IE more popular than you think, researcher says

Since many enterprise users run multiple browsers, IE's use is under-reported

Editor's note: The person quoted in this story as "Craig Barth" is actually Randall C. Kennedy, an InfoWorld contributor. Kennedy, who presented himself as the CTO of Devil Mountain Software, no longer works at InfoWorld. Given that he disguised his identity to Computerworld and a number of other publications, the credibility of Kennedy's statements is called into question. Rather than simply remove stories in which he is quoted, we have left them online so readers can weigh his data and conclusions for themselves.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) is used much more often than most assume, a researcher asserted today.

According Devil Mountain Software, nearly 57% of the 23,0000 PCs in the company's community-based Exo.performance.network (XPnet) run at least two browsers: IE and either Mozilla's Firefox, Google's Chrome, Opera Software's Opera or Apple's Safari for Windows.

To continue reading, register here to become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.

Editor's note: The person quoted in this story as "Craig Barth" is actually Randall C. Kennedy, an InfoWorld contributor. Kennedy, who presented himself as the CTO of Devil Mountain Software, no longer works at InfoWorld. Given that he disguised his identity to Computerworld and a number of other publications, the credibility of Kennedy's statements is called into question. Rather than simply remove stories in which he is quoted, we have left them online so readers can weigh his data and conclusions for themselves.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) is used much more often than most assume, a researcher asserted today.

According Devil Mountain Software, nearly 57% of the 23,0000 PCs in the company's community-based Exo.performance.network (XPnet) run at least two browsers: IE and either Mozilla's Firefox, Google's Chrome, Opera Software's Opera or Apple's Safari for Windows.

New mining of XPnet's data has revealed a more precise accounting of the multiple-browser phenomenon in the enterprise , said Craig Barth, the CTO at Devil Mountain.

More than 32% of the machines that Devil Mountain monitors run both IE and a version of Firefox, said Barth, making Mozilla's browser the top No. 2 browser in corporations. Google 's Chrome is the No. 2 second browser: 18% of the systems run both IE and Chrome. Opera and Safari are far behind Firefox and Chrome, running in conjunction with IE on only 4% and 3% of the machines, respectively.

Barth argued that the numbers challenge the conventional thinking regarding browser usage share, as regularly spelled out by the likes of NetApplications.com, a California company that measures traffic to some 40,000 Web sites to determine each browser's share of the total.

"While IE's presence across the broader Internet may have declined in recent years, its stranglehold on enterprise IT application compatibility, development practices and in-house deployment standards remains as firm as ever," Barth wrote in a blog posted today.

"When users can install another browser, and not all can, they're still forced to deal with IE with internal applications or sites," Barth said in an interview today. "IT forces them to use IE during the day within the company, but when they want to browse the [external] Web -- if they can -- they want to use another browser like Firefox or Chrome."

Because Internet metrics firms measure browser usage on only the public part of the Web, they're not seeing the true usage trends of IE, Barth argued.

For example, NetApplications' most recent data claimed that IE accounted for 62% of all browsers used worldwide last month, down 10% from the year before. In comparison, XPnet says nearly 80% of all PCs in business run Microsoft 's browser, with that number barely budging of late.

NetApplications did not respond to a request for comment on Barth's argument that it under-reports IE.

"The enterprise is a huge stronghold for Microsoft," said Barth. "Microsoft hasn't aggressively tried to move people off IE, or even older editions of IE. They don't have to. For their bread and butter, corporations, IE is still the dominant browser."