.... or is there a honest to goodness glitch in the way browser shares are counted?
There is indeed evidence that IE browser share has dropped at the expense of Firefox over recent months. There is some evidence that there are problems with the way in which different versions of IE are counted which could be screwing up the stats. Regardless, Market Share by Net Applications, the service which provides a monthly market share assessment, has failed to produce the July 1 results claiming that the data are under review.
Can you say ... "Confirmation Bias?"
Some details of this murky situation and links can be found here.
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IE is a dying breed for sure. With Firefox and the recent release of Google's Chrome IE isn't looking so solid anymore. It's also been years since new version of IE were available for Macs, also. Add the fact that many websites, including MS's own site can't properly display pages in IE8 - IE will be history IMO. Who wants to design to web templates for two versions of the same software? Who wants to have to remember to switch your browser to compatibility mode?
One way to look at, IE has always been the novice's browser. Some people chalk Firefox up as the "computer-wiz" guys browser (well at leased those older folks). Now novice end users have a name they trust, google, to switch to.
And all this is known by MS. They are ditching IE (most likely)in the near future. With being threatened to be sued by the EU - MS had 2 choices with it's windows 7 release, have the OS come with IE and Competitors browsers, or none at all. They actually chose none (don't ask me how most people will get their browser! FTP?).
With all this in mind, MS is creating a brand new browser, Gazelle, to try and get back into the market.
http://gizmodo.com/5310337/microsofts-gazelle-browser-could-be-the-goog…
-JJ
I've been IE free since ... oh, I never was a user of IE. Even as Netscape withered I continued to use it or else fire up Lynx (and complain bitterly about all the garbage like images replacing buttons which make it difficult to navigate with Lynx).
These days I moan about the ubiquitous and unnecessary 'Flash' which, strangely, is required to view some websites. Some people just have no sense for how to make a useful website.
From the title of the post I thought you were going to discuss Google's "Chrome OS" announcement!
I still use several different versions of IE for testing web sites under development, but would never even think to use it for regular browsing. I think this idea has actually filtered down to the masses to a certain degree. Some people actually listen to other computer users about what software they use.
No fan of IE here, but I think that's a bit of a stretch given that it's still got nearly twice the penetration of any other browser... Less dominant, sure, but "dying breed"? I don't think so. Just think of all those locked-down corporate desktops, for one thing...
Look at the figures for Europe - Firefox is inexorably overtaking IE - it looks like IE will be firmly number two by December, if not earlier.
I use Firefox 3.0.11 with a little add-on called User Agent Switcher 0.7.2 and leave it set to IE mode. That way I can get sites that enforce IE off my back. One famous one is ABC6 here in Providence.
Hey, don't forget about Safari 4 http://crave.cnet.co.uk/software/0,39029471,49301219,00.htm in many tests Safari 4 is really faster then other browsers!