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Not all IE users chose it

eWeek.com reports that numbers released by OneStat.com showed Mozilla Foundation browsers share of global usage increasing to a 7.4 percent while that of IE's dropping by 5 percentage points to a tad under the magical 90 percent mark. Cheers for Firefox that has been chiefly responsible for this!

But I was left confounded by a quote appearing on News.com from Gary Schare who is Microsoft's director of product management for Windows:

I still believe in the end that most users will decide that IE is the best choice when they take into account all the factors that led them to choose IE in the first place," Schare said. "Meanwhile, we're happy that they're primarily (using Firefox) on Windows, and that Firefox is part of the large ecosystem of software products available on the Windows platform.
This left me with the question- "Did I chose it?" I never chose IE! I used IE for a very long time simply because it existed on my computer from day 1. I would say that is the issue with most of the current IE users. Some did choose IE (and still do so), as their preferred browser. But most others simply have no clue about the existence of other better browsers. And so, are we right in assuming that they *chose* IE? I am not quite sure.

(I just found out that Neil Turner has raised exactly the same point on his blog. Individuals with like minded thinking, I suppose.)

Comments

Peeyush said…
I smell some typical Microsoft bashing here.

Question: did you download Netscape or Opera or any other browser and turned that into the primary browser on your machine the moment you found out where to download them from, or a search engine you could use to search for a download link?

I use Firefox and I really like it. But lets give credit where credit is due. IE 3.0 sucked... Netscape ruled the browser world... then IE 4.0 came.. and Netscape market share was lost faster that a little kid in Kumbh Mela. Both IE 3.0 and 4.0 came with various versions of Windows OS.

Thanks for putting a link to my blog, by the way...
6:57 AM
Peeyush said…
By the way, do you have an invite to wallop? I would love to try it out if you do. Thanks.
7:03 AM
enginerd said…
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
6:17 PM
enginerd said…
Sorry. I haven't got an invite available as of now. But I'll send you one as soon as I get any :)
6:18 PM
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