Browser ballot hurts Internet Explorer
By Barry Collins and Reuters
Posted on 22 Mar 2010 at 11:10
Internet Explorer has lost market share in major European markets, such as France, Britain and Italy, following the launch of the Windows browser ballot.
The browser ballot gives users the choice of 12 rival browsers, if Internet Explorer is installed as the default browser.
According to web statistics firm Statcounter, Internet Explorer's share of all web surfing has dropped by 2.5% in France, 1% in Britain and 1.3% in Italy over the past month.
Browser shoot-out
We test the seven hidden browsers in the Windows ballotOpera, the fourth largest browser firm, has seen downloads more than double in Europe because of the choice screen, with downloads in Italy, Spain and Poland more than tripling.
Mozilla says it has also seen a surge in interest. "We have seen significant growth in the number of new Firefox users as a result of the ballot choice screen," said a Mozilla spokesperson. "We expect these numbers to increase as the ballot choice screen fully rolls out across all countries."
Smaller web browsers, which have expressed concern that they're being squeezed out of the picture, have seen much lower levels of growth. At first sight, Microsoft's ballot screen shows only Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome. It isn't immediately obvious that the seven other choices are available by scrolling to the right.
"To date, new downloads of Flock originating from the browser choice screen have only contributed marginally to growth in overall downloads," said the makers of Flock in a statement. "This is also the case for the other browsers not on the main screen."
"We hope that the changes recommended in our urgent petition to the European Commission are implemented so that all the browsers that have been placed to the right of the main screen will have a reasonable chance of being found and considered by European consumers," Flock added.
From around the web
If you squeeze all the minor web browsers onto the main screen each browser will get smaller and more icon-like, favouring the "familiar" IE logo, surely?
By SwissMac on 22 Mar 2010 
"It isn't immediately obvious that the seven other choices are available by scrolling to the right."
Surely it is very obvious by the horizontal scroll bar sitting under the browser software names!!!! I saw the scroll bar very clearly and yet I have to wear glasses!!
I think the reason why the smaller browser have seen lower downloads is because they are less well known than the big players, and also the smaller browsers are simply not as good as the likes of Firefox, Chrome and Opera.
By KlingonBatleth on 22 Mar 2010
News Just in :)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8580716.stm
I bet M$ fans will have a field day tomorrow :)
By nicomo on 22 Mar 2010
Germany warns against using the Firefox browser
@nicomo I'm not for or against MS but it does show that all the major browsers suffer from security issues from time to time. And with relevance to this article, as FF becomes more popular, the bad guys will spend more of their time looking for waeknesses in FF's readily available open source code.
By rjp2000 on 23 Mar 2010
Who cares?
Would the "average" first-time user of Windows even realise there was a choice of browsers? Would they instinctively 'know' which was 'better'? Why should they waste time worrying about it, they'll probably just load the first one they see.
Personally I have never had a problem with MS browsers.
Speed - it's more dependent on the Internet connection than rendering times (with rural speeds of 256-512Kbs, is the browser slowing things down?)
Security - install an Anti Virus, an Anti Spyware and a Firewall, and use a Router, it's the first line of defence (you probably hear of more problems with IE because its the most prevalent, do you really hear of all the small bit-players' problems?
Looks - that page looks fine to me.
To sum up, for me the browser arguments come down to : If I buy a Ferrari, does that mean I can drive at 200MPH everywhere? No.
Do I buy the paperback book or the hardback? I don't care, I just want to read the pages and turn them at my own pace.
The setup scenario :
Thank you I'm in a hurry the kids are screaming "daddy make it work!" I'll click on the first icon I see to get the blasted thing up and running thankyouverymuch how many more reboots will this take.
:)
By Wilbert3 on 30 Apr 2010
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