IE9 Is Going Strong and IE8 Grows Faster than Chrome or Firefox

Although still very early in the development process, Internet Explorer 9 is going strong, having passed the 1 million download mark since Platform Preview 1 was released. This is rather remarkable, especially considering that IE9 even in Platform Preview 2 stage is only the core of IE vNext and not a fully-fledged browser, lacking basic functionality such as an Address Bar and Back and Forward buttons.

IE9 momentum is strong according to Microsoft. However, IE9 is yet to have its say on the browser market. The same is not valid for Internet Explorer 8. According to Net Applications, more users have chosen IE8 over Chrome and Firefox in May 2010. Since April, IE 8’s usage share has grown from 24.66% to 25.15%. Considering only data for Windows, IE8’s market share is over 31%, and growing constantly. At the same time, IE8 enjoys a share of 28.94% across all operating systems.

Data provided by the Internet metrics company points out that IE8 grew by.81% in the past month, no less than 2.5 times faster than Google Chrome. Net Applications credits IE6 with the position of runner-up browser worldwide with a share of 17.13% in May 2010. Internet Explorer 7 is down to 12.04% at the end of the past month.

Between April and May, Firefox 3.6 grew from 15.33% to 15.69%, while Mozilla’s overall share of the browser market went down from 24.59% in April to 24.35% the past month. During the same period, Chrome jumped from 6.73% to 7.05%, Safari went up from 4.72% to 4.77% and Opera from 2.30% to 2.43%.

What is interesting to note is the fact that while Internet Explorer did experience a decline in market share overall, it was the smallest decline in the last 12 months.

Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) RTW is available for download here (for 32-bit and 64-bit flavors of Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008).

Firefox 3.6.3 for Windows is available for download here.

Google Chrome 5.0 Stable is available for download here.

Opera 10.53 is available for download here.

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) Platform Preview 2 is available for download here.