Comment by azakai | Hacker News Reader

Comment by azakai | Hacker News Reader

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It will be hard, but I think IE can do it.

1. With WebGL support and the other new features in IE11, they are close to finally being comparable to Chrome and Firefox in terms of being a modern browser. Yes, bridges were burnt, but IE11 and things like TypeScript are making Microsoft cool in the web space again.

2. Previews appear to show IE11 is also competitive in terms of speed with other modern browsers. (IE was already fast at 2D canvas, but not much else.)

3. The tech community was disturbed by the NSA spying scandals (that involve most major browser vendors), which led to some movement to switch to alternative browsers and search engines. Even if people don't switch entirely away, they might choose to put less eggs in one basket, so prefer to not do Chrome+google.com or IE+bing. Of the other combinations of those options (there are others of course, but just considering those), IE+google.com seems more likely than Chrome+bing, so IE might gain a little there.

This is what IE advocates have been saying since IE9, and it is no more true with IE11 than it was then.

Inertia means IE needs to be significantly better than the alternatives to catch up. It takes time and energy to switch, so the payoff has to make it worth one's while.

When Firefox came out, it offered substantial improvements over IE6. When Chrome came out, it offered substantial improvements over Firefox.

IE11 continues the "hey, we're almost caught up!" tradition that has seen IE's market spiral downward for years. Until a version of IE comes out that earns the reaction "whoa, this is much better than Chrome or Firefox!", the downward spiral will continue.

Even if IE11 has only “almost caught up”, that means, as you point out, that inertia to change will mean existing users will be less likely to switch away from IE, as alternative browsers will no longer be significantly better. Just that will help to halt any downward spiral.

Note that on Akamai[0] (who have many of the world‘s largest sites as their customers) IE’s share is relatively static. On NetMarketShare[1], IE’s share is increasing. It seems any such downward spirals has already halted. At least on two of the major analytics sites that release public data.

[0] http://www.akamai.com/html/io/io_dataset.html#stat=browser&t... [1] http://www.netmarketshare.com

Why not Firefox+DuckDuckGo? I find that more likely than a switch to IE.

Pray tell how using IE makes people any more or less susceptible to NSA spying than using Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Chromium, etc.

And before you say certificate pinning, you know as well as I do that the NSA aren't known to have created fake Google or Microsoft keys through CAs for the purposes of spying.

Believe it or not but most browsers allow you to change the search provider, IE in particular makes this trivially easy (and is frankly a lot better at it than Chrome).

Honestly anyone who switched their browser/email client/word processor because of the "NSA spying scandal" really doesn't understand enough about technology to call themselves part of that community.

Almost... and it's still in beta. Which means theyll fall behind again as soon as the next Chrome release comes out.

Yes, unless IE switches to a fast release schedule like Chrome and Firefox, it is at risk of being quickly outclassed by them once more.

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