David Naylor: Blog

Is Bill Gates Not Getting It?

In an analysis by Tim Weber over at BBC News, regarding the competition Microsoft is currently having to deal with, Bill Gates is quoted: (on the subject of Firefox)

"I played around with it a bit, but it's just another browser, and IE [Microsoft's Internet Explorer] is better," Mr Gates told me, and challenged my assertion that Firefox's 'market share' is growing rapidly.

"So much software gets downloaded all the time, but do people actually use it?" he argued.

Just another browser, eh? IE is better is it? How come then that almost ten percent of the Internet's users already ditched IE, counting only from the beginning of November? When (ex-) IE users realize how easy and efficient web surfing actually can be if you're only using the right software, in my experience, they seldom look back.

The lowest Firefox usage figure at the moment is 5.69%. That figure, though, is now close to three months old, so we can easily reckon on Firefox being at a minimum figure of around 7% now. (We'll soon find out – Web Side Story are due to release a new lot of numbers during this week.)

Update: It seems the page i linked to at WebSideStory has been removed. Maybe this is because of the imminent update.

Update 2: WebSideStory have now released the update, giving Firefox 6.75% of the US usage.

Labels: browsers, firefox, internet explorer

Posted by David Naylor at 16:29