Internet Explorer has been hemorrhaging users at almost 1% per month for the last 5 months, according to a recent report from the web analytics company Net Applications. While IE still retains 62.7% of the browser market, projections indicate it could shrivel to under 50% by May. This is a new low for IE, which once held 95% of the market.
Google’s Chrome, on the other hand, is gathering users quickly. In just 18 months since launch, Chrome is now the third most popular browser behind Internet Explorer and Firefox. At 4.63% of the market, Chrome beat out Apple’s Safari, which garnered only 4.46%.
In December, Chrome blew past projections with an increase of .7%, partially fueled by the release of beta editions for Linux and Mac.
Coming in at number four, Safari still gained marginally in December, as did last place Opera.
Probably most troubling for the folks in Redmond is the quickening pace of Internet Explorer’s decline. In the first six months of 2009 IE lost an average of .36% market share, but the last six months ramped up to an average of .94%. Worse, the increased decline in market share comes despite the release of IE 8, which was launched in March.
Net Applications, who compiled this data, monitors traffic to over 40,000 websites and works with a sample size of over 160 million users each month.
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Comments
For most of the Internet's history, browser selection wasn't an option after Microsoft tied IE to Windows- and thus died just about the only choice available at the time: Netsacpe Navigator. Now that consumers understand that they do not have to use the default browser when they buy a computer, it makes sense to them to gain control over their browsing experience and use something better.
Additionally, it is well known that IE is a magnet for viruses and malware, having a huge number of exploitable vulnerabilities surpassing all other browsers... and no marketing budget can hide that fact.
Al...get your facts straight buddy. Apparenty someone's marketing budget is working well on you. Internet Explorer 8 catches almost twice as much malware than the competition. That's "less secure?" Microsoft's only real issue is that the do not advertise at all and the rest of the world believes whatever advertisement they see. If interested, NSSlabs has some real data to chew on in regards to browser security which will likely have you quite surprised. See their site for details.
NSSlabs research was sponsored by Microsoft, to try to revert the general idea that IE is the biggest entry door for viruses and malware. It is, indeed. IE is not only less secure, it is dozens of times slower than any other browser. Microsoft should drop the IE bloat and try to follow Chrome's simplicity.
Chrome, Firefox, Opera and Safari are all better options than IE in terms of speed, security and stability. For now, IE8 is two generations behind the others.
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