IE: 54.38%
Firefox: 38.21%
Google Chrome: 3.50%
Opera: 2.18%
Safari: 1.13%
Mozilla: 0.46%

Compared to December, the biggest gainer was Chrome, which increased by 0.34%.  The biggest loser was IE, which saw its market share decrease by 0.32%.  Firefox saw a small increase at 0.13%.   IE8, which is the next version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser, released its RC (release candidate) version in January 2009.  We have started to see a small trickle of IE8 browser (1.68% of all IE traffic).  We have not yet tried IE8, and will report our thoughts on it once we have done so.

Below are my reactions after initial usage:

As you type in the address bar, a list of all sites you’ve recently visited and match what you have typed in appears in a drop-down list.  This is very convenient, as I can then just scroll down and select the URL that I want to go to.

You can click on the favicon for a website to get more detailed information on the site, including the cookies it is dropping on your computer, and any password information you may have saved for this site.  Under the Media tab, you can also view all the images on the site separately.   Under the General tab, you can view meta tag information, content encoding, page size.  And if the site is using Wordpress, what version of Wordpress is used. 

Bookmark management is also better.  Now you can tag the web page you are saving.  Also, when you enter “Organize Bookmark” mode (Firefox 3 calls this the “Library”), it is easy to get additional information on each page you have saved, such as last visit time and site description.  Those were improvements, especially compared to IE.  You can organize by folder or by tag. 

On the page, you can zoom in or zoom out.  You can also select “No Style”, which will cause Firefox 3 to render only the HTML portion of the site.  This is handy for Webmasters in testing their website. 

It’s interesting to note that the existing version of the Google Toolbar was not compatible with Firefox 3, while the existing version of the Yahoo Toolbar was.  Updating add-on’s was very easy.

Other new improvements I have heard include better page loading time and better security, but I did not check out those claims.

Overall, I can’t really find any negatives.  Adding the social bookmarking feature is certainly a good idea, and there was no case where things were moved around just for the sake of moving around (unlikely Microsoft Office 2007, where horizontal icon list becomes vertical and vertical icon list becomes horizontal, while offering no real functionality enhancement).  The future appears bright for Firefox 3, and based on the current trajectory, I wouldn’t be surprised if Firefox catches IE in market share in the not-to-distant future. 

This transaction further shows the consolidation in the Business Intelligence industry, and means that of the “Top 4″ in Business Intelligence software (Hyperion, Cognos, Business Objects, and MicroStrategy), only 2 (Cognos and MicroStrategy) remain independent. It’s interesting to see if either one of those players get acquired. Currently, the only big player that hasn’t made a move in this space is Microsoft, as both Oracle and SAP have made their moves.

The people hurt most by this deal are those who have come to rely on the Business Objects - Oracle partnership. The BO/Oracle relationship is expected to cool down considerably, and I would expect any partnership between the two to dissolve in the not-to-distant future. For clients relying on this combination, they should start looking for alternatives soon.

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I downloaded Safari 3 Beta for Windows and started playing with it. Overall, the browsing experience is pleasant, browser speed was quick as advertised, and Apple’s renowned user interface did not disappoint. I did run into one issue, though, and that was I was unable to enter Chinese characters. Unfortunately for me, that means in the short run, I will need to stick with one of the current browsers.

It will be interesting to see how this announcement shakes up the browser market share. As I have been posting here in TopCat Blog, Safari’s market share has ranged between 0.6% to 0.8% during the past 9 months. One can expect that this number will increase in the coming months, as more and more Windows users discover Safari. My guess is that Safari will grow significantly at the expense of IE, and Firefox’s market share will become flat, as new defectors of IE will now likely turn to Safari.

What does this mean? The comment board at Technorati is already buzzing with the possibility of seeing Adsense ads in Feedburner feeds in the not-to-distant future. Additionally, it is very likely that there will be some kind of integration between Google Reader and Feedburner.

I also think that this will help Google Blog Search to include more blogs in its index. Furthermore, other blogging service sites, most notably Technorati, will probably feel the need to quickly partner up with someone else. A Google-Technorati marriage is also possible, although it’s not as obvious as the Google-Feedburner marriage, where there is little overlap between the two.