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It’s official. According to recent figures released by StatCounter Global Statistics, Firefox 3.5 has become the world’s most popular browser. Its global market share is just under 22%, with IE7 having dropped a little lower, but IE8 is catching up fast.
As with all statistics, there are a few caveats:

• the figures measure individual browser versions
• Internet Explorer still holds over 55% of the global browser market, but it’s split between IE6, IE7 and IE8.
• web statistics are inherently flawed. Don’t trust them.

There are also a number of regional differences:

The last two days of our Christmas Countdown have been extremely popular and as a consequence, the number of people contacting our support team has skyrocketed.
Given we’re already working with a skeleton team during the holiday period – we are struggling to cope.
I just ask that you please be a little patient waiting for a response for the next few days. We normally endeavor to maintain a 24 hour response time, but at the moment, we just can’t keep up with demand.
Rest assured — we will respond to your inquiry as soon as we can.

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Oracle’s plans for acquiring Sun have been on hold since April 2009. Although the US Department of Justice approved the deal, the European Commission formally objected. This week, MySQL creator Michael Widenius also put out an urgent call to save MySQL from Oracle’s clutches. His reasons:

• Rather than working with the EU, Oracle contacted hundreds of customers and asked them to write a letter of ‘unconditional acceptance’ to the EC.
• A strong MySQL has few benefits, whereas a weaker MySQL could be worth more than one billion dollars to Oracle.
• Oracle had not made any promises to keep all of MySQL under an open source license, retain current support pricing structures, regularly release new editions, work with the community, or add features that could make it more competitive with enterprise databases.
• Oracle’s begrudgingly updated the InnoDB engine and Sun eventually forked the project.

In response, the company has finally issued a press release outlining their intentions for MySQL. Oracle’s 5-year public commitments include:

In their ongoing attempt to lure users away from Google, Microsoft have teamed up with WolframAlpha to improve results in the Bing Search engine.
Both Bing and WolframAlpha were launched in 2009:

• Bing appeared in June and received a largely positive response from the Internet community. The results are relevant and fast, plus it has a few interesting features such as text and image previews. It’s been slowly chipping away at Google’s market share but is yet to achieve worldwide appeal.
• WolframAlpha was launched in May and was billed as the “knowledge engine” which would topple Google. It parses natural language and presents intelligent data rather than links to other websites. Following a high-profile marketing campaign, the servers promptly crashed and the system failed to live up to its initial hype.

Linking both services could work well. For example, a search for the planet “Mars” could show a wealth of technical information from WolframAlpha plus links to associated websites such as Nasa (and the chocolate company).
This isn’t the first search Bing partnership deal Microsoft has instigated. The company announced a Yahoo partnership in July and has recently begun integrating results from Facebook and Twitter.

It’s a big week for Microsoft. Windows 7 debuts on Thursday and the new OS is widely expected to be a success. Microsoft would argue that Vista was hardly a flop, but individuals and organizations have been slow to upgrade from the more-than-capable Windows XP. I’m going to make a sweeping statement that may shock some: Vista isn’t that bad. It has some irritating habits and needs decent hardware, but the majority of problems have been ironed out. However, Vista gave Windows a bad name and much of the media mud slinging has stuck.
Microsoft learned valuable lessons with Windows 7. It’s leaner, faster, and the OS has been publicly tested for many months. It’s good — even I bought a copy. (Although I may have reconsidered if I’d seen Microsoft’s embarrassingly awful “Hosting Your [Windows 7] Party” commercials first!)
Excitable Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will unveil Windows 7 at a press conference on Thursday. Industry rumor-mongers are also expecting him to provide further details about the opening of Microsoft’s standalone stores, with the first expected in Scottsdale, Arizona, US.
This is a new venture for Microsoft. As well as tackling Google in the cloud, they hope to beat Apple on the high street. But will it work?

