Firefox May Soon Overtake IE In Europe 290
peterkern writes "The July browser market share reports are somewhat inconsistent, but if we believe StatCounter, then it looks like Firefox will be overtaking Microsoft IE's market share next month. The two browsers are both within 1 point of 40% market share, IE above and Firefox below. Europeans are more crazy about Firefox than Americans: In Germany, Firefox has a 61% market share, while IE has only 25%. Google Chrome is, according to StatCounter, now above 10%. ConceivablyTech has more details, including market share data from both StatCounter and Net Applications (which as of this month is limiting its free data)."
pretty much over the browser wars (Score:5, Insightful)
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I love it here in Europe, just the other day a colleague of mine surprised me by wanting to install Ubuntu.
People here are less resistant to change and have a tiny bit more of patience to adapt to new things. They do not equate "new/unknown" with "crap" as other countries do.
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Holland has long been a Microsoft beacon in Europe, and I personally dislike it a lot because the main reason people here use Windows for solutions is because "everyone uses it".
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I love it here in Europe, just the other day a colleague of mine surprised me by wanting to install Ubuntu.
People here are less resistant to change and have a tiny bit more of patience to adapt to new things. They do not equate "new/unknown" with "crap" as other countries do.
Europe is not a country, yet.
About your sig: Ubuntu actually means "I can't be bothered to configure Debian". Messing with Slackware was fun, but since I was going to let apt do all the hard work for me, Ubuntu seemed like the logical next step.
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I feel the need to point out that this is mostly spin. The Chinese discovered America about 3500 years ago, the Vikings did it about 1200 years ago, the English, the French, and the Italians all had explorers reach America before the Columbus. All in all, America was "discovered" about 20 times before Columbus set sail in 1492... it's just that the Spanish were better at publicity.
It's not even considered debated in archaeological circles... it's considered a fact that America was discovered *long* before C
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Yeah but that is irrelevant to his point. The Spanish were the ones that brought back all the gold and became mega-rich from it.
They also squandered it all and are now one of the poorest countries in Europe. So let that be a lesson!
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Yes earlier.
We call them the Clovis Culture and based on their point making they were most likely related to the Soultrean industry, so European. Mitochondrial DNA that 'native' Americans share with southern Europeans supports that. So pre-Spain Spainards set foot in the Americas, then left or were killed off or the like, then came back and rediscovered the place. But there were probably some pre-Clovis cultures, so maybe not.
Not such a good news (Score:2)
Re:Not such a good news (Score:4, Insightful)
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I don't give a fuck. I use adblock, of course, so the Internet looks completely different to me than it looks for everyone else.
I hate ads and would be perfectly happy without them. I'm not in the business of providing revenue for websites. If there were more of me the current business model would disappear, but not the Internet. They would just find another business model.
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Sites must find ways to profit. The mission of a browser (or any app) is providing the best user experience, and ad block is part of this. You cannot stop technology development and adoption just because some guys don't know how to make money.
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Piss on them. I don't use an adblocker, I place em in my hosts file from my proxy server app called Cookie Cop. If they try to set a cookie and I don't need em, then I look into what site was trying to do that. If it's an advert or other garbage like intelitext, I block em permanently because I have no use for the idjits.
Take a walk, Ballmer (Score:5, Insightful)
It's getting harder and harder for Steve Ballmer to point to his resume and be able to justify his work over the past decade. While Microsoft has pushed out upgrades to all its software, the big picture is gloomy enough to make him sweat at upcoming board meetings: total loss to the ipod in the music market, total catastrophe in Microsoft's internally-competing music formats and platforms (Plays for Sure?), impending catastrophe in smart phones as RIM, Apple, and now Android eat his lunch, and growing irrelevance of desktop office software. Yes, they skirted disaster with Vista and pushed out Windows 7 which is generally well liked. But Microsoft is slipping behind in key growth markets and lack of vision and leadership is a big part of that.
If I were on the Board, I'd be telling Ballmer to go work on his golf game, and bring in new leadership. Microsoft has lots of talented developers and engineers. But upper management is sinking the ship.
