Government warnings against IE cause orgy of Firefox, Opera downloads

Filed under: Microsoft, Mozilla, Browsers

Recently, Internet Explorer has taken a lot of heat. This time, however, it hasn't been coming from disgruntled web devs or tech-savvy folks like our readers. No, this round of 'ditch IE' requests came from the governments of Germany, France, and Australia.

The result: their citizens ditching IE en masse.

As you can see in the chart, nearly 300,000 Germans have downloaded Firefox in the last four days. Opera has seen a significant jump as well, reporting that downloads in Germany have doubled. In France, the uptick seems to have primarily benefited Mozilla, with Opera reporting only a slight increase. Mozilla won't have stats ready for a few days, but they've said the change was noticeable.

Opera also reported that downloads in Australia jumped 37%.

There's every reason to think Google Chrome is getting in on the action as well - but Google's not keen to make with the numbers. They suggest we sit tight and check third-party reports at the end of the month.

ed: if you're not up to speed about why this happened, check out Sebastian's post regarding the critical patch issued by Microsoft today!

[via The Register]

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Government warnings against IE cause orgy of Firefox, Opera downloads originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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