Los Angeles City Council has approved a $7.2 million deal to use Google’s applications for its 30,000 personnel. The council voted unanimously to replace several of their current IT systems with Google Apps and GMail instead of competing offers over a dozen other IT suppliers.
The deal is a massive boost for Google as it attempts to compete with Microsoft, IBM and HP in the business arena. Perhaps it’s the first sign that cloud computing is being considered as a serious proposition by major corporations.
Google’s ambition is to lure companies away from their dependency on Microsoft Office. Their success to date has been modest:

• MS Office is one of the most entrenched business applications. For many companies, it is the primary reason for purchasing a PC.
• Feature-for-feature, MS Office beats Google Docs by a wide margin. Critics argue that Office users only utilize 10% those features, but that 10% differs from person to person.
• Many users develop their IT skills on MS Office. Google Docs may be simpler, but an element of re-training is likely to be necessary. For example, sharing a document with another user no longer involves emailing an attachment.
• Cloud computing is a relatively new concept compared to the files and folders model. Corporations will be concerned about service availability and security.

However, cloud computing can offer significant business advantages:

It’s a simple question: “What is a web browser?” Unfortunately, Google’s random survey in Times Square, New York, revealed that only 8% of people knew the answer. The remaining 92% of users either did not know or confused it with a search engine. Google had even more worrying concerns — the vast majority of respondents had never heard of their Chrome browser.
This is a problem that directly affects web developers. We want people to use the latest browsers so we can implement new technologies and techniques without spending time coding around problems on older applications. IE6 development is particularly problematical yet it retains 20% of the market 8 years after it’s initial release. How can we encourage people to upgrade when the vast majority don’t know what we’re talking about? Those users cannot possibly comprehend the benefits of newer browsers because they’re happy with their existing software.
There are deeper problems for Google. The company makes its money from search and online applications. As those systems become more sophisticated, they have become reliant on new technologies such as HTML5. Microsoft has made no firm commitment to HTML5 and, even if it is implemented, they are unlikely to provide support for their legacy browsers. Yet 65% of people continue to use Internet Explorer; they cannot run Google applications such as Wave.

Fresh copies of Windows 7 will be landing in people’s mailboxes and reaching high street stores this week. Unfortunately for Microsoft, pirated versions of their latest operating system have been available in China for several weeks longer. At just $3, it is also significantly less expensive than the standard retail price.
China is the world’s second largest PC market, but an estimated 80% of all software is pirated. The primary driving force behind the piracy is price: even Windows 7 Home Basic costs about one month’s income for a Chinese student. Microsoft have addressed software prices to some extent and slashed Office 2007 by over 70% last year. Nevertheless, it still compares unfavorably against the cost and widespread availability of pirated software.
There are signs that law enforcement is improving — IT research company Gartner estimates that piracy rates will fall to 50% by 2012. That would put China on the same level as most Asian markets, but experts still recognize that piracy throughout the region is a long-term problem.
For web evangelists, there is an obvious solution. Web applications and cloud computing can eradicate software piracy. A distribution model using micro-payments or advert-supported revenue could have more success at beating the pirates. Unfortunately, the internet is not available to the vast majority of Chinese residents, especially those in rural areas. Until fast broadband links are widely available, software piracy is likely to remain problem for Microsoft and many other companies.

Just when you thought all was quiet on the OS front, Apple breaks its silence to slam Windows 7 as being complex, expensive, and the cause of user headaches. Brian Croll, Vice President of OS X product marketing, explains:

Windows users are really tired of all the headaches that they’ve been getting over the years, starting all the way back from Windows Me to NT to Vista and now Windows 7. As a result, I think people are looking for something different, and the Mac offers real ease of use, stability and security.
Windows 7 is still just Windows. It doesn’t change a lot. It’s still complex, it’s still really expensive when you look at the cost of the upgrade, and there’s still security concerns. It turns out when you get Windows 7 it doesn’t even have some of the basic applications like mail or chat, or programs to manage your photos. You actually have to go and find them and download them.
For the consumer, there’s a lot of headache and annoyance built in to Windows 7. It’s built on a lot of antiquated technology that doesn’t change from release to release. We think that most people probably aren’t going to make that jump (from XP/Vista), and as a result, are going to be looking for new computers.

Let’s examine his statement in detail:
1. Windows users are tired of the headaches
Really? We’ve all had problems with Windows but does any OS offer a trouble-free experience? I think not, Mr Croll — and Macs are hardly exempt.