According to aggregate data collected by StatCounter on a sample exceeding 4 billion page-views per month across more than 3 million websites, Firefox 3 has surpassed Internet Explorer 7‘s European browser market share.
For the first time ever, Firefox pulled ahead by just over half a point, registering 35.05% to IE7′s 34.54% with Internet Explorer 6 lagging way behind in third place at 11.92%.
While Internet Explorer as a browser on the whole (across all its versions) is still more popular than Firefox, these statistics show that the gap is narrowing quite dramatically. In Europe at least.
This can be compared to North America where IE7 still has roughly twice as many users as Firefox 3. (Let’s not talk about Asia, where IE6 still is king.)
“The move is partly explained by a small switch from IE 7.0 usage to IE 8.0 but also by growing market share overall by Firefox 3.0,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO and founder StatCounter. “The data shows that Firefox is closing the gap and is now just 10% behind all IE versions in Europe.”
This could mean that European web consumers are becoming more web savvy, care more about security and speed and have simply opted to use a superior web browser. The knock on effect of this is much better support for web standards on the whole, making our lives as web developers much easier. It also means less pressure to support hideously out-dated browsers such as Internet Explorer 6.
Come on! It seems people are slowly starting to see the light and ditch the blue e of death. Maybe in a few years time IE will disappear completely and we’ll see a Firefox/Chrome battle on the cards, maybe with outsiders Opera or Safari picking up the underdog position – imagine that…
just goes to show no-one is invincible.. perhaps even Google could prove to be fallible in time!
Come on Alex, they know where you live, what your house looks like, what you search for, what ads you click, what applications you use and they have all this information stored to build up a behavioural picture of you so perfect then can fire targetted ads at you at exactly the moment you will want to buy someting.
Google own you.
Gotta agree with Alex here. Not even Google are invincible.
If we widen this debate out and consider the difference between open and closed systems; what is it that makes them so different? Essentially, in my opinion, it boils down to ownership of data.
In a Closed system, you purchase the right to complete privacy and IP protection. A Closed system is also known as a ‘licensing model’, which provides it’s customers the piece of mind that their data is “private”, but at a (often higher) cost. It stands to reason, therefore, that an Open system is the exact opposite; you waive a certain amount of your right to privacy and IP, but get the software for free. Price is not the only benefit here though, Open systems are also often higher quality, more feature packed, updated more frequently, can be more secure, much more interoperable with both Open and Closed systems and the vendors typically listen to their customer base much more closely.
Now if we turn back to Google, they own your data, but only while you let them! Because of the fact they control your data, you will only let them do so while you TRUST them. Furthermore, because Open systems are, by their very nature, easy to leave, a breach of trust can be devastating.
Nevertheless, I think there is undeniable trend towards Open systems … for now… The rise of free Cloud Based Software and Services/the millions of API’s out there/Google/Firefox are all prime examples.
All networks are designed for sharing, so let’s make that happen!
Good points and well made Dom – it’s very true that Google (and other open systems) do trade on trust – hopefully we won’t see the usual cock ups on this front we’ve come to expect from large companies.
In all seriousness though as you say no one is invicible, I think one of the reasons Google have done so well is that they keep this in the forefront of their collective mind and keep thinking of innovative ways to use the data they have.
Good one dom