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This is such a fairytale retelling of history. Firefox was well on the way to crushing IE. It was the whole reason Microsoft re-kick started IE development agai

This is such a fairytale retelling of history. Firefox was well on the way to crushing IE. It was the whole reason Microsoft re-kick started IE development again. Firefox was the dominant browser in 2008. Safari was the browser pushing ahead on performance and being lightweight except in JavaScript. So Google took WebKit and added their own JS engine to it so that Gmail and their office suite could compete with Microsoft's offerings. It worked and all browsers started an arms race for JS performance.

bobajeff 8y ago
Firefox was never the dominant browser. Neither was it on its way to crushing IE. You my friend are recalling a fairytale.
- pier25 8y ago
  Indeed: http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-200901-201902 http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-20090...
  - rovolo 8y ago
    From that source, it looks like the story depends on the region though (for desktop). In order of decreasing use of firefox: * Europe: Firefox overtook IE in 2011 with ~40% * Africa: Firefox overtook IE in 2012 with ~40%. It looks like Firefox had the best chance of "crushing it" here. * South America: Firefox overtook IE in 2015 with 12%. Peak was 32% in 2010 * Asia: Firefox overtook IE in 2016 with ~12%. Peak was 28% in 2011 * Oceana: Firefox overtook IE in 2017 with 12%. Peak was 32% in 2010 * North America: Firefox peaked at 30% in 2009 and was half as common as IE until 2015-2016. It still hasn't overtaken IE
    - pier25 8y ago
      Yeah but in most cases that happened during the rise of Chrome which could suggest that Firefox didn't really overtake IE, but IE lost users to Chrome and Firefox happened to lose less users. Another point to reinforce this argument is that in many of those regions Firefox peaked around 2010 and started losing users too.
- isostatic 8y ago
  In 2004 95% of browsers were IE, firefox was on 2.7% (TheCounter.com) By 2009 this had dropped to 70%, with Firefox and Safari on 20% and 6%. Chrome hadn't even launched. The hard work had been done -- people were using things other than IE, and it was growing. Firefox then plateaued and Chrome built on this, in 2012 not a single browser had more share than 33% share. After that things started going pear-shaped, and chrome started snowballing into monopoly

bobajeff 8y ago

Firefox was never the dominant browser. Neither was it on its way to crushing IE. You my friend are recalling a fairytale.

pier25 8y ago
Indeed: http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-200901-201902 http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-20090...
- rovolo 8y ago
  From that source, it looks like the story depends on the region though (for desktop). In order of decreasing use of firefox: * Europe: Firefox overtook IE in 2011 with ~40% * Africa: Firefox overtook IE in 2012 with ~40%. It looks like Firefox had the best chance of "crushing it" here. * South America: Firefox overtook IE in 2015 with 12%. Peak was 32% in 2010 * Asia: Firefox overtook IE in 2016 with ~12%. Peak was 28% in 2011 * Oceana: Firefox overtook IE in 2017 with 12%. Peak was 32% in 2010 * North America: Firefox peaked at 30% in 2009 and was half as common as IE until 2015-2016. It still hasn't overtaken IE
  - pier25 8y ago
    Yeah but in most cases that happened during the rise of Chrome which could suggest that Firefox didn't really overtake IE, but IE lost users to Chrome and Firefox happened to lose less users. Another point to reinforce this argument is that in many of those regions Firefox peaked around 2010 and started losing users too.
isostatic 8y ago
In 2004 95% of browsers were IE, firefox was on 2.7% (TheCounter.com) By 2009 this had dropped to 70%, with Firefox and Safari on 20% and 6%. Chrome hadn't even launched. The hard work had been done -- people were using things other than IE, and it was growing. Firefox then plateaued and Chrome built on this, in 2012 not a single browser had more share than 33% share. After that things started going pear-shaped, and chrome started snowballing into monopoly