Rishi

Free web analytics company reports that Internet Explorer still leads despite falling market share

Google's browser Chrome overtook Firefox for the first time globally on a monthly basis in November, according to StatCounter, the free website analytics company. The firm's research arm reports that Chrome took 25.69% of the worldwide market (up from 4.66% in November 2009) compared to Firefox's 25.23%. Microsoft's Internet Explorer still maintains a strong lead globally with 40.63%.

In the US Internet Explorer continues to perform strongly and is maintaining market share at 50.66%, up slightly from 50.24% year on year. Firefox retains second place on 20.09%, down from 26.75%. Chrome is up to 17.3% from 10.89%. Safari is on 10.76% from 10.71%.

In the UK, Internet Explorer also leads the market with 42.82%. Chrome is on 24.82%, having overtaken Firefox (20.56%) in July. (For other individual country or regional analysis see StatCounter Global Stats).

It was a tough decision for Firefox on Android: improve the browser's performance or keep its compatibility with add-ons and other technology?

But after creating a prototype, Mozilla settled on the winning answer quickly: performance. And tomorrow, a month after making the decision, Mozilla plans to release an early version of the overhauled Firefox for Android.

The organization will introduce the new version on the "nightly" channel, where Mozilla tests raw new technology. With the organization's rapid-release cycle, the nightly version graduates to the Aurora, beta, and final-release channels, maturing for six weeks in each phase.

The new version is strategically important for Mozilla for multiple reasons. First, smartphones and tablets are at the center of a mobile-first transformation of the computing industry, and Firefox isn't preinstalled anywhere right now. Second, with Firefox shut out on Apple's iOS and Microsoft's Windows Phone, Android is effectively the only route for Mozilla to bring its browser to the mobile market.

Last, Mozilla's objective--to ensure an open Web--relies on Firefox. Right now, Apple and Google browsers based on the open-source WebKit project dominate mobile browsing.

Release manager Christian Legnitto announced the move Friday. Initially the new version was geared just for phones, but Mozilla expanded it to tablets, too, after concluding it couldn't offer separate versions.

Firefox for personal computers, and many of the add-ons that helped make the browser popular by making it more customizable, use an interface called XUL (XML User Interface Language). But because the XUL-based version of Firefox took so long to start up on Android and isn't as responsive, Mozilla instead embraced Andoid's built-in technology.

Among the native interface advantages, according to programmer Mark Finkle:

It comes at a cost, though. XUL-based add-ons are one issue.
"Native UI builds are considered a new application and are not add-on compatible with the XUL versions," Finkle said

Mozilla is working on a new approach for add-ons on Android, though, through an interface called NativeWindow, Finkle said. And in a comment, Finkle added that it could be possible to build Firefox's newer Jetpack interface for add-ons atop the NativeWindow foundation.

There are other challenges, too, with the new version. The current Firefox Sync, for example, no longer works as a way to share bookmarks, passwords, and open tabs across multiple versions of the browser. A native version of Sync for Android is under construction, though, and due to arrive in December. Also being addressed is the fact that the current upgrade path drops saved passwords and browsing history.

Another list of objections came from Robert Kaiser, a Firefox project contributor, who listed his misgivings in a mailing list message: "The awesomebar algorithm [which suggests full links based on what people type in the adress bar] will be removed. The privacy of bookmarks and history will be removed. Open video might get undermined," he said. "A lot of Add-on awesomeness will be removed... Somehow I don't believe you fully there."

All these are potential problems, to be sure. But not as big as people not using the browser at all because it's too slow.

No judge has ever declared a Firefox plug-in called MafiaaFire Redirector to be illegal. But that didn't stop the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from trying to censor it from the Web.

The Mozilla Foundation says DHS requested the removal of MafiaaFire, which describes itself as a utility that "automatically redirects you to the correct alternate site" if the main domain has been seized by the U.S. government.

Harvey Anderson, Mozilla's general counsel, told CNET today that the request from DHS was made over the phone. Anderson replied in writing, posing a list of questions in an April 19 e-mail, includin

g this important one: "Is Mozilla legally obligated to disable the add-on?"

Anderson says DHS hasn't replied, and the plug-in has not been removed.

A DHS spokesman told CNET this afternoon that "ICE's Homeland Security Investigations does not comment publicly on our interaction with Internet intermediaries on intellectual property theft enforcement issues." ICE stands for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement division.

The reason DHS doesn't like the MafiaaFire plugin is obvious: It makes the government's tactic of seizing domain names less useful. FirstRow.net, Atdhe.net, and Torrent-Finder.com are among the domains seized on grounds that they're allegedly infringing copyrights of U.S. companies.

One response to a domain name seizure is, simply, to move to a new one, preferably in a top-level domain that can't be easily reached by DHS and the U.S. judicial system. That's what the popular sports video-streaming Web site, Atdhe.net, did after its domain went offline. It's now at Atdhenet.tv (and, just in case, Atdhe.me as well).

MafiaaFire helps to make this process a little easier by redirecting Firefox automatically to the replacement Web site. Its unflattering name arose out of a protest against the RIAA and MPAA--aka "the Music and Film Industry Association of America"--and the "mad-with-power ICE."

If a government official applies pressure on a private company to delete a file or document, that can raise constitutional and free speech issues. In the 1963 case known as Bantam Books v. Sullivan, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a commission's extra-judicial notification that some books or magazines were objectionable was an illegal "system of informal censorship."

"Whether the add-on is unlawful, or whether any speech is unlawful, is for the courts to determine, not for DHS to determine," says Aden Fine, staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. "Nobody from DHS should be going around trying to get speech removed from the Internet before a court decides."