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Time:
00:00 EST/05:00 GMT | News Source:
Associated Press |
Posted By: Robert Stein |
Mozilla's Firefox Web browser edged up slightly in usage at the expense of Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) Internet Explorer, commanding nearly 11 percent of the U.S. market on a typical weekday, according to research by WebSideStory.
On Dec. 7, Firefox had a 10.7 percent share on computers running Microsoft's Windows operating system, an increase from 9.84 percent seven weeks earlier.
By contrast, IE usage dropped to 88.2 percent, from 89.1 percent.
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#1 By
28801 (65.90.202.10)
at
12/18/2006 8:09:15 AM
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This only means that IE users have lives around the holidays and FF geeks are looking for girlfriends online.
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#2 By
37047 (216.191.227.68)
at
12/18/2006 8:50:59 AM
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This can only mean that people feel safer doing their online holiday shopping using Firefox, instead of the oft-compromised IE.
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#3 By
28801 (65.90.202.10)
at
12/18/2006 9:07:06 AM
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#2: Yea, that's what it is. Mom finds that perfect gift and stops what she is dong to download and install FF (cause, as we all know, most soccer moms are closet FF users).
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#4 By
13030 (198.22.121.110)
at
12/18/2006 9:37:20 AM
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#1: IE users have lives around the holidays
How would you know? You hang out here with the rest of us nerds.
#3: soccer moms are closet FF users
Only the techie ones. ;-)
Like I said before, I don't personally know a single techie that chooses to use IE over Firefox. I'm sure there are many techies that have no choice (MS employees and those that NotParker wants to fire for violating corporate desktop policy), so I'll cut them some slack...
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#5 By
116 (66.69.252.98)
at
12/18/2006 10:15:51 AM
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Well chalk me up for one that prefers IE over firefox. I personally hate the non native widgets firefox uses to render its browser with. As for browsing the only feature that firefox had nativelly that ie didn't has now been surpassed with 7.
Who cares what you use, I am more productive with IE but am glad there is a firefox to provide some means of competition.
Happy Holidays!
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#6 By
32132 (64.180.219.241)
at
12/18/2006 10:21:00 AM
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IE7 16.3%
FF2 3.12%
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#7 By
3746 (71.19.41.232)
at
12/18/2006 11:11:07 AM
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I am running Vista and have Firefox, Opera, Maxthon and IE7 loaded. I mostly use Maxthon and IE7. Opera would probably come in behind them in use. I don't really use extensions so I guess if you did then Firefox would be for you. Either way use what you want as they all offer solid experiences.
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#8 By
15406 (216.191.227.68)
at
12/18/2006 12:19:18 PM
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Just imagine what the FF numbers would be if it was also in Windows Update as a high-priority update. Oh well, as long as IE6 dies quickly and takes its never-ending security issues with it, so much the better. Now if only they could stop the unceasing flow of Word exploits...
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#9 By
23275 (68.17.42.38)
at
12/18/2006 1:02:46 PM
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#8, It would be a very good idea if WU and MU would allow for third parties to work with MS to update their SW - same would be nice inside WSUS where one could better keep track of installed SW and versions. It can be done in some cases, but not as easily as it could be.
I hope someone from MS reads some of the posts presented here.
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#10 By
15406 (216.191.227.68)
at
12/18/2006 1:43:02 PM
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#9: I'm pretty sure I've read this idea before but it would be almost impossible to implement. Political conflict and legal liability aspects would kill it immediately, even if it was a good idea in theory. Gates & Ballmer would have to have their knuckles broken with a ballpein hammer before they'd agree to assisting competitors in distributing their software using WU. Competitive issues aside, the liability of such an update hosing someone's system would be a risk MS wouldn't want to take as the finger of blame would point to them even if they were just the messenger. Plus, the expense and logistics of keeping such a repository up to date would be a major headache with negligible return for MS' bottom-line. Altruism has never been MS strong suit.
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#11 By
23275 (68.17.42.38)
at
12/18/2006 1:50:08 PM
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#9, Yeah, you're right about the overhead. Still, it could be made to work under WSUS - where one could locally control a fewer amount of updates for known titles - Adobe Reader, for example. It'd be nice if the method to implement that was easier and folded into say, System Center Essentials, etc... I think you're right, too, about emerging threats/vectors being in perhaps less well scrutinized products - older verisions of Word, Media Player and the soft underbelly of third party apps that use older tools and API's.
I think we're going to see a great deal of that kind of threat in 07 and a lot of noise regarding patches, and "forced" updates to Office 2007/Vista. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems the way of it.
