Web analytics firm OneStat.com reckons that IE's global usage share is 85.85 per cent, an increase of 2.8 per cent since July 2006. Mozilla Firefox's open source browser claims second place with a share of 11.49 per cent, a decrease of 1.44 per cent since July 2006. Apple's Safari claimed 1.61 per cent (down 0.23 per cent), and Opera held 0.69 per cent of the market, according to OneStat latest (October) figures. OneStat.com stats are drawn from visitors to websites that use its web analytics technology.
However, statistics from websites tools firm Net Applications, cited by Ars Technica, paint a contrasting picture. Its figures suggest the browser has only an 82.10 per cent share, its lowest figure for two years, while Firefox is enjoying a share of 12.46 per cent, with Safari in third berth with 3.53 per cent.
Although these figures come from September that doesn't even begin to explain the huge discrepancy between statistics from Net Applications and OnStat.com. Differing methodologies probably lie at the root of these conflicting stats.
We've been hearing all sorts of news stories about IE's market share for the past what? 6 or so years since the days when it was mainly IE vs. Netscape. Yet I don't think IE will disappear anytime soon (it's like the MP3 format yeah it's old an inferior in many ways yet it's so damned compatible). It will be around even in Windows Vista, and it will always have people using it so long as it's the default OS installed browser.
There's also so many companies that use it's ActiveX components for job applications, online training of new employees, for work schedules, for vacation schedules, etc., hence it's one of the core components of some companies to run on a daily basis.
The only thing I have against IE are it's vulnerabilities. If MS could fix those using Firefox as an example it would be a nice change from the norm of monthly updates to fix a critical security risk in the fabled browser.
If IE7 wasn't so messed up interface wise I'd probably use it. It does everything I would want it to and more(the new printer configuration is really cool). Also that thing where you click the button and it puts all your tabs on a single page is slick as hell.(firefox has an extension to do this too but its not as cool). Security issues aside if the interface was somewhat normal I could go back to it. (Honestly I don't get spyware/viruses anymore. Maybe its the router, spyware blaster, or host file but I haven't gotten any kind of spyware in a long time.)