Google Chrome: 31.88% (+0.63%)
IE: 31.71% (-1.01%)
Firefox: 31.30% (-0.01%)
Safari: 2.40% (+0.22%)
Opera: 1.50% (+0.04%)

In April 2012, Google Chrome’s increase was not as strong as February or March, but it was enough to overtake both IE and Firefox to take the #1 position. IE continued to decline, losing another 1.01% and is now only 0.41% ahead of Firefox. At the current rate, IE will fall to #3 in May. Among the smaller browsers, both Safari and Opera saw healthy increases in April, also at the expense of IE.

IE: 38.78% (-1.05%)
Firefox: 35.62% (+0.23%)
Google Chrome: 21.33% (+0.79%)
Safari: 1.84% (+0.02%)
Opera: 1.76% (+0.03%)

For the second month in a row, IE lost more than 1% market share. All the other major browsers gained market share at IE’s expense. Google Chrome was again the winner, gaining 0.79% during April. Firefox gained 0.23% and is now only 3.16% behind IE. This is the smallest gap between IE and Firefox since we started tracking.

IE: 39.83% (-1.21%)
Firefox: 35.39% (-0.02%)
Google Chrome: 20.54% (+0.96%)
Safari: 1.82% (+0.02%)
Opera: 1.73% (+0.04%)

IE was the big loser in March, dropping below the 40% mark and is now at 39.83%. Meanwhile, Google Chrome climbed 0.96% and has now passed 20% in market share. Despite losing ground in March, the gap between Firefox and IE now stood at a miniscule 4.44%. We talked about the IE9 RC release in the February browser market share article, and it appeared that this didn’t do anything to help IE. In fact, among all IE browsers, IE9 accounted for just 2.87% in total. The biggest chunk went to IE8 with 56.18%, followed by IE7 with 27.24%. A little surprising was that IE6 still accounted for 13.66% of all IE traffic. This shows people are refusing to upgrade their IE, and indirectly, I believe, signals people’s distrust of IE.

What had happened was that McAfee had released a new virus definition file (5958), in which it reported a false positive by detecting that the svchost.exe file has been infected with the W32/wecorl.a virus. As a result, the McAfee program deletes svchost.exe file, which renders Windows systems unbootable. For those affected, a manual fix was needed to restore the svchost.exe file. Large companies such as Intel were hit. Some hospitals were also reportedly hit, causing delays in scheduled surgeries and the stoppage of treatment of non-trauma emergency room patients.

One thing that was surprising was the number of computer still running Windows XP, as Microsoft has released two generations of Windows operating system since. This event tells us that many large companies are not trusting Microsoft’s newer versions of Windows software. This is something Microsoft definitely needs to pay attention to.

Then did Adobe make a mistake? Hardly. I believe there are two main reasons why Adobe got Omniture, neither of which had anything to do with the web analytics component.

1) Test & Target: This is a testing platform which allows web publishers to run different types of tests to optimize the website, from simple A/B testing to complicated multi-variant testing. Omniture acquired this technology through its purchase of Offermatica two years ago, and it has integrated Offermatica’s technology into its product suite. Test & Target is considered one of the top products in website testing and optimization.

2) Software As A Service (SaaS) model: Whether its web analytics or testing, Omniture uses the SaaS model and has done a pretty good job at it. In a SaaS model, the software vendor hosts the application so the customer does not need to worry about having to install software, checking for compatibility, or purchasing and managing new hardware and software. By purchasing Omniture, Adobe will be able to gain the SaaS expertise of Omniture.

IE: 54.38%
Firefox: 38.21%
Google Chrome: 3.50%
Opera: 2.18%
Safari: 1.13%
Mozilla: 0.46%

Compared to December, the biggest gainer was Chrome, which increased by 0.34%. The biggest loser was IE, which saw its market share decrease by 0.32%. Firefox saw a small increase at 0.13%.  IE8, which is the next version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser, released its RC (release candidate) version in January 2009. We have started to see a small trickle of IE8 browser (1.68% of all IE traffic). We have not yet tried IE8, and will report our thoughts on it once we have done so.

Below are my reactions after initial usage:

As you type in the address bar, a list of all sites you’ve recently visited and match what you have typed in appears in a drop-down list. This is very convenient, as I can then just scroll down and select the URL that I want to go to.

You can click on the favicon for a website to get more detailed information on the site, including the cookies it is dropping on your computer, and any password information you may have saved for this site. Under the Media tab, you can also view all the images on the site separately.  Under the General tab, you can view meta tag information, content encoding, page size. And if the site is using WordPress, what version of WordPress is used.Â

Bookmark management is also better. Now you can tag the web page you are saving. Also, when you enter “Organize Bookmark” mode (Firefox 3 calls this the “Library”), it is easy to get additional information on each page you have saved, such as last visit time and site description. Those were improvements, especially compared to IE. You can organize by folder or by tag.Â

On the page, you can zoom in or zoom out. You can also select “No Style”, which will cause Firefox 3 to render only the HTML portion of the site. This is handy for Webmasters in testing their website.Â

It’s interesting to note that the existing version of the Google Toolbar was not compatible with Firefox 3, while the existing version of the Yahoo Toolbar was. Updating add-on’s was very easy.

Other new improvements I have heard include better page loading time and better security, but I did not check out those claims.

Overall, I can’t really find any negatives.  Adding the social bookmarking feature is certainly a good idea, and there was no case where things were moved around just for the sake of moving around (unlikely Microsoft Office 2007, where horizontal icon list becomes vertical and vertical icon list becomes horizontal, while offering no real functionality enhancement).  The future appears bright for Firefox 3, and based on the current trajectory, I wouldn’t be surprised if Firefox catches IE in market share in the not-to-distant future.Â

This transaction further shows the consolidation in the Business Intelligence industry, and means that of the “Top 4″ in Business Intelligence software (Hyperion, Cognos, Business Objects, and MicroStrategy), only 2 (Cognos and MicroStrategy) remain independent. It’s interesting to see if either one of those players get acquired. Currently, the only big player that hasn’t made a move in this space is Microsoft, as both Oracle and SAP have made their moves.

The people hurt most by this deal are those who have come to rely on the Business Objects – Oracle partnership. The BO/Oracle relationship is expected to cool down considerably, and I would expect any partnership between the two to dissolve in the not-to-distant future. For clients relying on this combination, they should start looking for alternatives soon.

To use Adsense For Mobile, your site needs to be in wml, xhtml, or ctml. You can put one mobile ad unit on each page, and each unti can contain one (single) or two (double) ads. You can also customize your color scheme and select a channel to track, just like Adsense for Content. Adsnese For Mobile requires server-side scripting, and at this moment the following languages are supported:

PHP v4.3.0 or greater
Perl v5.8 or greater
JSP v1.2 or greater
ASP v3.0 or greater

I downloaded Safari 3 Beta for Windows and started playing with it. Overall, the browsing experience is pleasant, browser speed was quick as advertised, and Apple’s renowned user interface did not disappoint. I did run into one issue, though, and that was I was unable to enter Chinese characters. Unfortunately for me, that means in the short run, I will need to stick with one of the current browsers.

It will be interesting to see how this announcement shakes up the browser market share. As I have been posting here in TopCat Blog, Safari’s market share has ranged between 0.6% to 0.8% during the past 9 months. One can expect that this number will increase in the coming months, as more and more Windows users discover Safari. My guess is that Safari will grow significantly at the expense of IE, and Firefox’s market share will become flat, as new defectors of IE will now likely turn to Safari.