Filed under: News, Mozilla, Open Source
Let the Firefox death-watch begin!
The latest browser market-share figures from NetApplications have set
off a firestorm about the future of Firefox. Seems that the Fox actually lost market share in July,
with its overall share slipping from 8.71% to 8.07%. Meanwhile, Internet
Explorer was up to 87.2% percent in July, from 86.56% a month earlier.
Analysts have been wringing their hands, saying that recent security
problems in Firefox could have undermined growth, and that the shift
represents a resurgence for Internet Explorer. However, cooler heads
have pointed out that a shift of 0.64% in one month hardly means that
it's time to start the Firefox death watch (though I couldn't resist
the headline). As at least one web site has pointed out,
in checking their own logs, both Firefox and IE have shown an increase,
at the expense of other alternatives like Opera. However, given
the relentlessly upbeat coverage of Firefox over the past few
months, the market-share news gives pundits a chance to bash the
browser, something they've clearly been itching to do.