One From United Press International says The Firefox browser of California’s Mozilla Foundation, which competes with Microsoft Corp.s’ Internet Explorer, gained market share last month
Firefox’s market share rose to 8 percent in May, up from 7.38 percent in April, while Internet Explorer’s market share fell 0.77 percent to 87.23 percent, IDG News Service reported Tuesday.
This is hardly surprising…
…considering the fact that it’s one of the most extensible browsers around, its development stays active, it has great features (pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, and integrated Google searching), and most of all: it’s free. For those unfamiliar with Firefox, this WIRED article is a good overview.
Firefox market share
A couple of months ago, PC Magazine reported (unless it was PC World) that 20% of people using its online site were running Firefox.
For Cites & Insights , the share for 2005 appears to be almost exactly 10% Firefox. (I guess I have “typical” readers, since Mac OS is 2.6% of OS access, which is just barely higher than the Mac’s general 2% market share.)
For me, it’s speed and clarity: Firefox is faster to load, keeps the interface overhead low (unlike, for example, Opera), and (also unlike Opera) is compatible with almost everything that’s not deliberately designed to require IE.