Browser Wars update: Firefox continues to gain on IE

Firefox continues to make impressive gains among Europe's web surfers, chipping away further at the once unassailable lead of Microsoft's Internet Explorer. According to web measurement firm Xiti Monitor, Firefox's pan-European share of the browser market was 28 per cent in December, up from 23.1 per cent in the year earlier period. In some countries -- namely, Finland, Slovakia, Poland and Hungary -- at least 40 per cent of web surfers use Firefox, impressive for a browser that is a little over three years old.

A year ago when we looked at this, Firefox had a share of 30 per cent or better in seven European countries; today, there are 13 European countries above that mark. Britain and Italy (from where I am typing) are towards the bottom of the ranking with 17.2 and 21.7 per cent, respectively, of the surfing population having made the switch to Firefox.

How did IE fare? Internet Explorer still has a commanding lead, registering a 66.1 per cent share of web browser usage in Europe in December. That's down slightly from the previous month (66.9 per cent) and down again on the same month of the previous year (statistics are not available).

While Firefox has had an impressive 20 per cent year-on-year gain, the majority of that increase occurred in the first half of 2007. In the latter half growth slowed, only picking up again in October and November, Xiti reports.

As Ars Technica points out, Firefox's success could be Opera's downfall. Its Norwegian parents recently filed an antitrust claim against Microsoft saying that tying IE to Windows gives it an unfair market advantage. Opera currently has 3.3 per cent of the European browser market, Xiti reports, and is growing only modestly.

Comments

[Marcus]

I use Opera with Firefox as a backup, and I have to say that Opera, for all the publicity that's been given to Firefox, is still the superior browser. It's footprint is much smaller, it's incredibly fast, and the integrated email function makes it so much easier to contact people on the fly. So, why is Opera's share so small, and why isn't Firefox's share bigger than it is?

I think that Opera has it right, the only reason IE still exists is that it comes preloaded and set to automatically update on XP and Vista systems. Any idiot who actually compares the browsers can see that both Opera and Firefox are just so much superior to the offering of the "Evil Empire" All things being equal, IE doesn't stand a chance.

Unfortunately, due to the sheer financial prowess of Microsoft, I HAVE to have IE loaded on my pc. Even apart from the fact that it comes pre-loaded and almost impossible to remove, my stupid ISP's web offerings are written specifically NOT to function at all with either of the alternative browsers. Considering AT&T? Keep this in mind, it won't ALLOW you to use it's web sites with anything other than IE. Isn't that the very definition of monopoly? Wasn't that what the whole anti-trust legislation was written to prevent? Can't SOMEBODY do something about this?

Sue away, Opera. I'm rooting for you!

[Edward Gomez]

IE, like much Microsoft applications, has a very large overhead on resources, but even worse than that, inept web programmers write websites which can only be used on IE. As a life long Apple Mac user, this means that those badly designed website are completely inaccessible, since Microsoft ended development and support of IE for Mac some years ago.

You might think that mainstream websites would not be so foolhardy? PostOffice online banking is an infuriating example. I have to borrow a colleagues Windows laptop if I want to check my credit card balance. A primary consideration of chosing a credit card with PO was the ability to check and pay bills online, this sort of web design bad manners, is very annoying.

[Ivan Garnham]

Hi - I dropped PCs and Microsoft over a year ago and installed Apple Intel Macbooks and an Intel iMac - it's just the the best thing I ever did. I use Firefox. Now I look back to the dark days of Windows and PCs.

[Neil]

I too am a fan of Opera however I don't use it, the reason simply being that the browser really needs a UI overhaul and because it sticks to web standards like glue you often find that the browser doesn't work with many sites or you have limited functionality.

That said Opera does seem quite popular in Eastern Europe and the browser doesn't ever seem to have any issues with native Eastern European sites such as Onet (a Polish equivalent to Yahoo!) or WP.pl - I suppose that brings up the issue of sloppy web development here in the west catering mainly to IE6 which is still the No.1 used browser despite all it's flaws.

I usually use Firefox, it's robust and very customisable although the application in my everyday experience consumes vast amounts of memory when you have many tabs open in a single window causing your PC to become a little sluggish sometimes while IE7 does seem much better behaved in that regard.

[guyc]

I have a Mac and use Safari, which I think is now the best overall - it's super fast. The problem occurs when a web developer has built a site for IE only. If it's a commercial site this is unforgivable - any company with any sense would never hire a web developer that designs a site only for one browser, as they guaranteed to lose custom as a result. It would be like designing a shop door so narrow only very thin people could get inside. That would be crazy. IE only websites are equally ludicrous.

[blinkdt]

I use IE7 exclusively and love it. It's fast and furious, robust and versatile. Firefox is rather clownish in comparison, Opera just doesn't work, and Safari . . . well, one day Apple might get it right, but who cares. I'm running Vista Business x64. A Mac? Yeah, goplay with your iTunes, ya iToid, I have work to do.

[Neil]

I should have added to my previous comment that Opera do however make fantastic mobile web browsers, both their freeware Opera Mini and shareware Opera Mobile for Symbian S60 are outstanding.

And GUYC, try using Camino on the Mac, it looks fantastic and runs on the Mozilla Gecko rendering engine so its much more robust than I found Safari to be.

[David]

As a web developer I use Opera, Safari, Firefox and IE. Of these I prefer Opera and Safari. Safari because it's the most standards-compliant of the four, and Opera because it has good error reporting. Firefox also has good error reporting but its standards compliance is not so good, and it's huge and slow. As for IE, it's such rubbish that the only reason why so many people use it is because it's bundled with Windows. More people need to make the effort to look for alternatives, and the browser market needs to be open and equitable.

[Phill]

Far be it from me to defend internet explorer in any way but what many people fail to realise is that it isnt just a browser it is in many ways integrated within the windows opperating system and many applications which run on it. The (much unused)windows help browser for example and many other systems which use activex controls. I certainly wouldnt like to install windows and then find i cant access the inevitable metric shed load of updates because there is no browser with activex support. Also if IE were not installed already then what would people use to download firefox?

[Simon N]

If you have a look at windows task manager you will see that the 'do-nothing' program is 16k.

Programmers that know what they're doing can fit an entire chess program into 1k. Microsoft need 16k to do absolutely nothing at all.

Internet Explorer is written in exactly the same way. After all why write a small piece of code that can do something when with just a little more effort you can fill someones hard drive and sap all their processor power at the same time.

Firefox or Opera any day.

[Pete Smith]

I have been using opera since i found that an old laptop, sadly now defunct lacked the oomph to run the then latest IE.. it ran fast and each update has improved functionality and features with little impact on footprint and speed. I really would use nothing else. The latest version has some useful ( essential actually ) privacy and security tools. All the usual plugins work seamlessly and heres the biggy for me it just plain works, no faffing no patching and no chuffing pay out to Bill !! lol

[Pete Smith]

PS :- BTW opera allows itself to be identified as IE6 Negating most of the web page 'designed only for IE' isues and if it still doesn't work .... move on it's their loss

Pete