Since its release on February 10th, the IE9 Release Candidate has been downloaded over 11 million times. Together with the IE9 Beta, IE9 has been downloaded over 36 million times since its initial availability on September 15, 2010, reports The IE Team Blog.
Net Applications reports that IE9 now represents 0.66% of all worldwide browser usage share on Windows with 2.09% usage share on Windows 7.
Internet Explorer 9 release candidate came with a number of improvements, including a new tab management and UI. Now users can close tabs without actually having the tab active. Tabs can also be pinned under the address bar for users who browse with multiple tabs open. For added security, IE9 RC comes with tracking protection to prevent websites from finding your location.
As we reported two weeks ago, Internet Explorer 9 RC downloads were right on par with the beta, which managed to achieve over 2 million downloads in just five days.
Roger Capriotti, Director of Internet Explorer Product Marketing, also noted the continued growth of Internet Explorer overall "IE8 and 9 actually show even stronger growth on Windows: up 1.31% (versus 1.13% using the new February weighting) – or over three times Chrome’s 0.42% growth." Net Applications reported in February that Internet Explorer share increased by 0.86% across Windows. Across all operating systems, IE share also grew 0.78% using the new weighting.
Capriotti also noted that he"s looking forward to a "full product release in the near future". So stay tuned for that!