Posts Tagged ‘IE9’

Microsoft has just launched its fall IE advertising campaign and maintains the strategy of touting IE’s superior security features. A website that has been created in partnership with the Online Trust Alliance, the Identity Theft Council, and the Anti-Phishing Working Group, Microsoft concludes that IE achieves a perfect score in browser security and both Chrome and Firefox will leave you unprotected against certain attacks.

Google’s Chrome developer team has a good reason to celebrate. For the very first time. Google surpassed IE8 with a single version of its browser. For two days, Chrome 14 maintained the role of, the world’s most popular browser as it trumped IE8 by more than half a point of market share.

The Web Standards Project has updated its Acid3 test, which has been considered as a browser benchmark for web standards compatibility, but was recently criticized for using outdated technologies.

As the browser strategy of Microsoft, Mozilla and Google unfolds, we are noticing a seismic shift in the browser landscape. Google is claiming a bigger slice of the market every month, which gives the company greater control of web trends. A near perfect browser update model is supporting Chrome’s success, while Microsoft and Mozilla are struggling with a fragmented platform that could turn into a  nightmare to support. Especially Mozilla needs to figure out how to deal with requests for a stable platform model.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer hit a historic market share low this weekend, with IE share dropping below 40% for the first time in about 13 years, which falls into the product time frame of IE4.

NSS Labs published the latest results of a test that evaluated the vulnerability of web browser to socially engineered malware. IE9 won by a clear margin.

Interview - We had a chance to chat with Johnathan Nightingale Mozilla’s Director of Firefox Engineering about Firefox’ current challenges, its opportunities, its rivals, trends and its future.

Aptiquant, a company that recently released a report that tries to correlate web browsers and the intelligence level of their users said that it has received tons of hate mail and even a threat of being sued by IE users. Oh, and there is one other noteworthy update.

I have to admit that Google’s ability to grow Chrome’s market share at a breathtaking pace is still a mystery to us as advertising alone cannot account for all gains – or we would see IE9 in a completely different position today. However, as of this morning, we are convinced that Mozilla knows why Google got it right and why Microsoft got it entirely wrong.

In a market as competitive as web browsers, you don’t have to wait for your rivals to take advantage of your weaknesses. If you are careless enough to shoot yourself into the foot, it’s a given that you will be ridiculed and any open wound will be exploited.

The June browser market share numbers are out. They are close to our previous predictions and show accelerating growth for Chrome, a slow decline for IE and a sharp drop for Firefox, which is under increasing pressure to reinvent itself.

Analysis - There is no browser war. Browsers have evolved some time ago from a basic feature set that enables us to navigate the Internet to strategic tools that are placed to conquer the towers that control the Internet. We are in the middle of a platform war that should end in a stalemate, but is likely to reveal a clear winner again. Google has just turned around a battle that was lost a long time ago. And looks can be deceiving: It may not be the browser that is best for all users.