Compureus: TOP WEB BROWSERS 2018: FIREFOX SITS ON SLIPPERY SLOPE, CHROME GROWS EVEN BIGGER

Tuesday, June 5, 2018

TOP WEB BROWSERS 2018: FIREFOX SITS ON SLIPPERY SLOPE, CHROME GROWS EVEN BIGGER

If past is prologue, Mozilla's Firefox, Microsoft's Edge and Internet Explorer, and Apple's Safari are all in trouble. Analytics vendor Net Applications' data shows all three web browsers slipping in May as Google Chrome continued to grow.

Mozilla's Firefox landed on a slippery slope last month and may face a slow demise as users desert the browser for Google's Chrome.

According to California-based analytics vendor Net Applications, Firefox lost a quarter of a percentage point of user share in May, ending the month at 9.9%. It was the first time Firefox has fallen below the 10% marker since November 2016.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to visit its clients' websites. It then tallies the visitor sessions - which are effectively visits to the site, with multiple sessions possible daily - rather than count only users, as it once did. Net Applications thus measures activity most of all, although differently than rival metrics sources that focus on page views.

Eight years ago, Firefox accounted for more than a quarter of the globe's browser share. That's fallen to less than a tenth. More importantly, the trend for Firefox looks ugly. If the six-month average holds, Firefox will drop below 9% by September, then slide under 8% by January 2019.

While Mozilla may have access to different data - it should know, for instance, whether the active-user count is up or down - Net Applications' numbers must be tough to swallow. The company has poured time and resources into revamping Firefox, which produced "Quantum" late last year. But the redesign failed to stop the browser's drip-drip-drip of user share.

Other browsers also got bad news in May.

Microsoft's browsers - Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge - shed seven-tenths of a percentage point last month, accounting for 16.1% of all visitor sessions worldwide. The decline erased two consecutive months of gains by IE and Edge. Like Firefox, IE and Edge are on a downward line; the six-month trend forecasts that they will dip below 16% by September.

That number will fall even more as the months tick by, and more enterprises discard Windows 7 for Windows 10. IE has been downgraded to a legacy application - suitable for running older web apps and sites, though with all but maintenance servicing abandoned - and as corporations revamp their apps, the need for it will vanish. And Edge has simply been a flop: In May, only about one in eight Windows 10 users ran the browser, a record low in its three-year history.

Even Apple's Safari took a hit. The default Mac browser lost three-tenths of a percentage point to finish at 3.7%, the lowest number in nearly a year. And Apple's "Chrome Disease" continued to progress, with no cure in sight, as just 41% of Mac users relied on Safari in May. The bulk of the rest had almost certainly deserted Apple for Google and its Chrome browser.

Chrome, in fact, gained an impressive 1.2 percentage points in May, the largest one-month increase since January 2017. The additional user share pushed Chrome to 62.8%, closing in on two of every three desktop and laptop browsers. The last time a browser had such a dominating position was more than eight years ago, when IE accounted for 63.2% of all user share.

If the six-month trend holds true, Chrome should pass the 64% milestone sometime in September, and zip above 65% before New Year's Day.

Top browsers, March 2018

Microsoft's browsers have scratched out user share gains in three of the last five months, halting what late last year looked like a death spiral.

Less than half of the half-a-percentage point increase since November has come from Edge, the Windows 10 browser Microsoft has bet on for the foreseeable future.

According to data published Tuesday by California-based analytics vendor Net Applications, Microsoft's Edge and Internet Explorer (IE) combined to account for 16.8% of the browser market during April. The one-tenth of a point increase over March was near the browsers' five-month average.

The rosier outlook for Microsoft's browsers stood in contrast to earlier forecasts based on Net Applications' numbers. The reason for the change: The metrics company again went back into its data, this time for February, and revised its numbers after expelling bot traffic.

As it did in November, Net Applications purged the bot traffic because it skews results. These software-based tools are usually deployed by criminals and hucksters, who program the bots' automated scripts to mimic human online behavior, often for ad click fraud purposes.

"Bots can cause significant skewing of data," Net Applications explained last year. "We have seen situations where traffic from certain large countries is almost completely bot traffic. In other countries, ad fraudsters generate traffic that spoofs certain technologies in order to generate high-value clicks. Or, they heavily favor a particular browser or platform."

The revised data put Microsoft's browsers in a slightly better light, with increases to both Edge and IE since November's retuning. There's little indication that either browser actually grew its user share - as opposed to the bot scouring causing the gains - because both Edge and IE added to their share. As a second-class browser since Microsoft relegated it to legacy support duties, IE is unlikely to climb in user share.

Of Microsoft's two browsers, Edge was responsible for just under half - 48% - of the November-to-April increase; IE accounted for the remaining 52%.

Mozilla's Firefox did not benefit from Net Applications' latest bot cleansing, as it again shed share in April, losing four-tenths of a percentage point to end at 10.2%. That was after March's decline of six-tenths of a point to 10.5%.