Re:Take a walk, Ballmer (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Take a walk, Ballmer (Score:5, Insightful)
And that is going to get worse (Score:5, Informative)
If Oracle keeps acting like retards. I work for an engineering college at a university. If you know anything about engineering they it'll come as no surprise we are a Solaris and Windows shop. Solaris has a heavy legacy, it was doing high end work before other things could, and even today there are products that are Solaris only (though they could be ported to other OSes, they just aren't). While I won't say Solaris is problem free, I see the value in it. There is a difference between a real enterprise UNIX and Linux, loathe though Linux heads might be to admit it.
However we are currently in the process of getting rid of as much of it as we can. We are cutting it down to 4 essential servers and that number will likely go down further, perhaps to just one. Why? Because Oracle has decided to be complete fucks when it comes to licensing. So you already pay heavy maintenance on these SPARC systems. We could buy a new x86 server per year for the cost of maintenance on most of these things. Now that's not enough, they want to charge for Solaris patches, and they want to charge a lot. Oh, and should you ever stop paying they not only do you no longer get patches you are required, and I'm not making this up, to UNINSTALL all patches you've installed.
That's right, they are extorting you: You have to pay a yearly per server fee, or have a vulnerable system.
Well fuck that. We are getting rid of that shit post haste. Going to be Windows and Linux for as much as we can do. In the end I expect we'll need a single SPARC system to run the few apps that run on nothing else but that's it.
Guess what? If Oracle continues strategies like that with regards to other products, you'll find that MS will just gain more marketshare.
Mod parent up please (Score:2, Interesting)
Oracle is seriously screiny us around as well.
I hate to say this but DB2 looks more attractive from a pricing point of view every day.
That coupled with the insance price increases in WebLogic and Solaris, makes us seriously consider not buying anything more from Oracle/BEA/Sun.
We are already moving many critical systems to Linux on X86-64 Blades (Currently HP but maybe IBM in the future).
Oracle don't give a toss. All they want is more and more every month.
And MSSQL is a real contender too (Score:3, Interesting)
You can get some amazingly high end MSSQL servers these days. I've never had occasion but I do have a couple friend who work at places that do. You can get an HP Superdome 2 with 2TB of RAM and MSSQL will use it, given a large enough database. When you get the Datacenter versions of Windows and SQL Server you find that it has all the heavy hitting features you expect from a high end database. It scales to obscene levels and can handle massive reliability requirements.
I'm told that Oracle can go further stil
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The fact that your company only has had .net offers only means what it says: that your company has had such offers. Deriving from there that ".Net is getting bigger every year" is not a valid assumption; I could give a counter example pretty easily: my company hasn't had a single .Net offering since it was started.
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Re:Take a walk, Ballmer (Score:5, Interesting)
What planet are you on? .Net is big and getting bigger every year
in terms of 000,000's spent - J2EE massively outweighs .NET. I work in large enterprise systems delivery and the few financial orgs that went for .NET for truly resilient financial systems have moved away. .NET is used in places for presentation tier front end for web services but not a lot else.
The london stock exchange problems with tradelect (see article here [computerworld.com]) demonstrated that even a well funded and supported closely by top MS engineers and consultants - the system could not scale or perform to enterprise standards. This sent a real message across the financial industry (here in the UK) with many architects shunning MS. I also had to do the same when my client, a large life assurer, is having to spend over £10m to replace a perfectly functioning MS VB6/ASP sales platform because there is no upgrade path to .NET and the windows 2003 systems that it uses will go out of support soon. The last thing we're going to do is give more business to MS - so it is currently being replaced with services on an open source ESB platform (with paid support of course). The IT people here have a hard time explaining to the business why we need to spend so much money to get no new business functionality.
Re:Take a walk, Ballmer (Score:5, Interesting)
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--Coder
Re:Take a walk, Ballmer (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh-huh. I bet you see a lot of financial organizations basing their infrastructure off Mono.
Re:Take a walk, Ballmer (Score:4, Interesting)
What you point out is niche markets for MS. The core business is still office, followed by the OS. The xbox is also coming around slowly, if I remember correctly it is even starting to make back its investment, though at the current rate it'll be a century or two before it breaks even.
When some other office suit tops 50% market share, that is when the Microsoft ship starts sinking. And, as it goes with ships, once it starts sinking, the rest goes fairly quickly. Losing the document format lock-in would put a huge hole in the hull. Browsers, music format, smart phones - all that stuff is just water that's come over the railing. It sucks, but it doesn't endanger the ship.
