Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge browsers may be near the bottom of their unprecedented crash in user share, measurements published Sunday show.
Analytics vendor Net Applications reported that the user share of IE and Edge -- an estimate of the proportion of the world's personal computer owners who ran those browsers -- dropped by seven-tenths of a percentage point in December, falling to a combined 26.2%.
That seven-tenths of a point decline was notable because it was less than half that of the browsers' average monthly reductions over the last 12, six and three months, which were 1.9, 1.8 and 1.5 points, respectively. The slowly-shrinking averages over the three different spans supported the idea that IE and Edge may be reaching rock bottom.
Microsoft's browser collapse has been unparalleled. In 2016, IE and Edge -- Net Applications pours their user share into the same "bucket" -- shed 20.1 points, representing 43% of its December 2015 share. No other browser has bled that much user share that quickly, with the possible exception of Netscape Navigator in the 1990s.
I know we love to hate Microsoft in general and IE in particular, but is Edge that bad?
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 3, Interesting) by richtopia on Thursday January 05 2017, @05:37PM
I wish I could ask if Edge is good or bad, but the browser only supports Windows 10. IE 11 is acceptable when I use it on Win7.
I do want more rendering engines in the wild: Chrome is quickly becoming the dominant browser and I have encountered websites that only play nice on Chrome - not other Blink (Opera, Vivaldi) or WebKit (Otter Browser) browsers. Chrome may provide a very good experience, but I do not want to be forced to use the browser.