As Computerworld has pointed out several times since Mozilla launched a revamped Firefox labeled "Quantum," the redesign and associated attention has failed to stop the browser's long bleeding of user share. In the five months since Quantum's debut, Firefox has lost 1.3 percentage points, which represented 11% of its end-of-November share.

If the trend over the past five months continues, Firefox will slip under the 10% user share bar this month, and fall below 9% by September.

Meanwhile, the user share of Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari fell and climbed, respectively, last month. Chrome lost almost a tenth of a percentage point, slipping to 61.7%, while Safari scratched out another half of one-tenth of a point to make an even 4%.

However, Safari continued to lose ground where it counts, on Apple's Mac systems. Like Microsoft, Apple has been laid low by "Chrome Disease," as more of its Mac owners have deserted the company's own browser (Safari) for an alternative (almost certainly Chrome for the most part). Although Safari was the browser of choice for as much as two-thirds of those running OS X (the former name for macOS), Safari slipped into the minority on Apple machines in December. Last month, Safari was the primary browser on just 43% of all Macs.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to visit its clients' websites. It then tallies the visitor sessions - which are effectively visits to the site, with multiple sessions possible daily - rather than count only users, as it once did. Net Applications thus tracks both users as well as their activity, where rivals analytics sources focus solely on the later.

The company also accounts for the size of each country's online population to better estimate share in regions where it lacks analytics customers, such as China and India.

Top browsers, March 2018

Mozilla's radical overhaul of its financial cornerstone, Firefox, has so far failed in its primary mission, to stop the slide in browser share, new data published Sunday showed.

According to new numbers from California-based analytics vendor Net Applications, Firefox lost six-tenths of a percentage point of user share in March. That was the largest decline in almost two years, excepting November 2017, when Net Applications revamped its tallies by eliminating fraudulent bot traffic from its data.

For March, Firefox's user share — an estimate of the portion of the world's PC owners who ran the browser in a given period — was 10.3%, the lowest since a near-death experience in the summer of 2016, when it plunged to below 8%. At one point — April 2010, to be specific — Firefox accounted for more than a quarter of the globe's browser share.

More distressing to Mozilla, Firefox's user share has fallen rather than climbed since the November launch of Quantum, a.k.a. version 57, which the company trumpeted as the "biggest update" since Firefox 1.0 in 2004. Quantum boasted major speed improvements, a redesigned UI (user interface) and a switch to a new add-on framework that necessitated rewrites of all legacy extensions.

In the four months since Quantum's debut, Firefox has shed 1.1 percentage points, which represented more than a tenth of its end-of-November user share. Only in one of those four months did Firefox add share, and then only a tenth of a percentage point.

If Mozilla cannot stem that user-share bleeding, its financial future may be at risk; in 2016, the most recent year for which figures are available, royalties from Mozilla's search deals — to make search engine Z or Y the default of the browser — accounted for a whopping 91% of its total income. If the browser continues to shed users, search firms such as Google, the current default for the browser in many regions, will have less reason to pay for the privilege.

(On the bright side, Mozilla had nearly $400 million in cash, cash equivalents and investments at the end of 2016, or enough to run the organization for more than a year at the then-current spending levels.)

Firefox's immediate future may be rough: If the trend of the last four months continues, the browser will drop under the 10% bar sometime in May, and under 9% in August. That's not certain of course — Firefox has clawed out of user share holes before, if only temporarily — but the overall trend has been downward.

Apple's Safari also lost substantial user share last month, casting aside four-tenths of a percentage point to end March with 3.9%. The decline was the first for the year.

But Apple has suffered, like its operating system rival Microsoft, from "Chrome Disease." Safari has, just as has Internet Explorer, lost its once-majority position on its native OS, ceding share to Google's Chrome browser.

Where once Safari was the browser of choice for as much as two-thirds of those running OS X (the former name for what Apple now calls "macOS"), since late last year, Safari has slipped below the 50% mark on Apple machines. During March, for example, Safari was the primary browser on 46% of all Macs.

The obvious beneficiary of Safari's decline? Chrome. While it's impossible to prove that's the case with Net Applications' public data, the increase in Chrome's user share over the last two years — it was the only browser to continuously grow share during that period — points to it, not to the other cross-platform choice, Firefox.

The remaining major browsers — Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge, and Google's Chrome — gained share last month.

Microsoft's IE and Edge combined to post a user share of 17.9%, a month-over-month increase of about half a percentage point. That was the third boost to IE+Edge since Net Applications markedly downgraded their numbers in November when it scrubbed bot traffic from its data. But as Computerworld pointed out a month ago, Microsoft will soon face an Edge-only world that may have a huge impact on its position in the browser battle.

Already labeled a legacy browser for Windows 10, where it's relegated to rendering stagnant enterprise intranet pages and can't-be-or-won't-be upgraded apps, IE will fall off Windows 7's support when that OS gets its walking papers in January 2020. Users will still be able to run IE on Windows 10, but that's likely to be an increasingly smaller number as corporations revamp their online sites and apps to accommodate more modern browsers.