As for Balmer - MS had already lost its edge when he took over. I'm quite sure he becoming the fallboy was part of the deal. Does anyone here really think Gates stepped down because he didn't like being boss anymore? He stepped down because he knew that the star was fading, and he had to build an image seperate from MS or he'd go down with it. All the good that the Gates Foundation does has the purpose of washing his image clean. Even that idea is stolen from the robber barons. (note that I don't want to diminish the good the foundation does. I just point out it's not pure altruism but has a purpose.)
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When some other office suit tops 50% market share, that is when the Microsoft ship starts sinking. And, as it goes with ships, once it starts sinking, the rest goes fairly quickly. Losing the document format lock-in would put a huge hole in the hull.
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Why 50%?
Arbitrarily chosen. Once you can't say "the majority of people use this" anymore, you will have to start thinking about document formats and interchange.
People are always lazy. As long as they have an excuse they believe themselves, they won't change.
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I dont agree on the .NET thing. .NET is leaving J2EE for dust, and for good reason. And thats not including Mono, which is getting some serious commercial users now.
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The music and smartphone markets are not the main Microsoft markets. Microsoft's game is at home and office desktops, office applications, development environment, database and servers. Microsoft is by far the dominant force in most of these domains.
Corporate Browser (Score:5, Insightful)
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companies (Score:5, Insightful)
In Germany, Firefox has a 61% market share, while IE has only 25%.
And a huge part of that is companies that are suffering from Microsoft lock-in. Seriously, when I see people's private computers, be it friends or people at the airport, etc. - it is probably 80% or more Firefox. In most of the companies, however, IE is still the corporate standard, and quite often the only allowed browser.
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Firefox portable anyone?
Re:companies (Score:4, Insightful)
This is because of the deployment system and profile-settings for IE. Official Firefox doesn't have them. They are working on MSI's for Firefox 4 though. That's the first step.
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It's actually quite trivial to set up a silent proxy with firewall rules that automatically redirect all network traffic on web ports through the proxy. Once all your web traffic is going through a proxy, you can control who can view what on the web with ease.
In other words, it's quite easy to lock down users' web experiences without the user ever knowing it's happening. It just requires a little more effort than most management types are willing to put in.
coverage, please? (Score:2)
Is this home users? Business users? How's the data collected?
My experience of home users that the majority certainly aren't downloading alternative browsers. My experience of business users is that you get some IT types hating IE but others wanting the enterprise integration IE offers, the balance being those apathetic who leave IE on. So, assuming the stats are representative, what is triggering this switch?
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I've done the extended family + friend IT support thing and left some people on IE. Neither these guys nor the ones with FF seem to end up virus-laden once I've taken over the job. They've learnt to follow my eloquent speeches about how to behave online and enjoyed an appropriate level of anti-malware installation.
Today it's almost impossible to find straight up-to-date IE on a machine with good anti-malware installed being used as a vehicle for automagic malware installation. The guys who download a trojan
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FF (Score:2)
I didn't want to install software on my win7 running netbook but IE annoyed me so much, it became usable and smooth only after installing Firefox.
Today the first thing you do, you simply install Firefox, don't use IE, it is a pain.
Forced Browser Choice (Score:5, Interesting)
Could this be highly related to the fact that in Europe, as part of an anti-trust settlement, when you first log into a new Windows machine you are presented with a choice of internet browsers [microsoft.com] and no longer default to MSIE?
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No, this has always been the trend. The settlement didn't have a big impact as I see it.
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How many people actually install Windows these days? Most corporations have a ghost image they roll onto every laptop, and I wouldn't be surprised most small tech firms do the same. Leaves Dell and supermarket computers, which are usually not used by the brightest of techies.
I'm guessing that I'd choose for "Microsoft" rather than "Mozilla" or "Opera" if I were to select a question I don't understand in the first place -- just because there's Microsoft branding all over the screen.
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Well it stopped the EU from extorting money from Microsoft. Never mind, they still have ongoing antitrusts with Google and Oracle to keep the coffers filled (and Greece in the black).
Funny how the customers / businesses were the ones who felt the pain, yet Brussels gets to keep all the money for themselves.
