100 million IE7 users

Microsoft claims there have been 100 million IE7 downloads in this CNET article.

They go on to say:

…over 25 percent of all visitors to Web sites in the U.S. were using IE7, making IE7 the second most used browser after IE6.

Maybe, but it doesn’t quite add up to what I am seeing. Out of the most recent 50,000 hits to Interactive Mathematics, the browser use is as follows:

IE		77.02%
FF		18.01%
Safari		2.27% 

Out of all of the IE users, my stats show around 26% with IE7:

Internet Explorer v6.0	71.90%
Internet Explorer v7.0	25.70%
Internet Explorer v5.5	1.81% 

But this means 25.7% of 77.02% = 19.8% of the TOTAL users are browsing with IE7, not 25% of total users. At least to my site, anyway. Most of the visitors to the maths site will be from education, either students (who will be more tech-savvy and likely to be using Win/Firefox or Mac/Safari,) or academics (are they the remaining IE 5.5 users…?).

Their claim that IE7 is the second most popular browser appear to be true since 18% are using Firefox.

Does it matter?

It is interesting how IE7 penetration is rapidly increasing, now that it has been officially released. I hate it less than I used to back in Feb 06, largely because it now behaves a lot better than it used to. Its CSS rendering is better than IE6′s, but still not perfect. I guess all these new IE7 users are impressed with all the innovations that were ripped off Firefox in the first place. Anyway, I no longer have the violent desire to remove it from my system all the time.

I’m wondering about the implications for Vista. I thought Vista might be a bomb relative to previous versions of Windows (upgrade fatigue? I’m certainly suffering from it.) But it looks like Micro$oft still has plenty of clout.

Footnote: On this blog, Firefox share continues to increase:

IE	52.89%
FF	43.04%

Go Firefox.

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3 Comments on “100 million IE7 users”

  1. Peter says:

    IE7 is heaps better than IE6. I have not used Firefox much, but I’ll take your word for it.

    Why do so many people hate Microsoft? You don’t get to be that popular with bad software.

  2. M Meriage says:

    As of tonight I really do hate IE7. Trying to make an online photo album that exhibits thumbs that open to a large view in a child window is a nightmare. After searching for one whole day for someone who knew what to do, I decided to tour some other galleries. Guess what they all just use a back and forth from thumb to full view method that is really cumbersome. But it is all we can do now with IE7 to foul things up. Flash is out, the client wants to update using Contribute.

  3. Murray says:

    Thanks, M for your input.

    Update: For this blog, the stats for January so far reveal:

    Internet Explorer  	56.10%
    Firefox 	37.53%
    Safari 	4.62%
    AOL's Browser 	0.86%
    Netscape 	0.62% 	

    FF share has dropped as IE7 has increased.

    For Interactive Mathematics, the proportion is as follows:

    Internet Explorer  	69.06%
    Firefox 	25.29%
    Safari 	4.25%
    AOL's Browser 	0.65%
    Netscape 	0.44% 

    So Firefox is still doing respectably well and has gained on IE.

    It’s sad to see Netscape on its last legs and now that it is absorbed into the Mozilla camp, I guess it will totally disappear soon.

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