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Firefox surpasses IE6's browser share in October

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On November 4, 2009, 8:19 PM EST

October 2009's browser stats are in, and while Microsoft's Internet Explorer still lead the pack, IE6 has finally been surpassed by Firefox. Internet Explorer continued its descent, losing 1.07% browser share (from 65.71% to 64.64%), Firefox's share grew .32%, from 23.75% to 24.07%, Safari's share rose .18% to 4.42%, and Chrome furthered its lead on Opera, with the former gaining .41% (from 3.17% to 3.58%) and the latter declining .02% (from 2.19% to 2.17%).


IE6 is still accounted for some 23.3% of total Internet Explorer usage -- more than any other version. IE7 claimed 18.16%, IE8 18.12% and IE8 compatibility mode had 2.42%. Firefox 3.5 has taken off, accounting for 13.9% of all Firefox use, version 3.0 was attributed with 8.79%, and Firefox 2.0 only held a 1.14% sliver. Safari 4.0 (3.52%) and Chrome 3.0 (3.14%) are almost entirely responsible for their individual shares.

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User Comments (45)

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Guest
on November 5, 2009
8:56 AM

I dunno why Opera is last. It's by far the best browser. Firefox is so overrated.. just like google.

Reply

jazboy
on November 5, 2009
9:07 AM

The reason for IE to having most of the share is because most of the corporate world supports only IE. But the way firefox is growing , i don't think that day is very far where firefox will be having atleaset half of market share.

Reply

klepto12
on November 5, 2009
10:16 AM

first of all firefox is a far better browser than opera you obviously dont know what you are talking about i mean look at the shear number of firefox downloads vs opera not one person i know uses opera and i work at an internet company everyone uses firefox and for some things IE8 but mainly firefox.

Reply

TomSEA
on November 5, 2009
10:24 AM

Props to Firefox for taking the fight to the big gorilla on the block and giving us users some choices. I've been using it for years on my home PC but am stuck using IE7 at work. Firefox's functionality and speed blows IE6 & 7 clear out of the water.

Reply

FrankTank
on November 5, 2009
10:35 AM

klepto12 said:

its not that IE is that popular its that every pc that runs windows comes standard with IE already there and most people dont know any better.

Tell me about it. I wouldn't have even known about firefox if it hadn't been for using it on my brother in laws PC while on vacation at their home last year. Once I used it and saw how much better of a browser it was I would hooked and as soon as I got home I immediately downloaded it and haven't looked back.

Reply

namesdontmatter
on November 5, 2009
10:40 AM

I would like to use Chrome more often, but google's habitual collecting every bit of data about you doesn't appeal to me. There's another browser which is based on Chrome called SW Iron which looks pretty good, and it has everything Chrome does, minus the data collecting.

Reply

Guest
on November 5, 2009
12:02 PM

""about i mean look at the shear number of firefox downloads vs opera ""

I've downloaded Firefox on a couple occasions over the years to see what the fuss was about. I deleted it the same day...and yes I DO know what I'm talking about. One thing we can all agree on is that IE sucks.

Reply

lynxon
on November 5, 2009
12:08 PM

Hooray for Firefox and my thousands of addons! That must be the biggest reason why I could never switch to Chrome or any other browser for my day-to-day browsing, I just couldn't live without all those addons, although I do have Chrome installed for the just in case moments.

Reply

slh28
on November 5, 2009
12:29 PM

I've tried using opera and for whatever reason it's much slower loading up my homepage (which is igoogle) than firefox, chrome or IE. I like opera's features though, but the load up time is the dealbreaker for me. And to be honest I only know one person who uses opera, and that's because he works for opera lol.

Reply

Colonel Lance
on November 5, 2009
2:44 PM

Woot! go Firefox!

Reply

Guest
on November 5, 2009
3:01 PM

I tried Firefox but return to Opera. Opera has the best mouse gesture features. For those sites that don't play well then IE6 it is.

Reply

Shalimar
on November 5, 2009
3:43 PM

Once again FF FTW!!! IE continues to be beyond shoddy coding so it needs to DIE

Reply

Xclusiveitalian
on November 5, 2009
6:37 PM

I never heard of Opera but it seems to be doing horribly bad. Im not surprised IE is doing so good people consider it a default and most/all schools use it because they don't care about quality just providing an option to students. My college has more than 1,000 computers and every single one has Windows Xp professional installed and main browser is IE. Safari and firefox are more personal use. I don't really see firefox ever being on top though as long as schools and such just keep using IE.

Reply

Beggars
on November 5, 2009
8:19 PM

It's great Firefox has surpassed Internet Explorer 6's market share, but Firefox these days isn't exactly a stable browser. Firefox 3.5.4 repeatedly uses excess amounts of CPU and sometimes over 1gb of RAM with minimal extensions, maybe that's why some people still use Internet Explorer 6 most likely? Who knows.

I am a web developer, and nothing makes me more happy than seeing the market share of the world's most evil web browser dwindling, but I can't help but feel that Firefox isn't going to always be the saint we think it is.

Nothing can ever be as bad as IE6.

Reply

ken777
on November 5, 2009
8:27 PM

It would be interesting to see a similar browser share breakdown for mobile devices.

Reply

Puiu
on November 6, 2009
1:03 AM

ken777 said:

It would be interesting to see a similar browser share breakdown for mobile devices.

I also want to know the shares of each mobile browser. Maybe techspot will do one for us.

Reply

ellulbrian
on November 6, 2009
9:35 AM

my fav browser Opera is declining?! I find it quite good and innovative. The last feature which I figured out was Opera link. The high % of IE users don't even know what is a browser, let the numbers roll...

Reply

Guest
on November 6, 2009
2:02 PM

I can't fathom why anyone would use the archaic and sluggish Internet Explorer. Firefox has always been my favorite until a year ago when Chrome debuted. I only decided to try it out of curiosity and to my astonishment, it made even Firefox seem bloated and slow as molasses.

Google's browser is by far the fastest and snappiest browser available today. I love it not only for it's sheer speed, but also it's simplicity. Less is More. Much more, in this case!

Reply

Nirkon
on November 6, 2009
2:10 PM

Why is IE8 Compatibility mode counted as a different percentage? isn't it just a mode?

Reply

Guest
on November 9, 2009
12:23 PM

You can't "uninstall" any IE because it is an integral part of Windows. This is the reason for several anti-trust lawsuits against M$.

Reply

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