In the second full month of availability for the new Firefox 4 and Internet Explorer 9, clear trends are starting to emerge. Firefox users are upgrading; Internet Explorer users are not. And Internet Explorer's slide is continuing unabated.

Microsoft's browser is down 0.84 points to 54.27 percent. Firefox is up a fraction, gaining 0.08 points to 21.71 percent. Chrome saw gains of 0.58 points to 12.52 percent. Safari too is up a little with a 7.28 percent market share, up 0.13 points. Opera dropped 0.11 points to 2.03 percent.

The Chrome problem

Internet Explorer 9 is certainly a good browser, but much as Microsoft might like to claim otherwise, it's hard to make a case that it's unambiguously better than its competition. Firefox users, especially those in love with the enormous number of extensions and add-ons for that browser, are firmly entrenched. Internet Explorer is extensible, and does have extensions of its own, but its extensibility is far more limited than that of Firefox, and the same rich ecosystem of browser modifications simply doesn't exist. As things stand, Microsoft's chances of winning over such users seem slim.

Firefox seems to be in a similar situation; although it's not experiencing the same losses as Internet Explorer, Mozilla's browser equally isn't making any gains, in spite of a strong release in Firefox 4. Firefox was steadily gaining market share, winning over converts from Internet Explorer, until Google started to hit its stride with Chrome. The release of Chrome 4, in January 2010, which introduced support for extensions, strong developer tools, and which scored 100 percent in the Acid3 test, coincided with a near halt in Firefox's growth.

Since then, Chrome has continued to grow strongly, and is today the only browser to see consistent month-on-month gains. It now boasts a fairly rich range of extensions. Combined with regular releases, strong performance, and excellent standards compliance, the browser has a lot of nerd sex appeal—and hence plenty of advocacy. Couple this with aggressive marketing from Google, and the continued growth is no surprise.

Mozilla's fight back

Both Microsoft and Mozilla will have to change if they want to reverse these trends. The Mozilla organization is attempting to make such changes. It's currently on track to release Firefox 5 in late June, just three months after the release of Firefox 4. This will mark a major shift away from the infrequent major release policy that the group has used before: the new scheme will result in four smaller releases per year, enabling new features to be delivered to users in much less time than it took previously. In this way, Firefox is moving to a much more Chrome-like development model.

The transition will cause some amount of pain, at least initially. In particular, there are concerns about the ability of extension developers to keep on top of the regular release schedule. There are more than a few extensions already having problems due to incompatibility with Firefox 4, and the more frequent update schedule could make that problem worse. However, it's not insurmountable—Chrome manages regular releases and though compatibility is never assured, most extensions keep working correctly.

These more frequent releases, combined with implementation of a few key features (most notably the ability to isolate different tabs into different processes—something that Chrome and Internet Explorer have, but which remains missing from Firefox), may yet restore Firefox's ability to win over hearts and minds.

Microsoft's floundering

No such changes are planned by Microsoft, however. Redmond's browser was shedding market share first to Firefox and now to Chrome. Though the company has taken big strides—Internet Explorer 9 isn't perfect, but does lead the pack in some ways—its market share continues to slide. The nerds and technologists who, back in the late 1990s, promoted Internet Explorer, who made the switch to Firefox in the 2000s and brought friends, family, and coworkers along with them for the ride, and who are now shouting about how great Chrome is, just aren't interested in Internet Explorer.

Nor are Web developers, or the media in general.

If Microsoft wants to halt the downward slide—let alone regain share—it's going to take more than a new browser release every so often. Mimicing the competition would be a good start. Chrome and Firefox both have public schedules, or at least a close approximation: a new major Chrome version every four to six weeks, a new Firefox version every three months. Internet Explorer? We have no idea when Internet Explorer 10 will actually ship. But it's unlikely to be before 2012.

The lack of timetable is a problem. Even if Internet Explorer 9 is quite good now, it will, if history is anything to judge by, be eclipsed by both Firefox and Chrome long before it actually gets updated. This makes it hard to recommend. Tell someone to use Chrome or Firefox, and you're telling them to use a browser that's going to continue to keep pace with Web development indefinitely. Tell them to use Internet Explorer 9, and you're telling them to use a browser that's OK right now, but which will be sad and clunky by the end of the year. Better stick with Chrome or Firefox, then.

Then there's the update issue; even if Microsoft did release a new version every three months, allowing it to keep pace with browser developments, nobody will ever know, because Internet Explorer users can barely be bothered to upgrade their browsers.

Upgrade impact

Chrome's the clear winner, with rapid, automatic transitions. There are a few oddities; it looks like about a quarter of a percent of Chrome users are stuck on versions 9, 8, and 7-or-less, with no obvious reason why that should be. These people have installed Chrome and updated to a point, but then apparently decided to disable the built-in updating for some reason. Next month we should see if the pattern is repeated, as the transition from Chrome 10 to 11 will be complete, and the move from 11 to 12 will begin.

Firefox is doing pretty well. There's no automatic updating between 3.6 and 4, but there is in-browser promotion of the new version; combined with the fact that many Firefox users care about their browser choice and proactively update, it looks like a switch-over to Firefox 4 is occurring quite smoothly. It's already the most-used version of the browser, and should achieve a majority share this month. Firefox 5 will also make an entrance, assuming it hits its release date.

But for Internet Explorer, the picture is a sad one. Its transition lags behind that of Firefox 4 both in absolute terms—Internet Explorer 9 gained only 1.79 percent of the Web population last month, compared to 4.65 percent for Firefox 4—and in relative terms—48 percent of Firefox users are now using the latest version, versus just 8 percent of Internet Explorer users. The upgrades should start to pick up a little, as the browser is due to be offered over Windows Update later this month. It won't be a compulsory update, though, so many may end up rejecting or ignoring it.

A more aggressive posture from Microsoft—one that matched the postures of Mozilla or Google—would work wonders. If "using Internet Explorer" were synonymous with "using Internet Explorer 9" then at the very least, much of the animosity that the browser has earned in the Web development community would evaporate. Internet Explorer 9 doesn't do everything that its competitors do, but it does a lot. An environment in which Microsoft's newest browser is the only one in wide usage is a far more pleasant prospect than the current reality.

Along with more regular, more predictable updates, and more aggressive updating, Microsoft would do well to engage the browser extension community. Extensibility equivalent to that found in the competition would go down well with nerds, and nerds are often the ones making the decisions for the non-nerds around them.

Browser usage at Ars

Ars is, as ever, an outlier, with browser usage that's at odds with more typical sites. Firefox is down half a point, Chrome is up 0.27 points, Safari is up 0.25 points, Internet Explorer is up 0.29 points, and Opera is down 0.11 points.