IE8 Officially Becomes World’s Most-Used Browser

[z3r010]

IE8 Officially Becomes World’s Most-Used Browser

This week, Net Applications released their January browser market share report. Their report shows that Internet Explorer 8 is not only the most popular browser on Windows with 27.9% usage share, but that it now has 25.6% of market share across all OS’s on a worldwide-weighted usage share basis (data provided by Net Applications). We launched just less than a year ago, so it’s both humbling and thrilling to see so many people choose our product so quickly – making it the most popular browser of choice worldwide.

There are many reasons people choose which browser to use. Most people want to know and trust the company behind their browser. And people are looking a browser that protects them – and their privacy online. In an August 13th, 2009 post on the IEBlog, we announced Internet Explorer 8’s SmartScreen Filter had hit over 80 million malware blocks. But that was back in August. As of today, Internet Explorer 8 has done over 350 million malware blocks. You can see Internet Explorer 8’s SmartScreen Filter in action in this blog post. Internet Explorer 8’s SmartScreen Filter blocks malware over 2 million times a day.

Phishing is a very serious threat to people browsing the Internet today – a criminal attempt to secure people’s personal information online, generally spread through email directing unsuspecting consumers to fake websites and asking them to enter sensitive information . With Internet Explorer 7, we introduced the Phishing Filter, and have continued to improve on it in Internet Explorer 8. Together, Internet Explorer 7 and 8 have blocked a total of over 125 million phishing sites.

You may have recently heard about organizations including Google recommending that people update their browsers and move off older versions, such as the nearly decade-old Internet Explorer 6.  Think about what technology and the Internet were like in the year 2000 – and consider how they’ve evolved since then. In 2000, “phishing” was something that happened at the lake, not online. There was no social networking, no RSS feeds, and no real blogs. It was a different time – and people’s browsing needs were different. Today’s Internet calls for more.

We support this recommendation to move off Internet Explorer 6. Modern browsers such as Internet Explorer 8 bring benefits for customers and developers alike. We realize there are some customers today who depend on Internet Explorer 6, and while we continue to support them through the lifecycle of the product, we are also investing in the tools and training to help them upgrade as well.

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[Lordbob75]

There are many reasons people choose which browser to use. Most people want to know and trust the company behind their browser. And people are looking a browser that protects them – and their privacy online.

Most people just use the browser that comes with their computer.... IE8...

This would explain those ratings.

~Lordbob

 

[palz]

I'm a Chrome user myself, but when I first installed 7 and was forced to use IE, I must say I wasn't disappointed. We can all agree IE7 sucked, so this was a surprise for me.

-pâłž

 

[Nigsy]

I'm a Chrome user myself, but when I first installed 7 and was forced to use IE, I must say I wasn't disappointed. We can all agree IE7 sucked, so this was a surprise for me.

-pâłž

Not that much of a suprise, most users go with whatevers installed, so IE would be the most popular choice, and most users would upgrade when the auto update said to. Most coorporate users are on IE so again no suprise there.
Also a lot of regular users are afraid to jump of the MS merry go round as they are worried about viruses that lurk out there, totaly oblivious to the fact that most of theese threats activley target IE and MS vulnerabilities!
I'm guessing that it only people like us who, may not be experts, but are a bit more PC savvy, that know the options available if we don't want to use IE. I'm on FFox personally, really couldn't get used to chrome.

 

[madtownidiot]

IE only gets the most use because the clueless masses out there don't know there's anything better out there.

 

[KazeNoKoe23]

There are many reasons people choose which browser to use. Most people want to know and trust the company behind their browser. And people are looking a browser that protects them – and their privacy online.

Most people just use the browser that comes with their computer.... IE8...

This would explain those ratings.

~Lordbob

IE8 usually only comes with a computer that has Windows 7 pre-installed, and as much as we love 7, I don't think it's up that far yet in terms of market share.

 

[monkeys breath]

There are many reasons people choose which browser to use. Most people want to know and trust the company behind their browser. And people are looking a browser that protects them – and their privacy online.

Most people just use the browser that comes with their computer.... IE8...

This would explain those ratings.

~Lordbob

you got that 100% right. i only use ie8 if i have no other choice. pages that open instantly in fifefox can take several minutes in ie. as far as i am concerned i might as be running ie5 instead of ie8.

 

[F1FAN]

they ruined firefox with the start up time. I used to use it but i now use IE8 and safari. chrome is ok but a bit basic.

 

[pillainp]

I'm a Maxthon2 user, and that uses the IE engine with icing.

FF user since 2.x, and recent Chrome user (for Facebook only).

IE has been getting better and better, so that it now offers a lot of the same security that its rivals claim to do. IE8 has been a real revelation in regard to friendliness and security; with IE7Pro, it is definitely in the running again.

I have stopped using FF entirely, because I see that with every new version it has become slower and slower. One of the main advantages that FF offered me was that it could disregard ISP-imposed DL limits, but that is not the case with the last few versions, so I see no reason to stick with it at all.

