Chrome August’s big winner as Internet Explorer resumes slide

As browser competition continues to heat up, 2010 looks like the year when the market was repeatedly disrupted. Internet Explorer has not managed to gain share for a third month in a row. Firefox is leveling out while Chrome and Safari continue to grow. Opera? It's hanging on to relevance.

Between July and August, Internet Explorer dropped 0.34 percent, a drop smaller than June's or July's gain. Firefox, meanwhile, went up 0.02 percent, Chrome gained 0.36 percent, Safari was up 0.07, and Opera dipped 0.08 percent.

IE looks stuck around the 60 percent mark for the time being. At least it's still above its lowest point (59.69 percent) with its best chance of market share gains in the short term coming with the IE9 beta, and the back-to-school season.

The importance of being the default browser in the world's most popular operating system continues to help IE. Microsoft browsers are being used by more than 6 out of 10 people and IE8 is being used by more than one in four on the Web (quickly closing in on one in three)—it is now at 27.90 percent (over 30 percent if Compatibility Mode is included). Unfortunately for Web developers everywhere, IE6 continues to be more popular than IE7, though this month it declined more than its successor. IE6's share can be attributed to businesses still using customized intranet applications, and XP's much bigger installed base than Vista's (especially in developing countries).

If we take a look at the last 12 months, the stabilization of IE is really obvious. Firefox, meanwhile, remains far away from what may be the unreachable 25 percent mark, having lost all the share it gained in the last year. Its market share is actually lower than it was a year ago. Chrome's progress is very noticeable in the chart above, though it seems to have found resistance at the 7 percent mark. Safari's gains are at about 1 percentage point, while Opera's are almost insignificant.

As always, things at Ars are very different. There was no place-changing this time: Firefox continues to dominate, Chrome is second, Safari is third, IE is fourth, and Opera brings up the rear. Last month, Firefox gained share, as did Chrome and Opera. The first-party browsers, Safari and IE, both dropped.

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Feature: Being a behemoth: how Microsoft (and 9 others) make their billions

It has become a bit of a cliché: really innovative technology comes from garage-level startups. Once a company gets too large, it focuses its energy on keeping its existing customers happy, and loses its edge. But, for the most part, the technology we rely on for getting things done—providing the hardware and networking infrastructure, for example—comes from mature, profitable companies. So, we thought it might be interesting to take a step back and look at what tech companies are among the most successful at marketing products and services that are widely put to use.

Of course, any measure of "success" is inviting argument. Should it be profits, units sold, recent growth? We settled on two measures. The first is the market capitalization, which provides some sense of how the financial community views both a company's current fiscal strength and its potential for future growth. To provide some sense of how much of that is growth potential, we chose the price-to-earnings ratio as our other measure—the higher the number, the more the company's perceived growth potential factors into its market cap.

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Microsoft keeps Mac vs. PC battle going on Windows 7 website

Microsoft has added a PC versus Mac section to its Windows 7 website. The webpage is under the Compare tab, where users can match up the three main Windows 7 editions, read a Top 10 list of reasons to buy Windows 7, and read Microsoft's thoughts on why it believes Windows 7 has the advantage over Mac OS X. According to the new page, Microsoft says it has Apple beat in six categories: Having Fun (Macs might spoil your fun), Simplicity (Macs can take time to learn), Working Hard (Macs don't work as well at work or at school), Sharing (Macs don't like to share), Compatibility (Macs might not like your PC stuff), and Choice (Macs don't let you choose).

Each area makes a couple valid points, though Redmond makes sure to avoid naming any potential strengths Cupertino may have: this is strictly a pro-PC show. Each page ends off with a note to visit the Windows PC Scout to help the user find the right PC for them.

It's not surprising that Microsoft is playing up the PC vs. Mac comparisons given the "Get a Mac" campaign that ended a couple of months ago. Microsoft eventually responded directly to that campaign with the "I'm a PC" series of spots—an instant hit, at least in contrast to the Seinfeld and Gates ads. When Windows 7 came out the software giant changed course a bit with the I'm a PC and Windows 7 was my idea commercials.

It's worth noting that the Windows 7 webpage does not mention "I'm a PC" at all, but the distinction between Mac and PC that Apple first trumpeted is heavily emphasized. Microsoft seems perfectly happy to continue using the PC label if it means easily distinguishing itself from Apple's offerings.

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Windows 7 overtakes Windows Vista in market share

Last month, Windows 7 passed Windows Vista in market share, according to Netmarketshare.com. One year after Windows 7 hit RTM and nine months after it was released, Microsoft's newest OS managed to acquire more users than its predecessor. The operating system reached the 10 percent market share mark four months ago, and just last week Microsoft announced it had sold 175 million licenses so far.

If we take a look at the last 12 months, it's very clear that Windows 7 is surging forward. Meanwhile, Windows Vista has lost about four and a half percent in the last year, while Windows XP has lost almost 10 percent. Mac OS, meanwhile, has gained almost a fifth of a percent and Linux last month lost its recent gains.

Between June and July 2010, Windows dropped a minor 0.14 percent (from 91.46 percent to 91.32 percent). More specifically, Windows XP dropped 0.56 percent (from 62.43 percent to 61.87 percent), Windows Vista fell 0.34 percent (from 14.68 percent to 14.34 percent), and Windows 7 jumped 0.76 percent (from 13.70 percent to 14.46 percent). Even though Windows is slowly losing share, Windows 7 is doing phenomenally well: it has almost reached 15 percent and we expect one in five users on the Internet to be using it before the end of the year.

Mac OS has dropped the least: 0.10 percent (from 5.16 percent to 5.06 percent). Linux also dropped 0.14 percent (from 1.07 percent to 0.93 percent)—its biggest change in 12 months. The main reason that all the major PC operating systems are declining is that mobile operating systems are counted separately and are growing very quickly.

At Ars, our readers have embraced Microsoft's latest operating system much faster. Windows users accounted for 63.39 percent of our visitors last month. Breaking down that number, 27.13 percent use Windows XP, 9.32 percent are on Vista, and 26.14 percent have Windows 7. In other words, one in four Ars readers are Windows 7 users.

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