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Nope, the Firefox usage numbers have always been higher in Europe than elsewhere. This has been a tendency for years. And Germany also has a historical aversion for Microsoft software and was in the past a big Linux proponent (think SuSE) and StarOffice (now OpenOffice) was bigger than Microsoft Office for years IIRC. I wouldn't be surprised if also OS/2 had a larger following to elsewhere (or at least US).
All this predates any anti-trust settlement, but I am sure that change will make a difference too, but
That and IE is just old (Score:2)
Well, old in the computer world at any rate. IE 8 came out in March of last year. It more or less has not been updated since then. It's been patched, of course, and gotten some compatibility view updates and such but the browser, the rendering engine, all that is nearly a year and a half old.
Lot has changed since then, there are new features people want that IE does not offer. Stagnation can cause people to switch. I switched from Netscape to IE back in the day for that reason. Netscape hit 4.7 and just sto
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Au contrair, mon ami! (Score:2)
I believe the slashdot crowd has already debunked these people effecting the numbers numerous times. People who don't have a browser can't get a browser to get on the internet. Furthermore, this must have caused all of the nuclear plants in Europe to blow up leading the continent to a fate not unlike Atlantis.
And even in the unlikely event a there were number of refuges... the sample group would be too small for anything meaningful plus correlation does not necessary equal causation. Many would be like
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I installed an update once which in the description said it had the choice dialog. It didn't show up because I already used a different browser as default.
Only in Europe (Score:2, Insightful)
Have you noticed that Europe has a much bigger uptake of Linux, Firefox and in the older days Amiga?
I've often wondered if this is Europe being "open minded"....
I would love to be able to say the same about Australia...
AC
Change happens when people are unhappy enough (Score:2)
Seems clear that the people of Europe are generally unsatisfied and I am willing to bet that other changes, not related to Microsoft or MSIE are occurring at the same time and I would venture to guess that it is anti-American at its hearts. Not that I blame the people of Europe in the least. In a way, it might help the people of the U.S. become better people.
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If my experience counts (I live in a small country in Europe), people are not anti-US, not by a long shot. And if they were anti-US, they'd use other OS, not just switch browsers.
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You really shouldn't try to pin everything on anti-Americanism.
If anything, people here in Europe like the US more since the end of the Bush era (even if many of us probably expected mor from Obama than he delivered).
If we shun the products of American companies, it's not because they're American, but because their products or their attitude sucks.
Re:Browser market share (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Browser market share (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Browser market share (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm not so sure. Back in the 60s (IIRC) the Feds made it law that everyone had to switch. After much complaining, the car makers switched and began building cars largely in metric. (it was not a coincidence that more parts were coming from metric countries.) Just about the time when the manufacturing sector was finally getting tuned to working in metric, the government switched back. Sigh. But in fact the inch has been defined as 1/3937 meter for about 100 years, so we can argue that we are already met
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>>>Do what is good for them? What a stupid, shit headed, arrogant faggoty cocksucker you are.
Ooops. My fault. I forgot my sarcastic tag. I was not being serious. Hence the reference to the Democrat Congresses' $950 fine to punish the People for not buying health insurance. Congress must force the People to do what is good for them.
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"I was really hoping for an analogy using the metric system."
I, on the other hand, was hoping for a car analogy.
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>>>many parts of the world have universal healthcare
Monopoly healthcare. No choice healthcare.
Oh and yeah you're right. The article is about making history in EUROPE, because it would be the first time since Netscape that IE was not #1. The fact Opera is #1 in the former Soviet Republics is irrelevant to European browser share.
Re:Browser market share (Score:5, Informative)
Monopoly healthcare. No choice healthcare.
Only if you believe the drivel forced down your neck by the US media.
Government healthcare is NOT monopoly healthcare or "no choice healthcare". Here in the UK I have the option of being treated on the NHS (government) or I can go private, it is entirely up to me.
Here are some useful links to anyone interested in private healthcare in the UK:
http://www.spirehealthcare.com/ [spirehealthcare.com]
http://www.bupa.co.uk/ [bupa.co.uk]
http://www.privatehealth.co.uk/ [privatehealth.co.uk]
Unfortunately I still have to pay for the government healthcare out of my taxes but that is not what you were complaining about at all was it?
Re:Browser market share (Score:5, Interesting)
Why is it that a bewildering number of smart people has been indoctrinated into believing that the "free market" is the only solution to everything?
