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We continue to see momentum for Internet Explorer 8 worldwide with the share numbers released today. Net Applications’ August browser usage share figures confirm that as IE8 moves into its 18th month, it remains the fastest growing browser worldwide. Internet Explorer 8 grew 1.17% to account for 32.04% of usage share worldwide – more than three times that of Chrome’s 0.36% share growth. Firefox remained largely flat for August with a slight gain of 0.02% worldwide.
An additional piece of encouraging news was the further drop of Internet Explorer 6, particularly in developed markets. As Net Applications is reporting that IE6 share is now at its lowest point ever, I thought it would be a good time to address how we think about the aging browser. As we have said in the past, one of our main missions is to get people off IE6 as fast as humanly possible. And while IE6 was a great browser for its time, we all need the web to move forward. First, this is good for developers who we want to be able to write the same markup across their sites. It’s good for consumers who should have the protections afforded by a modern browser. Finally, it’s good for the web, particularly as we look ahead to IE9 and begin to see what’s possible.
The news today of August market share that Internet Explorer 6 is at or below 5% in many developed markets is overall goodness.
While there is still a significant number of Internet Explorer 6 users who have not upgraded, most of these users are concentrated in developing or emerging markets as well as enterprises with substantial application dependencies that take time to migrate. Overall, August data shows a decline of Internet Explorer 6 usage of 0.87% to 16.99% worldwide, which is about half the market share Internet Explorer 8 has today. Break that down further and you see that the share of IE6 is at 5.3% in the United States and less than 5% in Europe – a good sign that many users and developers are ready to embrace a modern browser. As IE6 share drops (and IE7 too), we expect a dip in worldwide IE share. For August, IE share worldwide decreased 0.34% to 60.40% worldwide, but in a world of customer choice we are pleased that people are continuing to choose Internet Explorer 8 three times more often than other browsers when they make that move.
Over the past several months, you have seen us talk about some of the ways we’re helping customers get off IE6 and onto IE8 and soon IE9, coming in beta in just a few weeks. From our work with enterprise customers, to consumer campaigns like adios IE6 and spoiled milk, to joining the fun at the IE6 Funeral - these efforts will continue.
Today, people on the web are demanding an even more beautiful web experience. The Internet Explorer 9 Platform Previews continue to generate great buzz among developers and browser enthusiasts, and we have now registered over 2.5 million downloads and 20 million page views to the IE Test Drive Site, our developer site where we show new capabilities in HTML5 and Internet Explorer 9. We are looking forward to even more great things with the release of IE9 Beta this month.
Ryan Gavin Senior Director, Internet Explorer Business and Marketing
unless ie9 is actually good, im sticking to chrome.
how can you be proud of IE's market share when you bundle it with every Windows PC and most idiots use it.
Ok. There are some really good add-ons in FireFox. If you guys give those, not only me but the whole lab i am working with will change our default browser. We need Script Block, a good Add-Block (not the crappy one now with IE8), better or similar to firebug, greasemonkey etc...
I use IE8, but past couple of weeks FireFox looks more impressive. I dono why. Is it because IE8 takes more time to crunch the pages with lot of flash ad's? Thats why I use script block to block all the ad's. So my page loads very fast in FF. I tried my best to find an equivalent in IE8 but no good.
One more note.
For future softwares, don't take this long to release a product. Not a good way to be successful. Bugs are Bugs and they are going to be there even if you release after a decade. So just keep it rolling and fixing.
@eboy
You can use Simple Adblock for IE for blocking ads. It uses the same filters as AdBlock Plus.
http://www.simple-adblock.com
I've said it before and I'll say it again... I would still use IE8 as my primary browser (I use it but not full time), except I really dislike the way IE8 handles RSS feeds, and I don't like having them in my email clients.
The best handling is a combination of Firefox's Live Bookmarks with the Feed Sidebar addon by Christopher Finke. If you guys implemented a mechanism like that, I'd switch back in a heartbeat, because I already have Simple AdBlock and a combination of Live Sync and Xmarks for Favorites syncing.
For now, I use IE8 for pages that Firefox just doesn't like. I will agree with eboy on one point... I wish you guys would release more significant IE updates quicker. I'd much rather install "Standards Compliance Update for September 2010" that incrementally brings IE into better standards compliance every month than wait 2-3 years for it. Likewise, a service pack to bring all those updates into a unified installer, and full version for the major enhancements like UI changes, feature additions, etc.
