Browser war hots up

Putting aside the quote "There are lies, damed lies, and statistics" for just one second, we are starting to see some figures that would indicate IE is starting to lose it's grip. For many years IE was holding between 85% and 95% of the market in terms of browsers people were using to visit sites on the Internet.

On linux.co.uk, it's now down to 46%.

"Foul!" I hear you cry, "that's because everyone visiting the site is a Linux user and hasn't got access to Internet Explorer!".

Well, here's the raw access information showing who is using what in the browser world, I think you'll agree that in this context the picture certainly isn't one of complete IE dominance;

All well and good, but obviously skewed given the user-base in question. What we need now is to see how many people are using Windows, and how many are using, god forbid, something else (!)

What do you know! Reasonably large proportion of Windows users!

Let's do a little math, if 68% of users are using Windows, and 46% are using Internet Explorer, this must mean that 22% of Windows users must be using something else, and in most cases that something else us going to be Firefox.

This may not sound like much, but this is a sample of hundreds of millions of Internet users and a 10% swing could easily represent be 20 million people.

The down-load-ometer

Another telling sign is the World Record set by Mozilla on the 18th of June when it clocked  8,002,530 downloads of Firefox version 3.

"As the arbiter and recorder of the world's amazing facts, Guinness World Records is pleased to add Mozilla's achievement to our archives," confirmed Guinness World Records manager Gareth Deaves in a statement.

Given many people get their updates automatically via their distribution (I know I do) this sounds like a huge figure for one 24 hour slot, not least as I do updates weekly at best.

If you are one of the 68% of people viewing this site using Windows, and one of the 46% of people still using Internet Explorer, take a look here and see what all the fuss is about!