If the cost benefit ratio is less for a market-based solution compared to an alternative solution, then maybe it's time to go with the alternative.
By all metrics, the US healthcare system is delivering comparable medical outcomes to other industrialized nations at about 2 times the cost.
It is beyond debate that a completely laissez faire approach to markets ultimately leads to distortions that prevent efficient resource distribution in most (if not all) sectors of the economy. The is just no reason to object based on the facts, yet people still object. Funny this ideology thing.....
Re:Browser market share (Score:4, Insightful)
That's partly because the US sucks at regulating anti-competitive practices.
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Because my dog just had surgery (which included a hysterectomy, an RFID cyber-implant, and 4 baby teeth pulled) for a total cost of $200. That is what health care costs (with a reasonable markup to cover overhead and profit). With humans, I understand if people want to include some additional safeguards, so maybe multiply that cost by n (where I'm thinking of
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Germany has basically universal public health insurance and people can chose between dozens if not hundreds of regulated insurance companies as well as many, many private insurance companies. There is absolutely no monopoly and a bewildering amount of choice.
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Sounds like Germany's healthcare system is in as sad as shape as America's healthcare/retirement system (medicare and SS respectively).
The reason I labeled it a "monopoly" is because even though you have "choice" between doctors, you are still dealing with the same central monopoly. It's akin to if you bought a Macintosh or Amiga or Linux computer, but still had to pay money to Microsoft.
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>>>public healthcare...coexists with private hospitals.
Same here with our public and private schools. But the monopoly still controls the money. It's akin to if you bought a Macintosh, and yet still had to send $1000 a year to Microsoft. You have "choice" of which device you use, but not where your money goes. It's a monopoly.
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Yes, like the road system, and the fire service, and the military.
You can choose never to drive on the roads if you walk everywhere, but your taxes still pay for them since the society you live in requires certain things (like the ability for trucks to deliver things to the town you live in).
You may not directly consume the services you pay for with your "monopoly" taxes, but you surely are not foolish enough to think that no government is a better option, or a government that cannot levy taxes. Part of bei
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Well it happens in the US, not just in healthcare but also schools. If I choose to attend a private hospital/school instead of the public variant, I must pay EXTRA money on top of the money I paid to the Uncle Sam monopoly. It's akin to if I decided to buy a Mac or Amiga computer, and yet still had to pay $1000/year to the Microsoft Monopoly.
Choice is not choice, if someone else controls the money.
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And debt. $130,000 per US home. Is there any country higher than that?
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$130,000 is the public debt of the government.
The average personal debt is about $80,000 per US home. Total would then then be $210,000 public plus personal debt. That exceeds the UK and probably every other civilized country.
Re:Browser market share (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yes but the point is, there are now sufficient users running browsers other than IE that you have to develop for them...
A few years ago, sites were developed for IE6 and nothing else, causing problems for people on non windows systems.
The fact that developers are still burdened with having to make sites compatible with IE doesn't really effect end users so much, it's much easier to develop a site that works with modern standards compliant browsers than it is to kludge a site to work with IE6.
Re:Browser market share (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes but the point is, there are now sufficient users running browsers other than IE that you have to develop for them...
The funny thing is that when Firefox had a similar market share to what IE6 has now, lots of sites said "screw it, this site only works in Internet Explorer". Adding support for Firefox was easy; just write a reasonably standards-compliant site and it looked ok in Firefox. Now developers have a much harder job trying to make sites work in IE6, yet you rarely see sites just rejecting it.
I still find the occasional site telling me I have an unsupported browser (Yahoo is one of them, which is pretty hilarious in 2010). HP blade enclosures "support" Firefox by asking you to install the IE tab extension.
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Well to put a more realistic view on this whole subject:
51% Microsoft Explorer
31% Mozilla Firefox
10% Google Chrome
4% Apple Safari
3% Opera
StatCounter
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This is sadly true. I have a number of critical paperwork handling work applications which do not work properly on IE 8 or Firefox or any sane modern browser. And I have others that will no longer run on IE 6, so I need 2 desktop environments, and 2 licenses for them, just to push the paperwork.
