Internet Explorer 9 could see massive market share gains with auto-selected Windows Update tonight

Internet Explorer 9 was officially released exactly one week ago. Even if the download numbers for its first 24 hours of existence weren't bad at 2.3 million, they were nowhere near Firefox 3's record-breaking 8 million. During the week that has passed since its launch, IE 9 has managed to secure about 1% of the browser market according to Clicky Web Analytics.

However, starting tonight, Microsoft is planning on rapidly accelerating IE9's market share by making it available as an Important update (and, thus, selected by default) in Windows Update. Since IE9 is available for both Windows 7 and Vista, a good guess would be that users of both versions of Microsoft's operating system will start receiving IE9 through Windows Update.

The rollout will be of the staggered variety, and as such will not reach every single Windows computer at the same time. Of course, if you've somehow become anxious to try IE9 while reading this post, you can manually download it yourself right now without waiting for Windows Update to deliver it to you.

As for how the pushing of IE9 via Windows Update will alter the new browser's market standing, we'll probably know in a day or two, so stay tuned.

Tags: apps, browser market share, BrowserMarketShare, browsers, ie9, internet explorer 9, InternetExplorer9, Microsoft, windows, windows update, WindowsUpdate