FireFox will grab 10 percent market share and Mozilla's many technology parts will become an increasingly important application development platform.

She says that “the product is so nice that people love it when they try it. It is innovative and has new features, it makes the Web a more enjoyable experience, it makes people more comfortable, and it's fast. It's a set of things you would want in a browser if you sat down and really thought about it.” She added that people rarely realize that the quality your web experience is determined to a large extent by the kind of browser you use. Firefox gives them that wonderful browsing enjoyment.

Gary Schare, Microsoft's director of product management for Windows on the other hand feels that people will stick with IE when they consider all the things that made them to opt for IE in the first place. He said that Microsoft is developing a new version of browser but one will have to wait till 2006. Schare said that Microsoft goes to people and gets there feedback on what they want and what they don’t want in a product. It is not so easy to satisfy absolutely everyone.

To us however somehow the diminishing share of IE from the market says something else. It says that nowadays costumers have a new way of giving a feedback. They just switch to someone else.

[JayB]

I seriously hope you are kidding, but just in case...
While I don't like communism either, this viewpoint is a little too narrow. What is wrong with people CREATING something when they see holes in existing products? Once they create something new, they can do what they wish with it. Not all ads are blocked, just the pop ups that are more annoying than anything else. By the way, a recent update of IE allows the same feature. If you don't trust it, that's fine. Don't use it. But, if you were so inclined, you could go through all the source code and make sure it was secure. If anything, this could reduce the cost of doing business, allowing MORE businesses to focus on BUSINESS, not spending money on keeping software up and secure. By the way, you can set Windows Update to automatically update your computer every week, day, month, etc... And you probably should do that if you are using Windows. WU is not tied to using IE exclusively.

Anyway, what are the reasons to switch?

Popup Blocking - although, to be fair, IE also has that feature now
Tabbed Browsing - if you haven't used it, you don't know what you are missing. Tabbed browsing allows the user to keep multiple sites open on individual tabs in your main browsing window. Why is this better than multiple windows? Well, you can switch between tabs quickly, you only have one window open (as opposed to two, three, or four), and you can actually set your homepage to a group of webpages that come up in different tabs

Speed - In some cases, Firefox is actually quicker than IE

More frequent security updates - Every user has the ability to report bugs. On top of this, there are many programmers that are working on said bugs. This usually leads to quicker bug fixes.

Security - there is an advantage to having only 10% of the market. Bug writers won't waste their time on attacking a small population. They'd rather go after IE since most people still use that.

Customizable - You can pick and choose a theme (different buttons, different layouts, etc)

Give it a shot. And keep IE around for comparison and shortcomings you may find with Firefox.

[Calpernia]

A lot of form submits are scripted with I.E. POSTDATA.

The SEND TO: doesn't work with other browsers.

[DeFault User]

Instead of clicking on a tab or a bookmark, rightclick it, then select "open in new tab."

Same thing in Opera except the choice is "open in new page".

[Tortenboxer]

IE has always been given away for free.

No, it hasn't. IE is being delivered as part of the Windows operating system, which isn't free at all. Of course you can download updates from Microsoft's website, but that is nothing but product support, which is included when you buy Windows.

Or did you just want to point out that your copy of Windows isn't legit?

[Redleg Duke]

Well, I have loaded it on my Windows XP Pro system and it is running just fine, thank you very much!

[Clypp]

Firefox = Open Source = Communism

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but doesn't communism prohibite the free flow of information? Open source = Communism?

Please tell me this is sarcasm.

[stainlessbanner]

Redmond still doesn't understand the concept of the web. Browsers and search engines (and FR) are critical utilities on the web - MS does neither well.

They don't do webservers and networking well, either...same for operating systems and directories.....

[Fatalis]

Of course you can download updates from Microsoft's website, but that is nothing but product support, which is included when you buy Windows.

Or did you just want to point out that your copy of Windows isn't legit?

Wrong on all counts.

