Asa, how are new Internet users factored into all of this?
Is it even possible to do that? Is it a small number?
Is it just assumed that the majority of them are IE users due to the fact that Windows is the most used, sold, and readily available OS?
Then what, they switch to other browsers? They must for IE's numbers to keep consistently falling.

I'd imagine that brand new Internet users don't jump into Chrome or Opera. Safari I can understand because of the increase in new Mac sales/users. And Firefox is a no brainer considering that new Internet users will more than likely know someone who uses Firefox that will recommend it to them (and help them get it setup because Firefox users are just that damn cool).

Ken, this chart is of usage, so it assumes 100% is the whole pie. That pie is definitely growing, it's doubled since we started the Firefox project. Given that all new computers (probably at least 99%) ship with IE or Safari, any gains that Firefox, Opera, and Chrome make are that much more exceptional.

- A

I don't know, maybe I'm missing something here or there has been great fluctuation in the last two days, but Firefox shows 3.38% increase, not 5% in the displayed plot. Same with the others, with about 0.25% more than stated in your Net Applications link.

Jamie, sorry, I didn't link to the year I was talking about, just the general trend page. I fixed that.

I'm also working from data that's subscriber only and gives me weekly snapshots. You'll notice the dates on the chart are mid-month to mid-month.

We are just coming out of a normal seasonal dip and you'll see at the end of this month that some major changes are under way.

We went from roughly 19% share on September 15th 2008 to roughly 24% share on September 15th, 2009. That's about 5 points.

- A

This seems like a really odd statistic to show. You are talking about the change in market share in an absolute sense. It seems like the more interesting trend is the relative change in market share (Chrome going from 3 to 5% of the total means a 67% increase in market share, while Firefox going from 24 to 29% is only a 21% increase), which is the derivative of market share as a function of time. The related number is increase in users. For Chrome to get 5% of the market share, it would probably have to more than double its user base.

Asa, you might want to make a plot of the derivative. That would be more interesting. If Chrome doubles its market share every 1.5 years and Firefox every 3 years, then Chrome could be a relatively strong competitor (in terms of market share) in a few years.

Maths Lover, I disagree. The whole point of measuring these things is to figure out how the Web is advancing, not how any one browser is advancing. The Web moves when people move from the archaic IE browsers to the modern browsers noted above. Relative change isn't at all interesting because it's the IE losses that matter. If I'm "Browser x" and I have half a percent market share and I double that, it doesn't mean nearly as much as if I'm Chrome or Firefox and I only grow at 33%. This isn't "market share" in the traditional sense. This is usage share and it matters because it determines what Web developers can do with the Web, not how successful a particular company is in terms of sales or even growth.

- A

If you want to compare usage share of various browsers and use that to make an argument about what developers will/should do, then you should look at the real percentages. If you want to show how browser share is progressing, then you should look at something like the ratio of market share now to a year ago (which would track users if the number of people on the internet didn't increase). The fact is that Firefox has increased its market share by 50% over the last two years (20% over the last year) while Chrome has increased its share by 160% over the last year.

From your quote, it sounds like Google would like to see at least 75% growth of market share over the next year. If Firefox could do something similar, it would have 40% of the market next year.

Maths Lover, I disagree. (First, there is no way to count users on the web, just _usage_. Point increases in Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera are point decreases in IE.)

A point decrease in IE is a point decrease in IE, it doesn't matter what percentage of growth that was for a particular browser that took that point. If Opera grows 500% to reach 10% global share, (a points gain of 8) that's less good for the Web than if Firefox grows a much more modest 100% to reach 48% global share, (a points gain of 24).

You're assuming we're measuring market share the way it's measured at traditional businesses and for the purposes of traditional businesses where they need to show growth to keep their shareholders happy.

That's not what we care about at Mozilla. That's not what Web developers care about. What we care about is increasing the capabilities of the Web and that means growing in absolute terms, the percentage of Web usage that comes from "modern" browsers like Firefox, Safari, and Opera.

- A

Asa, by your reasoning, then your graph is just nonsense. If you want to show how much the web has improved, you should show how much IE has fallen, and plot some graph, then you should plot the real percentage values, not some nonsensical "0 to x" lines.

"First, there is no way to count users on the web"

I don't know where do you see anything like that, maybe from the imaginations of your own mind. People are just telling you that you should use the real percentage values, not some useless "0 to x" lines.

Those "0 to x" straight line graph are just meaningless, misleading, and downright wrong. They don't represent anything. If you just want to show the total increase in percentage value of those browser over the year, just use numbers. If you want to show the increase in percentage value vs. progress in time, you should plot curves that corresponds to data from each month or week. The change in percentage value is by far not something linear.

Basically, if you just want to show the numbers, then just use plain numbers, if you want to plot graphs, then plot some real graphs. Unfortunately, you are doing neither, you are just drawing some random straight lines that have no statistical meaning and represent nothing, thus complete nonsense rubbish.

The plain numbers are meaningful, those straight line graph are not. they are just useless, confusing, and wrong.

I guess I just disagree with you, kaixin001.

The chart says, among other things "If you want to know who is hurting IE, here's a break out of those numbers. In the last year, Firefox took 5 more points from IE, continuing its trend of doing more damage to IE than any other browser, while Chrome took 2 points from IE, a good start for a new-comer to the browser playing field that is also targeting IE users."

That you see that as meaningless doesn't make it so. There's a lot of meaning there.

- A