217w ago - The honeymoon appears to be over for Internet Explorer 8 - and it wasn't much of a honeymoon to begin with, either. Just days after the browser's big debut, its market share has fallen a full 28 percent from its peak.

Alternative browsers, meanwhile, have held steady ground, losing no significant number of users to Microsoft's new offering.

To quote: IE 8 managed to break the 2 percent mark within a day of its release last Thursday, according to tracking data by analytics firm Net Applications. It grew slowly over the weekend, topping out at 2.59 percent of the overall browser market at 3 a.m. (EDT) Sunday. From there, things started heading downhill.

With a steady decline, Internet Explorer 8 dropped down to 1.86 percent of the market by Monday morning. It's bounced up and down a bit since then, but thus far, there's been no sign of a second wave of supporters rushing to make the switch.

Compare that with the release of Firefox 3 last summer: Within just three days of its launch, Mozilla's next-generation browser more than doubled its beta share, jumping up to nearly 19 percent of the market.

"I suppose the kindest description of user reaction to IE 8's first public outing would be 'underwhelming'," says Aodhan Cullen, CEO and founder of online data firm StatCounter.

219w ago - Firefox is eroding Internet Explorer's reign as the most popular Internet browser.

An online study conducted by marketing research firm Fittkau & Maass showed that 38.4 per cent of German-speaking Internet users browse either with Firefox version 3.x or 2.x.

The Internet Explorer 7.x version accounted for 37.2 per cent of the same group, while the previous version, 6.x, had 16 per cent.

Apple's Safari is used by 3.2 per cent of the 105,000 survey participants.

It was followed by Opera with 2.3 per cent and Google Chrome with 0.8 per cent.

231w ago - Microsoft is due to issue a patch to fix a security flaw believed to have affected as many as 10,000 Web sites.

The emergency patch should be available from 1800 GMT on 17 December, Microsoft has said.

The flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser could allow criminals to take control of people's computers and steal passwords.

Internet Explorer is used by the vast majority of computer users and the flaw could affect all versions of it.

So far the vulnerability has affected only machines running Internet Explorer 7.

Potential danger

According to Rick Ferguson, a senior security adviser at security firm Trend Micro, the flaw has so far been used to steal gaming passwords but more sensitive data could be at risk until the security update is installed.

"It is inevitable that it will be adapted by criminals. It's just a question of modifying the payload the trojan installs," he said.

It is relatively unusual for Microsoft to issue what it calls an "out-of-band" security bulletin and experts are reading the decision to rush out a patch as evidence of the potential danger of the flaw.
Some experts have suggested...

231w ago - Users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer are being urged by experts to switch to a rival until a serious security flaw has been fixed.

The flaw in Microsoft's Internet Explorer could allow criminals to take control of people's computers and steal their passwords, Internet experts say. Microsoft urged people to be vigilant while it investigated and prepared an emergency patch to resolve it.

"Microsoft is continuing its investigation of public reports of attacks against a new vulnerability in Internet Explorer," said the firm in a security advisory alert about the flaw.

Microsoft says it has detected attacks against IE 7.0 but said the "underlying vulnerability" was present in all versions of the browser. Other browsers, such as Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari, are not vulnerable to the flaw Microsoft has identified.

Browser bait

"In this case, hackers found the hole before Microsoft did," said Rick Ferguson, senior security advisor at Trend Micro. "This is never a good thing."

As many as 10,000 Web sites have been compromised since the vulnerability was discovered, he said.

"What we've seen from the exploit so far is it stealing game passwords, but it's inevitable that it will be adapted by criminals," he said. "It's just a question...

233w ago - Microsoft once had a near monopoly on Web browsers with Explorer, so it comes almost as a shock to find that the Web browser most used to access Bruceongames is Firefox 3 and that even the undermarketed Chrome has made a significant impact.

When it comes to search Google always had the majority of the market but MSN now seems to have slipped away to nearly nothing. It doesn't bring many people here.

You can forgive the above because Microsoft, famously, misunderstood the internet so came to it late. Operating systems are different though, Microsoft have owned this sector since MSDOS. But even here there are massive cracks appearing. By far the fastest growing section of the PC industry is Netbooks.

And the Linux derived Ubuntu has become a great success. Microsoft have fought back by bringing XP from the grave. But they are imposing stupid maximum system specifications that attempt to defy Moore's law.

And of course their worst operating system problem is Vista. This has been the biggest trainwreck in the history of Microsoft and they are rushing out Windows 7 to try and mitigate the disaster.

You might think that Microsoft own the market for standard applications with the Office suite of programmes that have swept all in front of them to become global standards....