Internet Browser Wars

Posted on April 24th, 2008 by Alex in WWW

Not everyone is aware that there is a browser war going on between Internet Explorer and its 3 main rivals, which are Mozillas Firefox, Opera and Apples Safari. A lot of Windows users are unaware that there are other browsers available to them that can offer safer browsing and a greater number of add-ons and user options.

Although Internet Explorer is still the most popular browser on the market it is getting strong competition from its nearest competitor Firefox. Figures released by W3schools show that Firefox is becoming more and more popular on the net:

2008	IE7	IE6	IE5	Firefox	Safari	Opera
March	21.9%	30.1%	1.1%	37.0%	2.1%	1.4%
February	21.5%	30.7%	1.3%	36.5%	2.0%	1.4%
January	21.2%	32.0%	1.5%	36.4%	1.9%

As the stats show, IE’s popularity is slowly coming down with only 0.4% increase for IE7. This could be a result of people switching to Windows Vista or running updates on XP that will upgrade IE6 to IE7. Overall Internet Explorer across its 3 versions made a loss of 0.4% in one month, were as Firefox had an increase of 0.5% in the same month.

So why are people making the change. One theory is that some users were not happy with Microsoft’s monopoly after it was brought to the public’s attention; the famous court case United States V. Microsoft were it was judged that it was unfair to the competition that Windows came with Internet Explorer already installed. Another theory is as the public has become more ‘Tech Savvy’ they are aware there are other browser options that may suit their needs.

I personally use Mozilla’s Firefox. I think it’s faster, more reliable, has greater features such as ‘Developer tool’ and ‘Firebug’, offers tabbed browsing (that Microsoft copied for IE7), it blocks pop ups and adverts, and finally its predictive Google search feature is quite simply brilliant.

My advice would be to look around - the main browsers are free to download so give them a go and see what you think (see links above). Your web browser is likely to be the most used bit of software you have. It’s important that you are using the browser that is best suited to YOUR needs and not the browser that is simply the most convenient.