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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: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday January 05 2017, @07:24PM
Almost everyone supports Firefox, which leads me to believe you've got something against them too.
Since it's topical(except to the person who modded me off topic before, not sure what they think the topic is), just in the last couple days, Google released a patch to Chrome that would uninstall Ad Nauseum [adnauseam.io] from anyone who manually installed it themselves in Chrome(it was never available through the ad-on store, naturally).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 05 2017, @08:06PM
Firefox has been swiftly turning awful and there's no way I would run it with defaults on bare hardware. I use a gecko-based browser with noscript, as well as lynx, and most google services either block both completely or have serious issues with them. Most *can* be made to work in gecko with careful whitelisting but it's a pain and also I don't WANT their scripts whitelisted on other pages which is an unavoidable side-effect. So here comes the sandboxed old IE. They can do whatever the heck they want but it all goes off to /dev/null at the end of the day and it can access nothing of interest to anyone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 05 2017, @08:23PM
It is not 'awful' or 'better' than chrome. For that mater chrome is neither better or worse than Firefox. That is from a user POV. Technically chrome is the better choice. With a better sandbox and better javascript subsystem.
I do however know google has the lead. My wife is looking for a job. No less than 2 different people said 'click on google to open the internet' for some sort of video share thing. Those are just the ones she has told me about.
It is a web browser. Thats it.
I stick with firefox simply because I like no-script better than the ones offered in the chrome eco system. That is just a personal preference. I have also noticed in chrome the cache system is rather flaky. As in it will build up 100-200 meg of cache then decide 'fuck that noise' and just delete the whole thing and start over. I like adblock plus gui better but am using ublock which is in the chrome eco system. The gui for ADP is better but it is slower and they decided adverts are actually cool.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday January 06 2017, @05:06PM
Sorry, not everything is perfectly relative, some things really are better than others. The Chrome UI is objectively awful, a major regression in a field already dominated by programs with really poorly thought out UIs, and Firefox (also Edge) quickly started imitating its misfeatures. And beyond the UI, Chrome is produced by an ad company. Just think about that for a moment and let it sink in. That's why they've obstructed decent no-scripting on chrome and they're never going to change on that.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?