Browser Market Share - January 2012 Final

http://www.conceivablytech.com/10121/products/2012-the-year-the-old-browser-died

 

More crystal balls ...

 

Yep. More of that damn math. lol

 

Well, I'd hesitate to label statistics as 'maths' LOL.

For instance according to the present (time of posting) a Wilders' poll places Mozilla Firefox as the most popular browser on this forum with 65 votes (43.33%). Google Chrome, second place at 33 votes (22.00%) is only almost half as popular. Until recently on this forum, an AV poll showed MSE as being the most popular, making me fashionable again (as I use MSE & have Fx as my default browser), after years of being the cyberspace equivalence of wearing flared trousers & having a mullet hairstyle.

I'm not arguing with your 'maths' aka 'statistics' about Chrome as a whole, but I am seriously still doubting these so-called statistical predictions of the inevitable demise of Firefox.

I also doubt that I am that 'fashionable'.

 

If the polls linked were taking a sample size of 65 no one would take them very seriously.

Statistics is fundamentally mathematics both in implementation and analysis. At most it's considered a separate science based in math. It would kind of be like saying "Physics isn't math" when it's basically calculus + theory.

Butttttt I know better than to start =p

 

Which is kind of my point.

Possibly, but they can often be misleading.

I am not too sure if that's a cogent analogy. The laws of physics are not necessarily based on empirical data that can be collected subjectively & without forms of bias. Mr Scott from Star Trek didn't believe you could easily change the laws of physics, if at all, remember.

Sorry, I'll go & play with ScriptNo some more.

 

I don't trust StatCounter's numbers to be representative.

 

Which could be a definite flaw when calculating 'statistics'. Wasn't it Dostoyevsky who said 'sometimes 2+2 = 5?'

 

I think it was Google or was it my ex-boss that got fired

 

Whose do you trust? They all show the same trends, which is my point. You can't extrapolate definitive ratios from a single analysis but you can definitely see trends, which (at least when I was taught) is really what you're looking for in statistics.

I'll be interested to see how IE10 actually does change things up.

 

Yeah, numeracy these days isn't as good as it was, is it?

 

Like the hula hoop?

 

Yep, fads definitely show up in these things and you could probably attribute everything we've seen to a fad. You just have to ask at what point it stops being a fad I suppose.

 

I suspect that's the £64,000,000 question.

 

Wikipedia has a good article on that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

Today, I think the most representative numbers come from Net Applications (OneStat is even better, but they stopped releasing the numbers to the public).

The trend you talk about is there, but it's not going that "fast". I recall you drawing some conclusions based on the "fastness"/speed of the trend showed by StatCounter - this may be wrong.

Edit: and a new trend may be showing up: https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=317470

 

This should bring much joy to people who are dependent on this new trend for their livelihood. If true, it saddens me because the "new trend" would mean a return of the "works best with this browser and this browser alone" nonsense that people had to tolerate a few years ago. Of course, the vendor of that browser, and employees, and shareholders of that vendor will do their best to bring back those days.

By the way, it's interesting to note that some people are very vocal about their right to privacy but don't seem so concerned about freedom to choose their hardware or software which is what this "new trend", if true, will do its best to kill.

 

Some people live in the past most of the time and this is not healthy.

On the quoted post, you managed to spread the usual FUD all the while literally ignoring the huge work Microsoft has been doing together with W3C to bring to reality the same markup goal: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/04/14/same-markup-writing-cross-browser-code.aspx

Get your facts straight and try again.

 

There tone has changed now that they've been humbled by the likes of Firefox and Netscape. Who's to say it would not change back when they're at the reigns again?

It's impossible to say. I doubt MS is making a comeback frankly. I'm personally really happy with the current state of things. Almost completely even between the top 3 browsers in the market. I'd like it to be a little more evenly split but this is the perfect environment for development/ competition.

EDIT: Though I don't think it will last. Maybe this is the start to a new trend but most likely it's an outlier/ a blip. We'll see in a few months. If the trends go the way they've been going for like... over a year now probably - it'll be Chrome where IE used to be.

 

All trends have to start somewhere. Ignoring data isn't really the safest thing to do. And it's quite easy to dismiss the past as FUD if one is motivated (WHY) enough to do so.

 

Yep, all trends have to start somewhere. I agree. It's just that you don't typically see a year of data going one way and then suddenly it goes the opposite way without some major change.

It could absolutely be the start of the trend. But a single data point is not a trend - we have to wait until next month to see. Even then I wouldn't call it a trend and I'd wait at least another month before calling it one.

I'd look to day to day data but it's not really worth it - at that level it's impossible to tell what's going on.

 

I'm just skeptic regarding a number of things, including the typical "anti-microsoft" talk.

Plus, I prefer to analyze a company for what it has been doing in recent years/present. (like the majority of investors, lol)

 

Which is fine. But it's worth taking into account that in recent years it's lost a ton of power in terms of influence over browsers. IE doesn't have the market power to strongarm standards like it used to.

So maybe MS is just trying to be the friendly company that adheres to standards or maybe they just don't have any other choice so they embrace it.

Either way it's good for now, just maybe not so good if they ever get that power back.

 

Yes, hegemony = bad; competition = good (usually).

 

Interesting article, although the traditional web browser won't completely die in just a year.