There's little evidence that that modern browser will be Edge: Microsoft's newest ran on just 13.2% of all Windows 10 personal computers last month, according to Net Applications. Although the number was one-and-a-half percentage points higher than February's, the truth is that Edge has been on a decline since its introduction, when it was the first choice of nearly 40% of all Windows 10 users.

When Edge becomes Microsoft's sole browser, more or less, there is a very good chance that the Redmond, Wash., developer will account for a share in the single digits. Even if Windows 10's PC penetration doubled, Edge would, by March's figure, be the browser on fewer than 9% of the world's personal computers.

Chrome also accumulated more user share last month, gaining three-tenths of a percentage point to rack up a record 60.9%. At its 12-month growth trend, Chrome should crack 62% by September and 63% by early 2019.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to visit its clients' websites. It then tallies the various browsers, accounting for the size of each country's online population to better estimate share in regions where it lacks large numbers of analytics customers.

Top browsers, February 2018

Microsoft is less than two years away from becoming a browser afterthought, according to the newest data from analytics vendor Net Applications.

Data published Thursday by the California-based company showed that the user share of Internet Explorer (IE) stood at 13.5% for February. That was an impressive 1.7 percentage point increase from the month prior and the highest, by far, since Net Applications revamped its tallies by eliminating bot-made traffic from the data.

Even that increase was but a temporary reprieve from a depressing-to-Microsoft trend that has seen the browser shed an enormous amount of user share in the past several years. As recently as June 2015, beforeMicrosoft launched Windows 10 and thus that OS's native browser, Edge, IE accounted for 54% of the world's browsers, and nearly 60% of those that ran on a Windows-powered personal computer.

Last month, IE's user share among all Windows-based PCs stood at 15.4%, meaning that fewer than one in every six Windows machines relied on IE to access the Internet.

Even worse for Microsoft, IE is on borrowed time. Already designated as a legacy browser in Windows 10, where it's been relegated by enterprises to rendering stagnant internal websites and can't-or-won't-be upgraded web apps, IE will be dropped from support on Windows 7 when that OS gets its retirement papers in January 2020. Users will still be able to run IE - and Windows 7 for that matter - after that month, but they will assume significant risk because neither the browser or the operating system will receive security updates.

Because IE accounted for more than three-fourths of the combined user share of both Microsoft browsers, and what with Edge's tenuous foothold on Windows 10, Microsoft faces a dramatic decline in its total user share when IE is put to pasture.

(Last month, Edge accounted for the browser of record on a record-low percentage of all Windows 10 machines - just 11.7% - which represented a nearly-two-percentage-point decline from the month before. In other words, Edge is a flop.)

By the time Microsoft retires Windows 7, and for effective purposes, IE as well, Windows 10 should have reached a user share (of all Windows) of around 63.6%, assuming its climb continues on the past year's trend line. If Edge hasn't, well, edged up as a share of all Windows 10 by that time - and all evidence is that it will not - then Microsoft's active browser share will be in the single digits, perhaps as low as 6%.

(By "active," Computerworld means still-supported browsers; there will undoubtedly be users who continue to run IE after Windows 7's retirement, sans security patches. And IE on Windows 8.1 will be a negligible contribution to user share, as that OS will have faded to under 5% by January 2020.)

As a comparison, Edge's predicted 6% in 2020 would be only slightly more than half the share that Mozilla's Firefox - another browser that has been, and is once again, on the ropes - now holds.

Other browsers' February results were mixed. Google's Chrome, while still the big dog, shed eight-tenths of a percentage point last month, falling to 60.6% and upending Computerworld's forecast that the browser would soon top the two-thirds mark. Firefox ran to stay in place, ending February with a user share of 10.9%, while Apple's Safari, always a single-digit browser on the desktop, picked up a tenth of a percentage point to reach 4.3%.

Apple, like Microsoft, has seen its primary browser lose share on its home turf. In February, approximately 44% of all Macs ran Safari as the main browser, down from a dominant 66% less than three years ago. Chrome has probably claimed the bulk of the Safari deserters, just as it has absorbed those Windows users who abandoned IE in the same period.

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the browser agent strings of the applications people use to visit its clients' websites. It then tallies the various browsers, accounting for the size of each country's online population to better estimate share in regions where it lacks large numbers of analytics customers.

Compureus

Tuesday, June 5, 2018

TOP WEB BROWSERS 2018: FIREFOX SITS ON SLIPPERY SLOPE, CHROME GROWS EVEN BIGGER

If past is prologue, Mozilla's Firefox, Microsoft's Edge and Internet Explorer, and Apple's Safari are all in trouble. Analytics vendor Net Applications' data shows all three web browsers slipping in May as Google Chrome continued to grow.

Top browsers, March 2018

Top browsers, March 2018

Top browsers, February 2018

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