Do you remember late summer, when MS started to patch third party Sw via WU? FlASH support was one of those I recall. I wonder if/ever we'll see more of that?
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#12 By
15406 (216.191.227.68)
at
12/18/2006 2:26:09 PM
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#11: Perhaps. I could envision a system where MS charges other vendors to host updates via WU or WSUS. Something similar to their software certification program where you pay to have your app/driver certified by MS as being compliant in some way. Such a certificate would not be cheap, and MS would likely insist on some caveats that would make the system unpalatable to some vendors. F/OSS would probably be contractually excluded somehow.
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#13 By
23275 (68.17.42.38)
at
12/18/2006 2:34:30 PM
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#12, but if enough of us ask... MS might just be willing to help. It sure wouldn't hurt the number of system they deploy, or sell - given that more and more PC/Servers ship each day and truth be told, a great many shops use a very wide variety of OSes/especially servers.
I think SCE/WSUS would be ideal.
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#14 By
7754 (216.160.8.41)
at
12/18/2006 2:40:29 PM
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lketchum, Latch--I've also wondered about the same thing you guys envision, although I think for a number of reasons (concern about bad patches, unverified updates--i.e., spyware/malware-tagged, other liabilities, bandwidth costs, etc.) Microsoft would probably decline to host such a service. However, what they could do--and what seems in keeping with their mindset--is develop a platform/framework so that other vendors could do the same. For example, rather than push the updates out to WSUS, they could provide functionality within WSUS to subscribe to vendor updates for other products--much like you subscribe to different search providers in IE 7. Granted, probably few ISVs have the kind of infrastructure for that, so perhaps Microsoft could offer a hosted service for those that do not. As long as it was an opt-in service from the customer side, I think it might fly.
At any rate, I love the competition between Firefox and IE. I like Firefox a lot, but still would not deploy it on my network--one decent browser is enough already; I don't want to worry about patching/updating/deploying/training/monitoring security issues for two (not to mention addressing the questions of "I bookmarked this yesterday (in Firefox), and now it's gone (in IE)!"). With IE 7, there are only a couple things I miss about Firefox (session saver being the biggest; inline search is already available through a 3rd party). As long as they are that close, I don't see any compelling reason to install/maintain/use Firefox anymore.
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#15 By
15406 (216.191.227.68)
at
12/18/2006 3:02:39 PM
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#14: The cost wouldn't be bourne by MS -- it would be covered by the fees charged to the participants based on usage. The problem of malware etc wouldn't be much of an issue as the escrow fee MS would charge would be in the 6 or 7-figure range and would preclude all but the biggest vendors from participating. The excluded would be smaller vendors and also includes F/OSS, as I doubt that the Apache team, Samba, Mozilla etc have that kind of cash laying around. Since all vendors already support patch distribution via their own website or other authorized affiliates, the trick would be getting them to also support another cost for the same service.
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#16 By
23275 (68.17.42.38)
at
12/18/2006 3:42:16 PM
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#14, I think you are onto an implementation that in practice, would actually work very well.
I think that as it was exercised, it would bring in others that supported it.
Also, within WSUS individual enterprises and small providers could create their own respositories and leverage WSUS to manage distribution.
This post was edited by lketchum on Monday, December 18, 2006 at 15:43.
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#17 By
7754 (216.160.8.41)
at
12/18/2006 4:47:30 PM
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#15, 16--they might want to do it before Google beats them to it. ;)
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#18 By
32132 (142.32.208.232)
at
12/19/2006 12:55:27 PM
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Of course most people don't mention one of the reasons Firefox is doing so well: pre-fetching.
Google is the default search engine for Firefox. Every time a Firefox user makes a web search the browser prefetches the first page of links automatically overstating Firefox's share.
IE7 doesn't do prefetch.
http://www.builderau.com.au/blogs/betaliving/viewblogpost.htm?p=339270733
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#19 By
7754 (216.160.8.41)
at
12/19/2006 3:49:39 PM
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IE7 doesn't do prefetch.
That's too bad. ISA does some of that automatically, but that isn't a bad feature to build into IE 7 (as an option) as well.
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#20 By
32132 (142.32.208.232)
at
12/19/2006 4:14:40 PM
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#19 The following is an untested example of why prefetching is not good from the link I provided:
"While generally a handy feature to speed up browsing performance, the drawbacks are seen when an innocent search query will return illicit or pornographic results. An example of such a term is "bear videos", the top result being an explicit personal site complete with videos."
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