The market share of Firefox vs. Internet Explorer

In his Open Road blog, Matt Asay was skeptical about some browser market share data because the sample audience was heavy on techies. The July 2008 stats for the site in question, W3Schools.com, were:

W3Schools.com
BROWSER	USAGE
Internet Explorer	52%
Firefox	43%
Safari	2%
Opera	2%

Into this discussion, I'd like to add my own numbers.

My JavaTester.org website also leans a bit towards a technical audience. To seek out the site, you have to know what Java is and that there are different versions of it. In July 2008 the site averaged 8,050 page views a day, according to awstats. Interestingly, the July usage stats also showed Internet Explorer at 52 percent, the same as W3Schools.

javatester.org
BROWSER	USAGE
Internet Explorer	52%
Firefox	32%
Netscape	4%
Mozilla	4%
Safari	2%
Opera	2%

The most popular site that I manage belongs to a client whose audience has no interest in technology. The site averaged 12,477 page views per day in July, also according to awstats. The market share there shows Internet Explorer did better, as did Safari.

Non-techies
BROWSER	USAGE
Internet Explorer	62%
Firefox	26%
Safari	6%
Mozilla	2%

In short, among techies, IE was used 52 percent of the time and Firefox either 32 percent or 43 percent. The higher percentage was at W3Schools.com and chances are that their users are more technically inclined than those at Javatester.org. Among a more general audience of web users, IE scored 62 percent and Firefox 26 percent.

It seems that as the technical awareness of the the audience decreases, the use of Internet Explorer increases.

Does this remind you of Windows? Businesses, with techies making the decisions, are, for the most part, sticking with XP while consumers find nothing but Vista on retail shelves.

See a summary of all my Defensive Computing postings.

[BassaBabe]

i use awstats also.
i never trust those W3C logs because as you say, many are testing browsers.
Still I guess IE is the default browser most tend to use unless taught otherwise.
I switched to Opera just before it became free. I like to think of myself in the top 2% rather than the bottom 2% hehe
Last time I enjoyed FF was version 1.8 if I remember (2003?), I don?t really like FF3.

Hope you are enjoying the last weeks of summer Michael.

[thelemurking]

This got me curious so I checked my logs (awstats)

MS Internet Explorer:
219941 - 48.7 %

Firefox:
184068 - 40.8 %

Safari:
16648 - 3.6 %

Mozilla:
11714 - 2.5 %

Netscape:
6395 - 1.4 %

Opera:
5865 - 1.3 %

My site is not really technical based, message board, shoutcast and a gallery for cellphone wallpapers. The wallpaper gallery is what gets the most hits. I was actually surprised at how close Firefox was to IE.

[davevolman]

Checked my logs of a travel site - first two weeks of Aug 2008 with total of 1.6 million page views.

75% IE
14% Firefox
7% Safari
2% spiders
1.4% Netscape

[dragonbite]

How many of these are also couning Browsers set to be identified as IE for compatibility with some sites?

Probably a very low percentage, but Linux users often tell Konquerer to spoof as IE for compatibility with sites.

[mhinnewyork]

Good point. Any analysis based on browser ID string is flawed. Opera too, can mis-identify itself on purpose. Michael Horowitz

[steve4lee]

Logs seem to tell more about the audience and where they view the site than anything else, other than skewing by subject matter.

I'm the volunteer webmaster for our neighborhood association, and I check awstats occasionally. While we get some hits from all over the world, the majority of visitors appear to be people in the neighborhood using the computer at home. The list of IP addresses show mostly in the range of the cable and DSL providers that serve the town.

Browser statistics over time average around 60% Internet Explorer, 25% Safari, 10% Firefox, and small amounts for a host of others. Firefox usage seems to split between Macs and PCs, but with different mixes each month, as best I can tell. "Unknown" sometimes does well, and I realize that awstats probably can't tell when a browser is pretending to be Internet Explorer. IE7 recently has taken a 2 to 1 lead over IE6, and IE5 usage is about nil.

I hesitate generalizing too much from this one site, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were typical of browser usage in homes in our socio-economic range. If these same people were viewing the site from the office, then the IE stats would surely be much higher, and if it were a site that dealt with virus and spyware protection, the Safari usage would be almost nil.

[mhinnewyork]

Excellent feedback, thanks. Michael Horowitz

[c|net Reader]

Is it even fair to lump the different versions of IE together?

[stankywater]

I run a site that caters to primarily Mac users:

66% Safari
19% Firefox
6% IE
6% Netscape
3% other

[prismfinder]

Can you even consider people who still use Internet Explorer "techies?"