@cjschris There was a similar comment on last month's share results questioning whether users are making an active choice about Internet Explorer or not. Here's how I responded :
We've certainly looked at shipping Windows without Internet Explorer as part of our recent work to comply with European competition law : blogs.technet.com/.../working-to-fulfill-our-legal-obligations-in-europe-for-windows-7.aspx
In the end, it isn't in the interests of consumers to have an operating system without a browser so to comply with European competition law, we instead offer users the Browser Choice Screen giving them a choice of the 12 most popular browsers by market share, with the top 5 browsers presented in a random order : blogs.technet.com/.../working-to-fulfill-our-legal-obligations-in-europe-for-windows-7.aspx
It's interesting that when users were presented with a choice of browsers in the EU, that IE share in Europe actually grew in June : windowsteamblog.com/.../net-applications-share-update-for-june.aspx
I've seen a couple of people suggest that IE8 share is purely a result of adoption of Windows 7. Keep in mind that Windows 7 was launched October 2009. Go take a look at Net Applications data for September 2009 (www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx) and you might be surprised to find how many people were using Internet Explorer 8 before we launched Windows 7.
And BTW ... IE9 is great! Have you checked out the Platform Preview at www.ietestdrive.com ? You can see our new rendering engine in action. The Beta including UI is coming 9/15.
@eboy I'd be interested to learn what your need is for "Script Block". When I talk to people about script blocking technologies, they're using it as a security solution. The threat landscape is incredibly complex but it's worth understanding so you can make informed decisions about your safety online. Our data suggests (www.microsoft.com/.../details.aspx) you're far more likely to encounter a social engineeiring (Phishing or Malware) based attack than you are a script based attack. Internet Explorer 8 does significantly better at social engineering attacks than our competittors (windowsteamblog.com/.../internet-explorer-8-smartscreen-174-filter-reaches-important-milestone.aspx). For script based attacks, IE8 helps protect against the most common attack vector - a Cross-site Scripting Type-1 Reflection attack. The XSS filter is a targeted protection against a real threat on the internet. Hopefully there's some good learning resources for you here.
I take a philosophical point of view on ad-blocking technologies. We all enjoy content on the web being free. Content is usually free because it's supported by advertising so by blocking adverts you're potentially putting the web on a path to charge for content. I'm happy to "pay the price" of seeing and mostly ignoring ads on the web so that the content I love remains free. You shouldn't need to use an add-on to make the web performant, your browser should be able to deal with pages - including ads - without slowing down. We've done a lot of work in IE9 to accelerate the entire rendering pipeline - not just focusing on limited benchmarks. You can see some examples of this work using the Internet Explorer Platform Preview over at www.ietestdrive.com.
While I'm talking about the Platform Preview, we certainly heard developer feedback loud and clear that they wanted more visibility into what was happening in the IE developer platform. The Internet Explorer Platform Preview is addressing that feedback with updates every 8 weeks.
James
Looking forward to the IE9 Beta and its hopefully refreshed UI. Somewhat related, I'm enjoying syncing favorites between my desktop and convertible netbook (Lenovo S10-3T) using Live Sync "Beta". I hope this syncing is extended to Windows Phone 7.
@GoodThings2L
As I mentioned in my reply to @eboy the Internet Explorer Platform Preview (www.ietestdrive.com) is our vehicle to give more visibility to developers into what's coming in Internet Explorer. I hear what you're saying about updating the actual browser on a more frequent schedule. There are some practicalities that we have to deal with at ~60% share that, for example, don't affect Chrome at 10% share. I think our Platform Preview model is a good balance of giving visibility to developers while maintaining compatibility with the web for our customers.
"adios IE6", "the IE6 Funeral".... Haha haha ha
Well, IE8 is a nice browser indeed, and I'm eagger for IE9 beta on September the 15th :)
Oh, as JohnCz said, enjoying syncing my favorites through my devices.
@cjschris
And obviously you are "da best" because you can install a browser... who is the idiot now?
Doesn't matter as XP users will eventually switch to browsers whose latest versions are available on their platform. Firefox 4 for example which doesn't abandon 60% of Windows users.
@pezzonovante @7flavor
It's good to see healthy debate on operating system support for Internet Explorer 9,. It's a topic I'm considering a future post on.
The last two commens strayed a little too far into name calling so I deleted them. Feel free to continue the debate without the name calling.
Thanks
Thanks James.
I would like to make a note regarding Script Block. There are billions are pages on web and not everyone of them are properly created. Some of them are having bad scripts that makes the browser hang/crash. I use script block to block those badly scripted pages. Thanks for the advice on Advertisements. 1 or 2 ad's fine are fine for a page, but it should not be something like search you content between flashy ad's.
I have tried all the previews of IE9 (yes i'm crazy fan of MS products) and quite impressive. I am now waiting for Sep 15.
