IE8 Users Downgrade To Explorer 7
The latest data shows that Microsoft's new browser lost market share over the weekend. — Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 appears to be losing market share, even though the browser has been on the market for less than a week.
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft has spent years converting raw install volume into market share without much success: even after 100 million IE 7 installs were reported in January 2007, the browser kept ceding ground, and by November 2008 Internet Explorer's share had slipped below 70 percent for the first time. A rough debut is also familiar territory — IE 7's own bug-ridden 2006 launch set the precedent for upgrades that arrive before they are ready.
What changed this weekend is the direction of the flow: rather than merely failing to win converts, IE 8 pushed existing users backwards, with confirmed reports of downgrades to IE 7 within days of the March 19 release. That comes just weeks after Firefox was shown gaining share at Safari's expense, meaning Microsoft's stumble lands while Mozilla is already collecting switchers.
First-order effects
- Microsoft now has to manage a visible rollback wave on top of a launch-week perception problem — reviewers had already flagged Web Slices as well-conceived but mediocrely executed, and weekend downgrades confirm for enterprises that IE 8 is not yet the safe deployment target.
Second-order effects
- Mozilla inherits a rare opening: every user who reverts to IE 7 has just demonstrated willingness to change browsers, which lowers the barrier for the Firefox pitch at exactly the moment Firefox was already adding share. Web developers, meanwhile, face a prolonged split between IE 7 and IE 8 rendering modes, stretching testing costs across both camps.
Third-order effects
- If each major upgrade cycle triggers regression instead of adoption, browser share stops tracking the Windows install base and starts tracking product quality — eroding the bundled-distribution advantage that has underpinned Internet Explorer's dominance since the late 1990s.
The trend: Browser market share is decoupling from operating-system defaults as upgrade quality, not install volume, becomes the deciding factor — a shift that favors whichever vendor ships releases users keep.