Jim Lynch: Off the Top of My Head…

My colleague Matt Hicks at eWEEK has a good piece about this. Not really a big surprise at this point is it? :roll:

Microsoft Internet Explorer is continuing to lose share in the browser market, as its much-smaller competitors chisel at its dominant position, new Web site visitor data shows.

Microsoft’s browser has dropped by 1.8 percentage points over the past three months to 93.7 percent of the market, according to data provided Wednesday by Web analytics vendor WebSideStory Inc.

The latest data comes after IE’s market share fell a percentage point between June and July in the wake of a series of high-profile security issues—the first time WebSideStory had recorded an IE drop.

The benefactors of Microsoft’s slight, but sustained, decline since June have included the open-source browsers from the Mozilla Foundation and a commercial competitor from Opera Software ASA.

I hope it’s a sustainable trend for two reasons. First, it’s a bad idea for one browser to have as large a market share as IE does right now. It makes that browser a huge target for the bad guys, as we’ve seen over the last few years with IE.

Second, it will force Microsoft to get off its ass and start making significant improvements to IE. Microsoft is guilty of arrogantly assuming that nothing could touch it after it destroyed Netscape. While they were napping, however, Firefox was being born.

Here’s to hoping that more and more being the migration to Firefox, Opera or other browsers. Perhaps then more site designers will focus on designing for true standards rather than for Internet Explorer. :roll:

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