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Comment by axod | Hacker News Reader

IE usage recently dropped below Chrome usage on Mibbit (Including our widget which is deployed on various non-techy websites).

  Firefox 55.1%
  Chrome 20.7%
  IE 15.2%
  Other 4.4%
  Opera 3.0%
  Safari 1.6%

The time when you have to support IE, for many, is coming to an end.

On a related note, I got a phone call from Microsoft adCenter the other day, asking why I hadn't spent any money with them for a year (Different website I run which needs big ad spend).

I said "Last time I tried the interface in Chrome, it didn't work".

She replied "Ah. Chrome is Google and so it's not compatible".

MS never cease to amaze me.

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> for many

Yes, for many sites with a technical audience. But for sites with an older, less technically sophisticated userbase, IE still has the vast majority over other browsers.

I hear what you're saying about the widget. But is that downloads? In which case: selection bias. What do the stats look like as far as impressions go on the non-techy sites?

Those stats combine main client (chat.mibbit.com) with our widget, split roughly 50/50. The widget is used on various websites, gaming, stock trading, dating, etc etc

Sure, it's still probably going to be slightly more tech, but I'm guessing there's quite a few other webapps who have similar demographic.

It also depends on how 'global' you are. IE usage varies wildly by country.

Here are stats for the University I work at. It's still not a representative sample but does show a different picture.

(Current Period):

  IE      35.01%
  Firefox 33.32%
  Safari  15.68%
  Chrome  14.56%

(Current Period - 1 Year):

  IE      40.61%
  Firefox 38.79%
  Safari  12.92%
  Chrome  4.93%

Pretty high Safari usage there. I'm guessing macs are extremely common at the University?

Probably more so than in the "real world".

FWIW, our usage stats on OSX break down to about 2/3 using Safari and 1/3 using Firefox.

You're not trying to say that academia is an imaginary world, are you?

No, but I think it's safe to say that it's off the mean in many areas.

What country? I suspect figures in Europe are very different from those in the US. European versions of Windows are now required to offer a selection of browsers at install time.

For a car site I run I get the following IE usage over the last couple of years (monthly visits in the 5K range):

apr 2007 71.8% oct 2007 74.5% apr 2008 72.0% oct 2008 67.1% apr 2009 67.6% oct 2009 65.6% apr 2010 58.5% oct 2010 61.2%

That's still a considerable majority of IE users.

Oh, so Google is to blame? No Microsoft, your adCenter is not compatible with your customer's browser.

Their attitude was especially surprising, since I'm actually trying to spend money with them.

"Surprising" is not how I would describe it. In fact, given their own Microsoft-centric view of the tech universe, it's nothing but expected. "Boneheaded", perhaps, would be more appropriate.

Or perhaps you are attributing company culture to an under educated call center worker?

Have you seen how poorly non-Microsoft browsers are supported by Microsoft's web tools?

Exchange is a pain. Hotmail, on its last (last I saw - no longer use it) big change took months (many) for the Firefox version to arrive at a comparable feature set as the IE version. If you are not running Windows, you will face an even worse browser compatibility. For a long time, any ASP.NET application built with the GUI tools on Visual Studio was pretty much guaranteed not to work properly on anything but IE.

No. I don't think the reaction of the call center worker is surprising in any measure. He could know non-Microsoft browsers were not supported and inferred the thing being from Google meant it would not be compatible.

BTW, would it be compatible with Firefox on Linux?

Justin.tv is trending the same way, but more slowly - Chrome hasn't caught up with IE yet. Seems like it's just a matter of time now though:

  Firefox 36.16%
  IE 35.78%
  Chrome 19.35%
  Safari 6.08%
  Opera 1.85%
  Other <1%

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