IE losing market share, just going to get worse

Ripcord

Ripcord

Senior Lurker
A look at Google's zeitgeist (http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html) gives a bit of a graphical taste for the news at the beginning of the month - that all the security bugs and other problems are finally convincing the 90%+ of web browser users that there might be a more worthwhile browser available than Windows Internet Explorer.

Supposedly the most recent round of viruses and newsworthy items like CERT's (US Computer Emergency Response Team) recommendation to consider other non-IE browsers has triggered a spike of downloads of Mozilla (doubling of the usual download rate). Other browser vendors, like Opera, have been reporting similar spikes.

The zeitgeist graph shows the first downward movement in the usage of Internet Explorer in more than three years, and only reflects through the end of June (most of the Mozilla download growth has occurred in July). Users are starting to ditch IE en mass.

Which is a good thing. Not because other browsers are necessarily more secure than Internet Explorer (in general most are), or that they are better than IE (Opera and Mozilla definitely clean IE's clock), but because it's just not healthy for one company to so totally dominate the web browsing business.

After years of users, corporations, and web site designers forgetting that anything besides IE existed, and Microsoft forgetting that IE DOES exist (except bug fixes IE development nearly stopped for almost two years), the masses are starting to realize that there are other products out there, and they're actually quite good. And this can only be a good thing.

I'm really hoping this pace continues. We might start seeing some real competition in the browser space again, and this sort of thing is INCREDIBLY good for Apple (and other non-MS platforms). At this point the ONLY negative side of web browsing on OS X at the moment is one thing: Site Compatibility. If market share of non-IE browsers grows to something substantial, like 10% or more (dare I say it, 20%?), web site designers will sit up, take notice, and build websites that WORK.

...Which is incredibly good for the browsing experience on OS X, Linux, Solaris, etc., and in both the long and short run, good for the browsing experience on Windows as well.
 
...But shhhh, don't tell Microsoft. I'd like to see browser share climb pretty significantly before the buzz grows to the point where they start playing anti-competitive games again. Since they've been so dominantly on top they've actually been a little docile lately.

XP SP2 (due in September at this point) will make things interesting as well (first new features in IE in a while, like popup blocking!), and who knows what's coming up in Longhorn. However, at the moment the alternative browsers have quite a distinct technological, feature, and security lead over IE, and it would be good to see this leveraged to its fullest before Microsoft makes any moves. Microsoft's excellent at only making their products "good enough" to get by, then using anti-competitive practices to dominate.

...Not that I'm expressly anti-Microsoft, I'd just feel one heck of a lot more comfortable if they only controlled, say, 60% of the market. 90-95% just isn't healthy.
 
I wonder if Apple would ever port Safari to Windows. I doubt it, but you never know.
I'm sure IE, however, is eventually destined to go the way of the moa, the wooly mammoth, Norton Utilities and Netscape Navigator.
 
Randman said:
I wonder if Apple would ever port Safari to Windows. I doubt it, but you never know.
I'm sure IE, however, is eventually destined to go the way of the moa, the wooly mammoth, Norton Utilities and Netscape Navigator.
Click to expand...
IE, as we know it, is planned to be eliminated by Microsoft. It is no longer being developed on the Mac. On Windows, it will be folded into the GUI.
 
Any of you have XP? goto start, programs, MSN Explorer. that is microsofts vision for the future.
 
Randman said:
I wonder if Apple would ever port Safari to Windows. I doubt it, but you never know.
Click to expand...
read somewhere that iTunes has core parts of the KHTML engine that Safari uses also present in the Windows version of iTunes.

So, that's definitely a step closer to Safari on the PC than originally thought.

Now if it'll be done 100%, I'd like hope so.
 
I doubt Safari wil be ported, especially given how Safari-like FireFox is.

I am ecstatic that IE dominance is waning. Yes, because I hate M$ and want them to die a slow death, but mostly because, as a developer, their current lack of compliance with standards is utterly horrible. Across the board.

It is so frustrating knowing that your fancy CSS programming is wasted because no version of IE even supports it properly. And since IE is so dominant, you're just screwed. Thanks a lot a-holes. And here's a concept, how about native, built-in support for PNGs without pulling some idiotic style sheet or programmatic trick?

As other [compliant] browsers gain popularity and M$ takes their sweet time with Longhorn, it will only entrench the compliance model. The Longhorn IE will HAVE to be compliant or risk the embarassment of not working with the majority of well-designed sites.

In the end it won't matter, because M$ will just bully their way back to the top anyway. Hate to be so pessimistic.

Having said that, now's our chance. There will be no bigger window of opurtunity to bring M$ into a realistic competitive arena. With their longhorn delay, XP essentially frozen in time, alternate browser increase, Linux battle and Mac/Apple progressing beautifully, NOW is the time. And that means all of us developers writing standards-compliant code and using standards-compliant tools and creating standards-compliant media. So far, M$ does none of the above.
 
Randman said:
I wonder if Apple would ever port Safari to Windows. I doubt it, but you never know.
I'm sure IE, however, is eventually destined to go the way of the moa, the wooly mammoth, Norton Utilities and Netscape Navigator.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what reason Safari would be ported to Windows. It doesn't directly generate them revenue (by charging for the programs or like iTunes acting as a gateway to the music store). It doesn't indirectly generate them revenue either (like Quicktime), and doesn't make it more likely that they will buy products (like the iPod).

The only possible reason I can think of is that by releasing Safari for Windows they hope to expand their browser market share and therefore generate some kind of leverage for themselves. But this is silly, since what leverage exactly are they going to have? Safari was designed because Apple realized they needed a STRONG web browser for the OS X platform, because they wanted to innovate in a way that made people more likely to buy OS X and Mac platform, and because WebCore is just a really good set of libraries to be able to offer developers.

At least in the forseeable future there is no reason for Apple to invest money in Safari for Windows. And forget the "iTunes has already partially ported Safari" thought - the head Safari developer keeps pointing out in his public blog, the browser in iTunes has NOTHING to do with webcore or Safari.
 
just an update. itunes does not use khtml. dave hyatt said so himself in his blog. i beleive it uses a gzipped xml file for the layout.
 
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