Besides, Max2 offers a lot of what FF claims to, the difference being that Max2 does it all out of the box (DL manager, Ad/popup blocking, etc) while FF requires me to download an addon/extensions for each of those and a variety of other functions built into Max2.

Max2 over IE8 is doing everything I need and doing it fine, so I will not fix what is not broken.

 

[Boastree]

Since I put Win 7 on my computer I have used FF, Chrome, Opera...and have returned to IE 8 every time a little diappointed of the hype associated with wth others. I DO NOT just use email and look at pictures. I USE the internet to the fullest and I am VERY satisfied with IE8 now that I have LEARNED how to teak and use it. BUT...I use a 32 bit OS and 32 bit browser. A little slower, may be, than 64 perhaps but ROCK SOLID!

 

[Merlin2000]

Internet Explorer has been LOSING its' market share over the past year - an 8% decrease. See Browser market share

As better browsers come out, Internet Explorer will continue to lose it's place as the most commonly used browser. IE8 hasn't been out long enough to really know how good/bad it is, hopefully it's better than its' predecessors.

As long as Microsoft ships out with IE, it's never going to go away... nor should it. Unfortunately, FireFox isn't good enough to be used by the average user. Hopefully some day it will support all of the functionality that IE supports, and more.

I still can't believe FF ships without flash. I wish the default download for FF was loaded up with all the tools an average user would need, and then a secondary version ships without all the bells and whistles. The fact that the file size is so small, doesn't mean anything to me with FF. I don't care that IE maybe require 20mb of space to run, while FF is only 5mb, I care about how ready it is out of the box. Ahhh, FireFox will learn sooner or later

 

[suprattalljdm]

I use Chrome but am getting kinda worried that with every update it seems it uses more and more memory, which is the reason I left Firefox in the first place.

 

[Pwnnned]

To be honest, I actually don't understand all the negative comments with some exceptions from a few posts. Internet Explorer 8 isn't really as bad as most of you make it sound. I can also guarantee some of you making those negative comments never actually even used Internet Explorer 8 before because of past versions of the browser. Microsoft is taking small steps at a time to making the browser better and better. I am actually an active user of Google Chrome, though I do use Internet Explorer 8 when I have to.

 

[monkeys breath]

To be honest, I actually don't understand all the negative comments with some exceptions from a few posts. Internet Explorer 8 isn't really as bad as most of you make it sound. I can also guarantee some of you making those negative comments never actually even used Internet Explorer 8 before because of past versions of the browser. Microsoft is taking small steps at a time to making the browser better and better. I am actually an active user of Google Chrome, though I do use Internet Explorer 8 when I have to.

like it or not ie8 is a living joke.

 

[KazeNoKoe23]

like it or not ie8 is a living joke.

:sarc: Based on what exactly? I'm a devoted Firefox user but IE8 is a step ahead of its predecessor. IE6 was a joke, no doubt, but IE8 on Vista or 7 with UAC enabled is a pretty secure browser, plus it's speedy.

 

[madtownidiot]

Firefox starts up with no perceptible delay when started from quicklaunch on my system. Much faster than IE8. It renders pages in 1/5th the time IE does. Enough with the rhetoric. Do you people want honest opinions or is the focus of this forum to line up and kiss bill gate's A**

 

[monkeys breath]

like it or not ie8 is a living joke.

:sarc: Based on what exactly? I'm a devoted Firefox user but IE8 is a step ahead of its predecessor. IE6 was a joke, no doubt, but IE8 on Vista or 7 with UAC enabled is a pretty secure browser, plus it's speedy.

like i stated in a previous post sites that load instantly in firefox can take several minutes to load in ie8. if you call being able to go fix a sandwich and come back and the page is still loading speedy then yes ie8 is speedy.

 

[Pwnnned]

like it or not ie8 is a living joke.

:sarc: Based on what exactly? I'm a devoted Firefox user but IE8 is a step ahead of its predecessor. IE6 was a joke, no doubt, but IE8 on Vista or 7 with UAC enabled is a pretty secure browser, plus it's speedy.

like i stated in a previous post sites that load instantly in firefox can take several minutes to load in ie8. if you call being able to go fix a sandwich and come back and the page is still loading speedy then yes ie8 is speedy.

Several minutes? Look, possibly several minutes on your computer could be due to your internet connection because it seems completely fine running on mine. As I said before, its a decent browser which is getting better over time.

 

[madtownidiot]

Several minutes? Look, possibly several minutes on your computer could be due to your internet connection because it seems completely fine running on mine. As I said before, its a decent browser which is getting better over time.

Or trying to load a page that's bloated with flash ads that only load when using a browser crippled by Active X based malware.

 

[UrbanBounca]

I'm baffled that people are actually defending IE8 in terms of speed. There is no doubt that IE8 has gotten more secure, especially since IE6, but to actually defend the browser saying it's speedy is exaggerating a little bit. IE8 doesn't take minutes to load, as someone has already stated, but to even compare it to Firefox or Chrome is pretty ridiculous. Firefox 3.6 is the most bloated Firefox browser to date, and it's still much faster than IE.

For the record, we use IE8 at work, and it's only 'cause it's the browser that came with the O/S.