IE9 to Firefox 4 Comparisons Are Misleading

According to Microsoft at least.

The Redmond firm proudly declared that IE9 had managed 2.3 million downloads a day after the browser’s release (14th of March), but is obviously feeling the heat with Firefox’s 4 more spectacular numbers.

Ryan Gavin, senior director of IE marketing, had the following to say:

With Internet Explorer 9, Firefox 4, and Chrome 10 all hitting their final releases recently, drawing instant comparisons around downloads or initial usage is a natural temptation, but unfortunately you can’t do it quite yet.

One of the reasons why the comparison is deemed unfair by Microsoft is to do with how company offers browser updates. So far, only those running release candidate or beta builds of IE9 received the notification via Windows Update. IE8 users will be prompted to upgrade starting in April.

Gavin continued with a slight untruth, namely

In the case of Firefox 4 and Chrome 10 their update mechanisms are turned on as part of their initial release to web (RTW).

What Gavin says does apply to Chrome with its silent updates, but Mozilla has not turned on an upgrade offer for people running Firefox 3.6 as of yet. In order to upgrade to Firefox 4, users have to manually check for an update to see the Firefox 4 offer after making sure that Firefox 3.6 is up to date.

Another argument by Gavin as to why the comparison is unfair is that IE9 is only available on Windows Vista and Windows 7. This contrasts heavily with Firefox which saw releases for Windows XP, OS X, as well as Linux.

Adoption on Windows 7 is what we care about most. Other browsers support other platforms, so if you want to draw comparisons you really need to take account of addressable base. With IE9, you essentially need to multiple by a factor of almost 3x to account for the difference in current addressable base.

Gavin ended his reasoning with the following:

The net of all this is that any comparison of browser share adoption at this point is premature at best, and misleading at worst. In a few months, we’ll be better placed to look at the share of the latest browser versions and get a sense for relative progress and adoption.