There is more than one?

Quite possibly there are hundreds if not more. The top 5 are:-1

Internet Explorer 66.97%
Firefox 22.98%
Safari 4.07%
Chrome 2.84%
Opera 2.04%

Why is Internet Explorer so popular?

This is actually quite a difficult question to answer, for various reasons.  One reason is most users (that’s you and me) don’t know there is a choice and stick with the one that came with the computer.

The other more complex reason is Microsoft.  On 3 April 2000, Microsoft was convicted of being an “abusive monopoly”. In using its Windows Monopoly to bundle Internet Explorer with its operating system it was thus able to dominate the Internet Browser market easily as customers had Internet Explorer by default.

The other issue here is Microsoft used its Windows Monopoly to prevent competing Internet Browsers from being bundled with computers from the likes of Dell, Compaq, HP, IBM, Sony etc.

Why is Internet Explorer still #1?

Again there are various reasons at play here.  The court case against Microsoft has shown that the US Federal Government’s bark is much worse than its bite, in doing very little to encourage competition.

In March 2004 the European Union stepped up to the plate and fined Microsoft $613 million  this time for bundling Windows Media Player with Windows.  Microsoft, for its lack of compliance with the March 2004 judgement, was fined again on 27 February 2008 to the tune of  $1.4 billion, the largest fine in the history of EU competition policy.

So what does all that mean?  Microsoft for all this time has been continuing with the same Anti-Competitive practices that landed them in trouble nearly 10 years ago.

However things are starting to change. On 1 September 2009, Sony closed a deal with Google to bundle Chrome as the default Internet Browser in its PCs.2

The other reason is Business.  Microsoft introduced features which are proprietary and only usable within Internet Explorer.  Businesses have developed applications based on those features and well, they don’t want to change those applications to comply with web standards. Therefore, we still have the old Internet Explorer 6 (which is grossly out-of-date) with over 25% of the Web Browser market and the newer versions of Internet Explorer 7 & 8 only having 21% & 15% respectively.3

Don’t you like Internet Explorer?

No   (I could write another article on why.)