Internet Explorer falters in the browser market, Chrome on the upswing

By on May 4, 2010 at 1:07 PM
General May 4, 2010

browser-market-share

Having long reigned as the king of the browser world, Internet Explorer continued its downward slide in April as its market share fell to a ten-year low. Market share for the Windows-based browser dropped 0.7 percent in April. to 59.95%. Despite its unhealthy losses, Internet Explorer still remains the dominant browser with double the market share of its closes competitor, Firerfox, which made a modest gain of 0.07% to finish the month at 24.59%. While IE stumbled, Chrome was on the upswing, grabbing 0.6 more percentage points to capture an overall market share of 6.73%. Apple’s Safari made a 0.07% gain at the expense of Opera which lost 0.07%. Next month’s figures should prove to be interesting as they may reveal whether the precipitous drop is the result of the EU’s mandatory browser ballot, now in full swing, or merely a bad month for Microsoft.

[via Ars Technica]

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30 Comments

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  • Roger A

    Definitely a Google user, so I use Chrome, back up to Firefox, back up to that Flock, back up to that Opera, and last resort, even after using my BlackBerry browser is I.E.

    • bob

      Iron is an anonymized version of Chrome that works just like it … another option. No reason to ever use IE or Safari either for that matter.

  • user

    Firefox is great but it’s printing support is still abysmal and it still doesn’t offer a 64-bit version.

    I don’t know what is taking them so long, seriously. Supposedly open-source effort but not anywhere near active 64-bit development. I’m seeing a fast uptake of 64-bit now with Windows 7 64-bit machines selling like crazy.

    • dangermouse

      There are 64bit versions out there. For example, this is my user agent string from my linux box, but I’m sure Windows binaries are out there also.

      Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100423 Ubuntu/10.04 (lucid) Firefox/3.6.3

  • Mrwirez

    R.I.P. Netscape Navigator. 1995′s finest..

  • cat in the hat

    chrome is like lightning. it will continue to climb, but probably not surpass IE anytime soon. too many end users that doesn’t know about the alternatives.

  • Robert Biro

    Guys a change in less than 1 tenth of 1 percent is just noise. And Chrome grew by 6 tenths of 1 percent.

    Statistically I’d say everything is status quo.

    • bob

      Imagine the productivity gains if all those IE users switched to Chrome.. literally billions of $ worth of paid employee hours pissed away using Microsoft’s crap browser… incredible really ..

    • Kirsty

      grow by 6 tenth of its own market share would be totally insignificant. but gaining 6 tenth of the overall browser market in one month is at least worth mentioning.

  • http://smokinn.com Guillaume Theoret

    I love Chrome.

    That said, click through and break down by browser versions. It makes me weep for the web that IE6 is *still* ahead of Firefox.

    • Scott

      I’m not sure if this is the same in other large corporations, but I work for a large US company. Everything they have that’s web based, runs only in IE 6. No other version of IE, Firefox, Chrome… none of that. Why? Too cheap to code their stuff for another browser. I bet if someone could dig into this, we would find the reason as to why IE has such a high % of users.

      • F4ion1

        If they would just code their software to web standards it wouldn’t be an issue. It would work in any browser. The problem is they code it specifically for IE.

      • NuShrike

        Also because you can get fired buying Microsoft. That’s the monoculture mentality that takes down companies.

      • NuShrike

        That is can’t get fired buying Microsoft. Also ActiveX of the time was the primary way to get HTML-activated programs, sorta the webOS of the day.

      • bob

        Fact is any IT manager that allows IE to be used SHOULD be fired… because the cost in wasted time and productivity is so high

  • Mitch Cumstein

    Seriously, please don’t point out meaningless changes that are statistically insignificant like the “upswing” in Chrome and change in Safari/Opera. Your bias is pretty pathetic to include the Chrome change in the title. I don’t really care who is dominant, but c’mon.

  • Faalkor

    The corp I work at is still on IE6 and Win XP but we are getting ready to roll out Office 2010 /facepalm

  • uberdog

    Google is innovating (http://www.socialnews.biz/tag/Google), Microsoft is dying on the vine. I still can’t believe 60% is an accurate number. I think much of that has to do with people using the default browser at work. I would not be surprised if firefox is the browser of choice on home pcs.

  • FriarNurgle

    What the flock?

  • ryan

    59.95% of computer users are just to dumb to know any better.

    • joe

      yep, they’re “just to dumb.”

      On another note, where can I try this Firerfox?

      • anon

        lol – firefox is awesome, so I can only assume firerfox is awesomer, & firestfox is awesomest

      • …

        bahahah. great, now the people in the library are looking at me in evil ways since i disturbed their studies.

        firestfox! awesome!

      • stinky

        Dude, just Goggel it. What a ‘tard.

      • joe

        Dude, it was a joke. From the story above:

        “Despite its unhealthy losses, Internet Explorer still remains the dominant browser with double the market share of its closes competitor, FIRERFOX, which made a modest gain of 0.07% to finish the month at 24.59%.”

  • J.P Michaels

    Would be nice to see what the chart was like 12 month ago.

  • http://(null) Joe

    am I the only asshole who doesn’t see a huge difference in any of these browsers?granted most of my browsing is done on a mobile phone. (who would have thought anyone would have ever said that 10 years ago). I don’t do anything on a pc browser other than watch porn and read the news. IE does that just as good as anything else Ive used, although I do run opera from time to time. maybe if I was a heavier user….

    Or maybe it’s people using browsers like chrome and firefox to fight the establishment. guess who is the establishment people…

    Posted from BGR Mobile (iPhone) at: Providence Rhode Island, USA

    • user

      Adblock Plus for Firefox = huge differences.

      Opera is great. Notes feature is a very useful feature (among so many others) and its speed and lean on resources (older versions moreso). I have been using it since version 3. I love Opera. Innovative company but they tend to push that innovation by changing the GUI and menus too much each time, alienating their users.

      Fanboy’s Adblock list for Opera is also useful and gives adblocking to the masses on Opera; it’s just fiddlier to implement.

      Safari is also very nice in its simplicity and support for web standards. If you are a web developer you will appreciate the alternative browsers when it comes to modern standards support.

      IE is still more prone to infection than the others. Firefox is kind of flexibility with its extremely useful add-on site.

      • user

        Firefox is kind of flexibility = king of flexibility.

        Anyway, the point being they all have strengths and weaknesses and are quite different from each other. If you are a light user of the web on the desktop, there is probably little point. If you use the web a lot, you can more appreciate the differences between the browsers and even notice how they perform with many tabs open (there are differences with performance along with usability differences, too).

  • Michael Gonzales

    I think the only reason why IE is still on top after all of these years is that most of the corporate world will not let there employees use anything else at work. Any company that has more then 5000 people in it would contribute to the numbers here and have a visible impact on the outcome. At my work they only support IE. I downloaded Firefox they were not happy with me. They said we don’t support it. I told them I don’t need support because it does not crash. At home Firefox is my main browser to. My wife uses IE. If she really cared and new what she was missing she would probably switch to.

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