Internet Explorer 9's growth on Windows 7 highlights Firefox's weakness
Microsoft put out a rah-rah blog post today, touting its various victories with Internet Explorer for the year, mostly discussing Internet Explorer 9′s performance on Windows 7.
Context & Ripple Effects
Internet Explorer spent half a decade bleeding share before this post: its slice of the browser market fell below 70% back in late 2008, Firefox was flagged as a serious threat in Europe as early as 2007, and a 2009 report showed the pattern of the era — Vista dragging IE down while Windows 7, Firefox and Chrome surged. The turnaround attempt came with IE9 itself, which Ars Technica reviewed in March 2011 as the most modern browser there is, followed by July data showing IE9 dominating malware-blocking stats.
So Microsoft's year-end blog post is the victory lap on that rebuild: rather than claiming overall share gains, it stakes the claim narrowly on IE9's growth among Windows 7 users — the one cohort where Microsoft controls the default — and frames Firefox as the browser failing to keep pace.
First-order effects
- Mozilla takes the direct hit: if IE9's momentum is concentrated on Windows 7, Firefox's historical stronghold — Windows users dissatisfied with IE — is the exact ground being contested.
- Microsoft gains a usable counter-narrative after years of decline stories, one anchored to the security record (IE9's malware-blocking dominance) rather than just marketing.
Second-order effects
- Google's Chrome, which rode the same 2009 surge alongside Firefox, is positioned to absorb defectors from either side — meaning Microsoft's anti-Firefox framing may accelerate consolidation around Chrome more than around IE.
- Mozilla's dependence on search-deal revenue makes any sustained share erosion on Windows a funding problem, pressuring it to differentiate beyond raw rendering performance.
Third-order effects
- The episode points toward browser competition being decided by OS integration and defaults rather than features alone — a bundle-cannibalization dynamic where the platform owner reclaims share whenever its browser becomes genuinely competitive.
- If the pattern holds, independent browsers like Firefox survive only by attaching to non-Windows platforms or institutional niches, shrinking the browser layer into an extension of operating-system ecosystems.
The trend: Browser share is consolidating around platform owners who can tie a competitive engine to their installed base, squeezing standalone browsers out of the middle of the market.