[zeugma]

You'll need to make sure that the bookmarks.html file you set is not the default bookmark file. There will be one that contains all the default links. This is the file that is copied in whenever you create a new profile. If you're running windows, do a search for all the bookmarks.html files and open each one up in firefox until you find the right one. Once you do, go into the preferences and set the page as your homepage. NOTE: I don't think Firefox flushes out your bookmarks to disk until the program closes, so if you set a bookmark, then tell FF to reload your "homepage", it won't reflect the new change until you exit and go back in. I find this particular behavior of FF/Moz to be annoying. If you, like me, like to leave your browser up all the time, and set several bookmarks during the session, then have one of those infrequent program crashes, the bookmarks you've set won't be updated in your bookmarks file bacause the program didn't exit gracefully. Granted, that doesn't happen often, but it's a major PITA if it does.

[Tortenboxer]

The Mac version is given away for free, because it's an old one. IE 5 was released in 1998.

[zeugma]

3) Double-click on the tab bar to open a new blank tab. :-)

Hot damn! Thanks. Learn something new every day!

[Clara Lou]

No, it hasn't. IE is being delivered as part of the Windows operating system, which isn't free at all. Of course you can download updates from Microsoft's website, but that is nothing but product support, which is included when you buy Windows.
You are soooooooooo full of misinformation.

[zeugma]

I'd rather stick with IE, because that's the way to keep the computer secure

hahahahahhahahhahahhhahahahahhhahahahaha hack, cough, hahaaha, thud (sound of zeugma falling out of his chair), OW hahahahahahahahaahahahahaha

Thanks, (says zeugma as he wipes the coffee off his screen), that's the funniest thing I've read in a month.

[Tortenboxer]

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but doesn't communism prohibite the free flow of information?

Communism is about prohibition of private property, including intellectual property. Without protection of intellectual property, companies like Microsoft wouldn't exist.

[Tortenboxer]

You are soooooooooo full of misinformation.

Feel free to prove me wrong.

[Fatalis]

It was given away when IE 5 was new. IE has always been given away for free. People on older Windows systems can also download newer versions of IE for free.

[ShadowAce]

Firefox = Open Source = Communism

Let's look at this "logic," shall we?

Churches = charities = Communism.

Giving things away for free is not the American way.

Are you actually saying that charities and churches are evil? I hope not.

Blocking advertisments means you are taking a website's content without paying for it. That's stealing!

Wrong. I steal nothing. Stealing implies that what I take is no longer available to the original owner. I think we can all see the fallacy of your statement there.

We don't want to end up becoming a socialist country, do we?

No we don't. Since socialism means the state (or other central authority) controls everything, wouldn't we want more choice--more browsers than just IE?

That's why I'll never put that piece of crap on my computer.

Partial list of IE patches
Google search for Firefox patches

Looks like IE has quite a few more patches than Firefox has ever required.

Always keep in mind that anyone, including Europeans and Chinese, can mess with Firefox' open source code and put all kinds of spyware into it.

Sorry, that won't fly here. Firefox's code has more peer review that IE's ever will.

I'd rather stick with IE, because that's the way to keep the computer secure.

I think this statement speaks for itself.

Learn to think before you post. It actually makes you look a little smarter than you may be.

[rabidralph]

For all you news junkies, FireFox has this thingy that updates the links for your web sites that are compatible with FireFox's update thingy. It's like clicking on the refresh button on FR but it's on other news web sites. All the latest headlines appear in your bookmarked link and you can choose to link immediately to the story. It's a cool thingy. I think it's called Live Links thingy.

[PAR35]

, but I have not yet found a way to SEND PAGE via EMAIL from Firefox. Have to copy and paste the URL into Explorer in order to Send it. Do you have a solution?

Switch to Mozilla from Firefox. It is the same basic browser, but with a slightly more complex user interface and more features. It does have a "send page" feature that links to its integrated email client.

[stainlessbanner]

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