Microsoft IE7 Browser Clocks 100 Million Installations

The final version of Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 was launched 3 months back and on January 8th, they had topped 100 million IE7 installations. They say that over 25% of all visitors to websites in the US were using IE7, making IE7 the second most used browser after IE6.

And this is just the beginning. Once more final localized IE versions are released, expect more international users to hop in. A large credit for this goes to the Automatic Updates that easily upgrades Microsoft software to their latest versions. A major boost of IE7 numbers will come with the the consumer availability of Windows Vista on January 30, 2007 (and new computers will start shipping with Windows Vista with preloaded IE7).

So is Firefox lagging behind with over 286 Million downloads ever since it started years back (see firefox download counters)? Spread Firefox guys seem to disagree.

“What Microsoft didn’t say in that announcement was that all of those IE7 users were just upgrades from IE6 and that the total IE share actually fell over the last three months. You can read more about the real impact IE7 (or lack of impact) over at this Information Week article.”

IE7 entry was not sudden and it has been around for some time too. I remember blogging that developers could beta test Internet Explorer 7 in late 2005! And of course then there was beta 2 preview, beta 3, IE7 with plus and without plus also.

Don’t forget Opera! Its wonderful too…