Yet I still get angry glares from some of our own corporate staff at software presentations when I ask "does it run on Firefox" or "does it run on Linux"? It's especially sad when I ask "which version of Java does it
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Youtube and Google Apps have already dropped support for IE6. If they work in the browser, great, but if you try visiting either site using IE6 you'll get a "hey idiot, isn't it time you upgraded your browser?" message.
Many other major sites have stopped developping for IE6 out there... Dell's website doesn't render properly in IE6, Microsoft's own website and MSDN portal don't work properly in IE6. It's really just corporate tools that've been developped for the piece of shit browser that's holding things
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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>>>DownThemAll
Why would I want to use this instead of Firefox's built-in download manager?
>>>it features an advanced accelerator that increases speed up to 400%
I don't see how this is possible. My ISP is 90 KB/s and I don't see how that could be accelerated upto 360 KB/s
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If its anything like other download managers, it downloads over multiple connections to get around transfer limits on the remote server.
But you are right, in most cases it won't make any difference at all - so all you are doing is tying up connections without achieving anything.
In those cases where it DOES work, you are potentially DoSing other users - transfer limits are usually there because of limited resources.
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your stats are all over the place literally, your opera 50% share crawls along the bottom of the graph where your showing IE as gaining. Thou did you notice the blue line was higher at the start of the graph than where it is now. The graph doesn't actually say where the stats cover I assume it is worldwide or maybe just microsofts website.
we just don't know do we.
ok so browser share is pretty much static and perhaps there is some more interest in chrome.
pretty much expected don't you think
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IE increasing at the cost of Firefox? Really? My sources [statcounter.com] show that the slow march down for IE is still continuing.
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I don't think it's really making history, considering Opera has always had up to 50% market share in CIS countries [opera.com].
ITYM "over 50% market share"[0]. According to your source, Opera has only over 50% in Belarus. If this was always so isn't mentioned in your article.
[0] otherwise: Opera had up to 50% market share since it's release. Just like FF. Worldwide.
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2 months in a row does become a trend though. Yes, it's less than half a percent rise, but if the stats show a half a percent rise every month in a row for 6 months, that does become more than statistical noise....
As others have pointed out though, the numbers the GP posted are suspect at best....
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I use opera instead. I find IE just as much security issue prone as IE.
To offer a counter argument, from my personal experience I've found Opera to be as much of a security issue as Opera.
Re:Europeans aren't trained well (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, selling online I've noticed that Europeans are terrible consumers. They don't listen well to our support staff, they immediately charge back if the service is not up to par, etc. etc. It's a hell dealing with Europeans.
If you're looking to make money, honestly, invest in US consumers first. Much easier to part them from their money and to convince them not to cancel/buy more.
So what you're saying is that we're less gullible and more demanding? Why thank you, that's really nice of you.
I'll let you get back to assraping ignorant 'merkins now ;-)
Re:Opposite world wide trend? (Score:4, Interesting)
A CEO is looking for a new CFO for his company. He invites an engineer, a mathematician and a statistician for a group interview. The CEO asks, "How much is two plus two?" The engineer pulls out his calculator, punches it in, and says, "Four!"
The mathematician goes to the whiteboard, and scribbles down a proof, and says, "This proves that two plus two is four!"
The statistician, leans forward to the CEO, and whispers, "How much do you want two plus two to be?"
Microsolt, Sun, Oracle, IBM, Dell, HP, SAP etc. all do this: They will create a different definition for what comprises their market, and then they all claim to be the market leader.
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A CEO is looking for a new CFO for his company. He invites an engineer, a mathematician and a statistician for a group interview. The CEO asks, "How much is two plus two?" The engineer pulls out his calculator, punches it in, and says, "Four!"
The mathematician goes to the whiteboard, and scribbles down a proof, and says, "This proves that two plus two is solvable!"
The statistician, leans forward to the CEO, and whispers, "How much do you want two plus two to be?"
There, fixed that for you.
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I've seen this in action at another company - they were gradually getting behind the tech curve, and their product lines were gradually getting trounced, one by one. The mantra at the company was they only wanted to be in markets where they have the biggest share and could control the market. Instead of figuring out what had to be done to succeed in those markets - and doing that - the market droids kept redefining the markets more narrowly until there really wasn't anything else left (and I was gone by t
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Goes to show you really can't take any of these findings seriously.
No. TFA is about market share in Europe - yours is about worldwide market share.