So far to my observation, people with limited knowledge on computer use IE. Someone with a little knowledge is switching to other browsers. People working on web development use IE just to test for the compatibility in IE. So i will say more than 80% of IE users are someone who are novice computer users. I am working in a robotics lab and we have people with different computer skills. Every one try to avoid their mouse pointer near IE. Out of curiosity I asked why and the answer is "It takes long time to start".
I use my browser in Private mode with all add-on and plug-ins turned off. So my IE8 loads fast. But I cannot tell them to do that. Even people from other labs are using different browser and the reason they give is start up and they show how long it takes IE8 compared to other browser in start up.
IE 9 is cool, but my lab will not upgrade till MS pulls the plug for XP. So just disable IE8's plugin's and addons at start, then gradually load them after the browser is started. Because you have time till the users types in the address and hits the return key.
I am happy that people are reading my comments and yes Microsoft is hearing the people now. I have worked in web development companies too. Trust me guys, everyone uses FF for their cool tools and IE is not the default browser for people even with some mediocre knowledge.
"Internet Explorer 8 grew 1.17% to account for 32.04% of usage share worldwide – more than three times that of Chrome’s 0.36% share growth."
This is bullocks. If I apply the filters myself it shows IE8 grew from 26.87 to 27.90, which is a growth of 1.03% The site also shows that Chrome grew from 6.48% to 7.52% a growth of 1.04%
Also please take in to consideration that you are comparing 1 version against an entire browser. Overall IE dropped 0.37%
Stop trying to manipulate the facts
Sorry Guys , I think IE is the main area where Microsoft is lacking the most.
I am a big fan of Microsoft products by IE is a exception.
I love the performance of Chrome.
I hope u ppl make IE9 better in terms of performance.
People,
There are options to tweak FireFox. I know IE won't allow. But just look at the link for making FireFox more faster
www.forevergeek.com/.../make_firefox_faster
Why not MS implement this in IE? if not the same, something similar. Cumon guys. This is not about who made it first. It is about who makes better. I'll be happy if MS has some sort of tweaking tool for IE.
I guess it's just that people trust their first impressions, which was IE. But I hope the IE team will consider revising IE8 at least, since us XP users will be stuck with that browser permanently. There are still some problems that I was hoping would be taken care of in IE9, but since XP is not supported............
@mstrelan
mstrelan, My name is Roger Capriotti, and I work on the Internet Explorer Product Management team. We’re definitely not interested in manipulating usage share data. We’re just reporting what Net Apps had published this month. Based on your post, there’s a few things you missed in the Net Applications report.
The September 1st NetMarketShare press release (www.netmarketshare.com/report.aspx) states that “In August, Internet Explorer 8 gained 1.17% to 32.04%.” The discrepancy you see is because you are looking at IE8 only share in the Net Apps browser version view. If you look further down their list, you will also see IE8 Compatibility View and several editions of third-party licensees of IE8 that should be added together. That’s how Net Apps comes to the number of 32.04% in their press release that we have quoted. Net Applications FAQ section (www.netmarketshare.com/faq.aspx) explains how they report their data. Take a look at the question “What browser versions does Net Market Share track and report?” (www.netmarketshare.com/faq.aspx)
As for your comment ”Chrome grew from 6.48% to 7.52% a growth of 1.04%” - I’d be interested in understanding where you saw the 6.48%. NetMarketShare data (www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx) shows 7.16% from Chrome in July, and 7.52% in August. That’s 0.36% growth according to our math.
Finally, it is true that the comparison we are making is between one version of IE (IE8) and all of Chrome. But if we were to compare against a single shipping version of Chrome – say Chrome 5.0 which was the mainline version of Chrome in August, you’d see even faster growth rates of IE8 versus Chrome 5.0. Chrome 5.0 share worldwide was 6.77% in August versus 6.48% in July. That’s 0.29% growth – only one-fourth of IE8 growth versus the one-third we noted when you compare all of Chrome to IE8. If you were to look at Chrome 6.0, it’s 0.39% in August versus 0.28% in July. As a matter of fact, the entire Chrome 6.0 user base in August is only one-third of IE8’s one month growth for August.
Because we’ve been working hard to move people off of earlier versions of IE to IE8, we spend much of our time looking at IE8 growth rates versus overall IE share (which includes IE6 and IE7).
Thanks for your comment. I hope this clears up a few things for you.
@rogercap
Thanks for clarifying - I did not see that there are five versions of the same browser reported. And it was also my mistake about Chrome - it seems as though I was looking at Chrome 5 for July vs Chrome overall for August. Whoops. I do applaud that more and more people are switching to IE8 since IE6 and IE7 are so outdated. I also applaud Chrome for old versions becoming largely irrelevant within 1-3 months of a new release. I am looking forward to IE9 but also hoping that Microsoft won't allow old versions to hang around for years once IE10, IE11 etc come out.