To me, anyone who's using IE is so blatantly irresponsible and reckless regarding security that they don't deserve such a classification.

[pjhenry1216]

Anyone using IE7 isn't as reckless or insecure as you claim. People give most Microsoft products a bad security rating, but most of that is just because they dislike Microsoft than for any real reasons. IE7 may not be the best, but it isn't as bad as people claim. Just as a note, I use FF3.

[Seaspray0]

Prismfinder, it's easy for the "couch potatoe" to criticize the professionals, but you wouldn't last 10 minutes in my job. Yes, I am a techie, and yes I use IE. I also use Firefox (revision 2), I won't use safari which is the most vulnerable of the 3.

[quirK]

Actually, IE 7 on Vista with Protected Mode is considered to be more secure by default than Firefox 3. However, I use Fx 3 with Adblock Plus and NoScript, and 10 other extensions that IE 7 cannot provide.

[gengaretjax]

I use IE and find your remark interesting and funny. Thank You.

[michael_herc]

I agree with the idea that as technical awareness decreases, the use of Internet Explorer rises. For instance, my mom and my grandma both use Internet Explorer and when I asked them why and told them they should use Mozilla or Safari, they both thought that the only way to use the Internet was to use Internet Explorer. I think people see the word "Internet" and automatically think that's how they get online. I think the awareness of Mozilla Firefox and Safari needs to increase because I think more people would use them. I just downloaded Safari for my grandma and she loves it!!

[mhinnewyork]

Why would you opt for Safari as opposed to Firefox? Michael Horowitz

[The User]

I have amazing stats for my proprietary web-tool:

FireFox 3: 100%

Oh, wait, the tool is opened for me only.

[vhaakmat]

"To me, anyone who's using IE is so blatantly irresponsible and reckless regarding security that they don't deserve such a classification."

Please keep this dumb comment to yourself... You must have been hiding under a rock for the past year. IE7 has the same or better security as FF 2x and 3x. The latest security issues have been with FF not IE7... so go take a hike.

[real_bgiel]

I don't think it is a dumb comment... the techies that I know all use FF. MSIE is favored by general users who believe it is the only option, or who simply do not care as long as they can surf the web.

[richard mitnick]

No surprises here.

[duerra]

FireFox's biggest hurdle that it needs to overcome is getting new users started. Their vanilla FF release is basic almost to a fault. You pretty much need a few extensions just to get the basic configuration options up to par, and a lot of people don't want to go through that hassle. They just want to install a browser, configure it, and go.

[jscott418]

What amazes me is how Apple touts Safari as the fastest browser ever. But even after forcing Windows users for a while to accept Safari in Apple updates. It still manages only a small user group. I for one have never had any issues with Internet Explorer. Its the one browser that loads every page on every site. I still have problems with Firefox on certain sites. Yes, people can brag about being WC3 compliant but who cares if web sites don't follow it. For me Safari has become a outdated browser. It has no anti-phishing tools, it lacks good rendering on some sites. If Safari was a Microsoft products it would definitely get more negative press.

[geotopia]

Though it's far from obvious, the dark horse in this race is Safari, aka "WebKit", aka "KHTML". It's gone from zero to 3-6% in about 3 years, doubling in the last. Now, it's easy to double a small number, but there are some other factors at play. First, it runs on virtually every platform. Mac, Windows, and Linux (through KHTML and Webkit). It runs on iPhone and iPod (Touch). It runs on AppleTV. It runs on Windows Mobile (Iris browser from Torch Mobile). It's the browser technology for Google's Android. Another dark horse, Adobe's AIR platform uses WebKit as the web renderer. While the penetration is low in terms of percentage, the spread is wide.
My argument is that the browser is moving away from the desktop/laptop onto mobile handsets, kiosks, and tv/living room devices. One day we'll wake up and realize that the desktop web is the minority and most browsing is being done in the car, living room, kiosk, or while someone's walking around with a phone in their hand. The browser agent recorded on the destination sites will be varied, IE, FireFox, Mozilla, Webkit, Iris, Opera, Safari, and all of them are going to head to low double digits, but when you add up Webkit, Iris, iPhone, Safari, iPod (Touch), you'll realize how much Webkit is gaining. Check back in 6 months or a year to this issue and you'll see it fulfilled.
Apple took over Webkit Open Source development (under GPL, I believe) and has spread it's goodness around without triggering too many alarms at Redmond. Ironically, it was the Mozilla crowd that took first notice when John Lilly lashed out at Steve Jobs for pushing a version upgrade to Safari over iTunes. That was a year ago when Safari was around 1% user share.
Final factor, Safari/Webkit is fast and compliant. It passed the latest Acid test with flying colors. It's ahead of the curve in terms of supporting new trends (advanced CSS, font embedding), but doesn't do so at the cost of site compatibility.

