It is a well known fact that Microsoft is losing ground in the web browsers market, specially in Europe where the laws are harder against the monopoly.
This plus the fact that the worldwide acclaimed Firefox has been capturing MS users since about 2004 when the 1.0 version was out. Back in 2005 Firefox had about 4% of the users around the world, and that number constantly increased to 13% in 2006, and 16% in 2007. Then Chrome appeared only to make the market even a bit more diverse.
As of today the statistics are mixed depending on who elaborates them, and where are they tracked. Net Applications Market Share says:
- Internet Explorer: 65.85%
- Firefox: 22.39%
- Chrome: 1.74%
Check the link for other sources.
I edited this post due to wrong statistics. Thanks Daniel for clarification.
Internet Explorer 8 has been around for a few months now and since Microsoft already has bad numbers with the 7th version, they are beginning to do weird things to get people to install IE on their machines.
Browser for the Better
Browser for the Better is a Microsoft charity campaign that states that for every download of IE8 made through the website: http://www.browserforthebetter.com/index-htm.html, 8 meals will be donated to the organization Feeding America.They were honest enough to explain below in small letters that the "8 meals" are for illustrative purposes only, and they will actually donate 1.15USD to that organization per download (because as we all know, in the US you can buy 8 meals with 1.15 bucks). Also it looks like tracking the downloads through the official MS website is an unattainable quest, because they will only donate money if you download through browserforthebetter.com, if you get IE8 from the MS page or through Windows Update, forget about the donation.
Dig up the treasure!
Now this is a funny one, they put somewhere in the internet a hidden element that is only viewable through IE8, and if you see it, you get 10.000 USD. Wouldn't it better to donate those 10 grand to Feeding America? I would have downloaded it!Lets tell some lies...
Now MS created a get-the-facts website that shows you what are the IE8's "benefits" over the other browsers. I am afraid that one day they will get serious and remove this joke, so just in case this link gets removed or obsolete, I took a screenshot of it.
Videos
Well we can't deny that MS has more money than Google and Mozilla so they can spend a bit more money on their marketing campaign, just look up in Youtube the IE8 ads and you will see pretty much the same things that I wrote here but in film format.What's next?
I can see it coming:
Come on Microsoft! You have the resources, spend some money on improving your browser, marketing can wait.
I am a senior programmer born in Argentina. I work full time as a programmer and part time as a freelance web developer.
2 comments:
Firefox is definitely not the most widely used browser across the world.
If you actually read the page you sourced the browser usage statistics from (http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp), you'd notice these stats are for their own website only, a site they say themselves is more likely to be viewed by web professionals, who are more likely to use non-IE browsers.
I hate IE as much as the next man, but don't use statistics that are fundamentally flawed - the sample size is too small and the audience is too narrow.
Hi!
Thanks for spotting the error, indeed I misread the statistics. I will correct them ASAP.
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