Firefox Is Not Beating Internet Explorer
By Greg L | 11 November 2008 | Blogs | 7 Comments
J’s Notes is reporting that Firefox has overtaken Microsoft Internet Explorer in the latest round of the “browser war” (such as it is these days), although I haven’t seen it. It would be nice to see MSIE fade away, as it’s a pain to support since it doesn’t support industry standards, but tries to impose it’s own standards on the rest of the industry. It’s nice to see that Microsoft hasn’t entirely dominated, but with 460 thousand page requests from MSIE compared to 135 thousand page requests for Firefox since April, it’s hard for me to say that MSIE is anything but dominant.
Let’s hope that changes in the future. Here are the raw numbers for those interested:
| no. | reqs | pages | browser |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 3351957 | 460585 | MSIE |
| 2279929 | 283456 | MSIE/7 | |
| 1058722 | 172558 | MSIE/6 | |
| 6582 | 3969 | MSIE/5 | |
| 4440 | 404 | MSIE/8 | |
| 2206 | 188 | MSIE/4 | |
| 41 | 8 | MSIE/3 | |
| 3 | 2 | MSIE/2 | |
| 2 | 548022 | 448837 | Netscape (compatible) |
| 3 | 924669 | 135117 | Firefox |
| 553043 | 86556 | Firefox/2 | |
| 349622 | 42877 | Firefox/3 | |
| 19027 | 5090 | Firefox/1 | |
| 2891 | 587 | Firefox/0 | |
| 4 | 67474 | 62997 | msnbot |
| 67474 | 62997 | msnbot/1 | |
| 5 | 46871 | 46821 | UvHarvester |
| 46871 | 46821 | UvHarvester/1 | |
| 6 | 32928 | 32927 | Gregarius |
| 32928 | 32927 | Gregarius/0 | |
| 7 | 34904 | 32815 | Mediapartners-Google |
| 8 | 51580 | 31267 | Mozilla |
| 21439 | 3454 | Mozilla/1 | |
| 35 | 8 | Mozilla/0 | |
| 9 | 159371 | 23374 | Safari |
| 125092 | 18388 | Safari/525 | |
| 16765 | 2984 | Safari/523 | |
| 13156 | 1550 | Safari/419 | |
| 2592 | 253 | Safari/312 | |
| 570 | 72 | Safari/526 | |
| 498 | 65 | Safari/416 | |
| 268 | 19 | Safari/417 | |
| 66 | 7 | Safari/412 | |
| 74 | 7 | Safari/125 | |
| 79 | 5 | Safari/85 | |
| 10 | 21452 | 21452 | Feedfetcher-Google; (+http: |
| 21452 | 21452 | Feedfetcher-Google; (+http://www | |
| 11 | 16044 | 16044 | BuzzTracker |
| 16044 | 16044 | BuzzTracker/1 | |
| 12 | 15550 | 15550 | FeedBurner |
| 15550 | 15550 | FeedBurner/1 | |
| 13 | 10579 | 9693 | Gigabot |
| 10282 | 9482 | Gigabot/3 | |
| 297 | 211 | Gigabot/1 | |
| 14 | 8465 | 8459 | Abilon |
| 15 | 9340 | 8130 | msnbot-media |
| 9340 | 8130 | msnbot-media/1 | |
| 16 | 7620 | 6880 | OpenISearch |
| 7620 | 6880 | OpenISearch/1 | |
| 17 | 6880 | 6880 | Bloglines |
| 6880 | 6880 | Bloglines/3 | |
| 18 | 6312 | 6312 | NewsGatorOnline |
| 6312 | 6312 | NewsGatorOnline/2 | |
| 19 | 4107 | 4059 | 3GSE bot (Internet Research Institute UK, http: |
| 4107 | 4059 | 3GSE bot (Internet Research Institute UK, http://iri-uk | |
| 20 | 4096 | 4038 | larbin_2.6.3 larbin2.6.3@unspecified.mail |
| 86313 | 49487 | [not listed: 760 browsers] |
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7 Comments
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I think it depends on your website content. Your blog postings are conservative which means largely older crowd who are likely to use whatever is installed on their computer. I run blog where I post my tech solutions to problems and I see Firefox 90% of the time. I think IE is still dominant as majority but it’s not longer super majority and is quite the minority on many sites.
Actually, Firefox hasn’t passed IE yet, IE has just fallen below the 50% threshold for the first time.
For the month of October
IE7: 26.9%
IE6: 20.2%
FF: 44%
Certainly at the rate of FF’s growth and IE’s decline you may see FF take over within the next 3-6 months, though that could be offset by if and when Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 8 break out.
Thing is, even as IE falls behind FF overall, the trend may not carry over to some genres of sites, political blogging being one. As the internet is used more by tech types then you’ll see their preferences take over for internet trends. But when you look at other genres tech folks don’t fiddle in all that much - let’s say political blogging for example - you find an audience that is less tech savvy and more likely to use whatever is immediately at their disposal on their machine, which means Internet Explorer.
You can see that in your own traffic:
http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s28bvblnet&r=13
Or that of others:
NLS - http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s30oister&r=13
RK - http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=s14raisingkaine&r=13
While there can be an expected trickle down over time of FF moving more and more into the market, overall we’re going to have to deal with IE for a long time to come. Hopefully Microsoft’s realizing that they have less clout than they used to and will adopt web standards that they don’t create, but something makes me doubt that.
Agree with Thumper and Jason both. It’s all about demographics - not everyone likes to tweak on their PC. As long as it works to their standards, they won’t see any reason to shift to Firefox, although I find it is vastly superior to IE.
OT, has anyone tried Chrome yet?
Rob - Chrome’s alright. I’ve had an issue that when I switch through tabs it automatically refreshes a page, making it take longer to actually multi-task than Firefox. I’ve also become quite attached to some of my FF plug-ins and the customization I’ve done with it for my smaller screened netbook. Not writing Chrome off entirely, just not sold yet.
Chrome is meh. Firefox does mostly everything I want it to so I see little reason to go with Chrome.
Take a look at the good ‘ol wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers
I use Firefox, but the smarmy answer is the one to which Thumper beat me: those figures just prove your readers are Neanderthals, Greg!