Last week on the 15th, we released Internet Explorer 9 Beta. The initial reaction has been pretty overwhelming, and we are very humbled by the response our customers have had. In first two days, over 2 million people worldwide downloaded IE9 Beta. By comparison, when Internet Explorer 8 Beta launched in August 2008, we had 1.3 million downloads over the first five days.
We’ve seen 9 million visits and over 26 million page views to the Beauty of the Web site since its release last week, and our developer-focused IE Test Drive Site has had 4 million page views since last Wednesday.
It’s is also to encouraging to see that as people have had a chance to dig deeper into the IE9 beta, the reaction has been equally positive. I’ve included some of the early looks at IE9 below from some leading industry reviewers:
· Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 a huge step forward - Edward Baig/USA Today
· Internet Explorer 9: From corporate memo to beta - Ina Fried/CNET News
· Microsoft steals a lead with IE9 - Richard Waters/Financial Times
· A First Look at Internet Explorer 9 Beta - Robert Strohmeyer/PCWorld
· Internet Explorer 9 beta review: Microsoft reinvents the browser - Ed Bott/ZDNet
· Internet Explorer 9 puts spotlight on website features - Glenn Chapman/Agence France Presse
· Microsoft's new IE9 promises zippier performance - Jessica Mintz/Associated Press
Of course, as we talked about last week, the emphasis isn’t the browser; it’s the sites we all love to visit getting richer and better experiences enabled by IE9. At our launch event last week, we unveiled 70 new partner experiences reaching over 800 million active internet users. Looking at the click-throughs on Beauty of the Web, our top ten partner sites showcasing some of the new things you can do with IE9 are: Facebook, Agent 008ball, BMW Vision EfficientDynamics, IMDb HD Trailer Gallery, CNN, One Day in Beijing, BeatKeep, Amazon.com, The Shodo, and LA Surprise Flower-o-Scope.
People are also experiencing the powerful combination of HTML5 and a fully-hardware accelerated browser with the Endless Mural also unveiled last week, where leading digital artist Joshua Davis showed how easy it is to create pieces of HTML5 art and add them to the mural. Since last week, users have contributed over 2,000 pieces of art to the Endless Mural.
All in all, we are encouraged about the very early response to the IE9 release this past week, namely because it signals that the emphasis on making websites shine through Windows is resonating. We are looking forward to more and more partners building great experiences through Internet Explorer 9 to deliver a more beautiful web.
Thanks,
Roger Capriotti
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