David Risley is the founder of PCMech.com. He is the brains, the thinker, the writer, the nerd.According to a story on ComputerWorld, market share of Apple’s Safari web browser as well as usage of Mozilla Firefox both dropped in the last month. Internet Explorer market share actually gained.
Market share for Safari dropped from 5.8% to 5.5%. Firefox usage went from 17.8% to 17%. Internet Explorer usage went from 74.8% to 76%.
I’m not exactly sure what would explain the shift, although that shift isn’t very large.
Apple did make news not long ago for using Apple Update to promote Safari to Windows users who were not running it. This made some people angry, including John Lily, CEO of Mozilla. He lambasted Apple in a blog post where he compared the practice to malware and said it “undermines the Internet”.
My guess is that IE usage increased slightly because of a new wave of people using Windows Update because they are looking for service packs for XP and Vista. Windows XP SP3 is rolling out currently whereas Vista SP1 hasn’t yet officially made its way to Windows Update. But, I have little doubt that people checking Windows Update is leading to the increase in usage of Internet Explorer.
While Safari market share dropped overall, their update strategy certainly was effective when it comes specifically to Windows users. A story on Gizmodo shows that Safari usage on Windows tripled.
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Rich Menga, a native New Englander residing in Tampa Bay Florida, 
5/3/2008 1:27 pm
It could very well be that people have set their browsers to tell a site that they are running IE on XP, and actually be running Firefox or Safari on a Mac. I have set the browsers that way for a long time to trick sites into working.
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5/3/2008 8:45 pm
Og! Goody!!!
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5/4/2008 10:06 pm
My choice is Firefox, and i know that most bloggers use it too.
As you said the reason might be in Windows Update, and many people testing the new IE7
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5/5/2008 4:35 am
I find those percentages unbelievable. I much prefer FireFox than IE. FF has a much cleaner and uncluttered page and much easier to navigate. My website does not look any good on IE either.
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