Firefox Finally Leapfrogs Internet Explorer 6
Firefox Finally Leapfrogs Internet Explorer 6
Posted 11/04/2009 at 9:15am
| by Paul Lilly
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In the grand scheme of things, October might go down as a month to remember. That's the month Mozilla's Firefox browser was finally able to catch up to, and surpass, Microsoft's still popular Internet Explorer 6.
Internet Explorer remains way out in front in market share, but it's becoming clear that Microsoft's lead isn't long for the world. From September to October, IE dropped 1.07 percentage points, settling in at 66.64 percent. At the same time, Firefox gained ground on its own accord by moving up 0.32 percentage points to end up at 24.07 percent. Those are significant numbers for such a short period of time. If the current pace were to keep up, it would take a little over 2 years for Firefox to completely catch up with IE, and could conceivably jump ahead by early 2012.
But it's not just about Firefox. Safari, Chrome, and Opera combined hold a little over 10 percent of the market. Throw Firefox into the fray and alternative browsers (non-IE) are being used by a third of all surfers. When looking at it from that angle, IE is on pace to give up its market share lead even before 2012, just not to a single browser.
Maybe then, Netscape can finally rest in peace.
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Slugbait
November 04, 2009 at 1:49pm
It is more correct to say that Firefox beat IE6 due to attrition, not user preference.
It wasn't until the middle of last year that IE7 was classified as "high priority" on Windows Update...previously, it was optional. Once it was reclassified, everyone doing autoupdate got IE7.
However, according to SQM there are tens of millions of computers out there still running W2K and 98 (yes, ME too). Those systems will never upgrade beyond IE6, so it makes sense why it has taken all this time for Firefox to finally eclipse IE6. We'll probably see the usage stats level out a bit for the next couple of years, but as those old Windows machines are retired, Firefox will continue slowly increasing its lead over IE6.
n0ctis
November 04, 2009 at 12:39pm
So, it hasn't actually leapfrogged IE. And even at that, it hasn't leapfrogged the current or last version, but IE 6?
*slap*
________________________________________________________________
.: vires et honos :.
mesiah
November 04, 2009 at 9:10pm
Um.... I am pretty sure you just restated the title of the article.
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