[mhinnewyork]

Excellent points. I don't know how the various phone/mobile based browsers identify themselves to websites in terms of a browser ID string. However, they do, it may be a while until products like awstats correctly classify them - so their usage may be under-reported for a long time. Michael Horowitz

[TV James]

The high rates of IE use are testers who're building those sites reloading and tweaking and reloading trying to get something to look right in IE that worked correctly the first time in Firefox.

[gengaretjax]

I use webtrends analytics at work and refreshes as such are a filtered stat. Typically, most modern statistical analysis software products - at least those at the enterprise level do not include refreshes as apart of their hit tracking trends.

I still see IE7 Stats that are usually Triple that of FF and easily Quadrupled that of All the others combined. The site for which I am given you the stats is a Healthcare Company service some 13 Million users. Averages per month would be subjectively around 3M Hits a month.

[csmarkham]

Horowitz is a good writer, but I think he got caught being lazy in an attempt at pith.

He is technically orrect, but perhaps insinuates a correlation in the phrasing of his closing line.
Technical awareness typically doesn't decrease in the non-Luddite.

If you assume that the "default user" (i.e. with no technical experience) will use IE exactly because
there is some modicum of technical experience required just to get and install FF, one might better
summarize the findings of the research as,

"It seems that as the technical awareness of the audience increases, the use of Firefox increases."

I think that pretty much matches the experience of everyone I know. Erm, at least of those who
have switched to Firefox.

[gengaretjax]

I agree with this statement and applaud your proposed change to the statement. Most people that become more literate with computer and internet usage as some point tend to transfer to FireFox. I also, see a trend that as they become more experts in this field they generally choose a side to stand on. I feel that this standing really goes with the environment that they use continually: in my case working with government security, MSFT products everwhere and similar business related concerns that I am more familiar using IE. Though, my choice given one would likely be some other browser or otherwise. However, even at home for consistancy I use IE.

Thank You for your great update and info...

[ambigous]

From the logs for my rock music enthusiast site (AWstats):

MSIE - 73.8 (%)

Firefox - 18.6

Mozilla - 2.9

Safari - 2.4

Opera - 1.1

[vrjory]

I build websites and got into firefox to check compatibility issues. I don't have too many of those between ie and ff, but safari is a pain, so far. I had heard ff being highly touted as a better experience, and since I am on the web 20-40 hours a week, I looked for to something noticeably superior to ie. But it is not. Just another browser. Ford or Chevrolet? Techies don't use ff because they think it is better than ie. They use it because they think using something besides the norm is "cool" (all those hidden nerd egos, lol)

[sisyphus1]

"Does this remind you of Windows? Businesses, with techies making the decisions, are, for the most part, sticking with XP while consumers find nothing but Vista on retail shelves."
In fact, the large tech companies that I have worked for recently have not yet fully cycled to Windows XP,
are queasy about SP2 (let alone SP3) and many of the PC's are still running Windows 2000. These people are very averse to making ANY changes to their system because they are mostly in the dark as to how the system really works and much of their software and hardware is outdated.
#1: They do not want to spend money on new stuff.
#2: The IT staff are lazy and don't want to have to work very hard.

[szilagyic]

I am really wondering when Firefox will pull ahead of IE. With the release of IE7 and IE8, and upcoming Firefox 3.5, things will definitely start to heat up. I can vouch that Firefox is an awesome browser, and does just about anything you want since it has a massive number of available extensions/add-ons. I own a web hosting company, and the web server stats in May 2009 show IE at an even 50%, while Firefox is at 37%. The rest is composed of older Netscape browsers, Opera, and others. But, I know Microsoft is watching, and I am really curious to the adoption rate of IE8 as it breaks websites. Rather than coding websites to work with IE, why can't IE be better backwards compatible? Meanwhile, if a site works in Firefox 2.0, it works in Firefox 3.5 and probably beyond. In the world of web browsers, Firefox wins in my opinion. The only issues we have against this are: 1) that IE comes pre-installed with Windows, and 2) We rely on the user to download, install, and use Firefox, while IE is already integrated into Windows. I wrote my own article on open source vs. closed source, and touch on the web browser war:

<a href="http://members.apex-internet.com/sa/windowslinux">http://members.apex-internet.com/sa/windowslinux</a>