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Firefox Tops 100 Million Downloads

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Wed Oct 19, 2005 12:54 PM
from the shop-smart-shop-f-mart dept.
The Internet Software
webslash writes "Mozilla's Firefox web browser crossed the 100 million downloads milestone today. Webmasters are adding Firefox download counters on websites to keep track of the downloads in real time. Firefox celebrated 50 million downloads just 6 months back and with the release of Firefox 1.5 Beta 2. Additionally the Firefox 2/3 roadmap also looks promising."
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  • Some misc. Browser Percentage Data - GO FF! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by xmas2003 (739875) * on Wednesday October 19 2005, @12:56PM (#13828540) Homepage
    Looking at the browser data for this month so far on the halloween webcam [komar.org], there is 64.3% IE, 27.2% Firefox, 2.5% Safari, 1.2% Netscape, 0.8% Mozilla, 0.7% Opera, and the rest misc. - even a handful of hits from WebTV and Firebird.

    In comparison, the 2004 Christmas webcam [komar.org] had 67.9% IE, 21.1% Firefox, 2.7% Netscape, 2.7% Safari, 2.4% Mozilla, and 1.6% Opera. Not a lotta change, although one interesting thing is the drop in Mozilla (everyone uses Firefox now?) and Netscape - no surprise on the later.

    This would support some of the press that says Firefox growth is slowing. Having said that, Firefox just ROCKS - really sucks when you can do something cool in HTML/CSS (example :hover) and IE doesn't support it. And obligatory "extensions are cool" too ... GO FIREFOX!

  • More sec bugs = more downloads (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    More sec bugs => more downloads

    • Re:More sec bugs = more downloads (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Just so you're aware, the download counter doesn't count downloads initiated via "update"...
    • Then again, think of it this way:

      More bugs found (who can honestly predict every issue?) = more bugs fixed by (team|community)
      More fixes = more patches released without some stupid schedule

      I think of this more as a way of saying "Go us!" and by 'us', I mean the users, supporters, contributors. We're smarter with our security practices and more active in making a good thing better. Not every FF user fits that mold, but it's more typical than IE. That's worth a little more than bugs in my opinion. Nobody can

  • Google News/. (Score:5, Funny)

    by sloths (909607) on Wednesday October 19 2005, @12:57PM (#13828553)
    What does this have to do with Google?

  • Net Installations (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Vile Slime (638816) on Wednesday October 19 2005, @12:57PM (#13828556)
    Yeah,

    100 million, billion, jillion, whatever is great. Those numbers can be achieved via the same people downloading multiple releases. But, how many singular installtions are there. Now that would be an interesting statistic.
    • Yes well you also fail to take into consideration IT departments which download once and install multiple times. IT departments have to maintain control over installed software so they just maintain install images and a localized software depository and push it out when it is needed or update that one copy when needed. So the stat is flawed both ways.

      But I would say that I would think it balances out and that this still is probably the best stat we have for judging it's growth. It would be nice to see a gra

    • Re:Net Installations (Score:2, Insightful)

      by nrgy (835451)
      This is exactly why I realy don't pay attention to statistics all that much. For instance when Steve Jobs introduced the iPod Mini he gave a number of total music downloads the iTunes store had done to that date. He then took this number and averaged it to the number of songs downloaded per person. The result which he gave is most likely nowhere near the actual average. The problem with these kind of statistics is they never account for the user reformating windows 10 times in a day "I've done that with
    • I had heard that three Brazilian [mozilla.org] copies have been downloaded!

    • Re:Net Installations (Score:5, Informative)

      by VolciMaster (821873) on Wednesday October 19 2005, @01:39PM (#13828987) Homepage
      Updates done from within Firefox don't count against the download count. Additionally, it doesn't track people who may download the installers from mirrors.

      THat being said, I agree that it would be a more helpful stat to know how many unique installed copies there are out there (I've downloaded it multiple times on a couple computers due to reformats).

  • Go Firefox (Score:2, Insightful)

    by DominicanZero (861859)
    It's at times like this when I feel so good about being part of the Firefox community. Let's keep working towards a safer internet and safer computers. Go Firefox!

  • usage on the way up too? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by jkind (922585) on Wednesday October 19 2005, @12:58PM (#13828567) Homepage
    What are your percentages looking like on *your* web site ? Statcounter is telling me almost 40% are using some flavor of Firefox lately... Safari is on the rise too!

  • Free As In Beer - Opera (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ergo98 (9391) on Wednesday October 19 2005, @12:58PM (#13828568) Homepage Journal
    This is not a troll, but ever since Opera went free-as-in-beer, my Firefox icon gets used about as frequently as my IE link does (I have the IE 7 beta as well, but it's just laughable in comparison).

    Of course to me the primary benefits of Firefox were standards compliance, features, cross-platform capabilities, and free-as-in-beer. I get all of those advantages, along with improved speed and a few more feaures (e.g. native SVG, something that is coming to a stable Firefox release any-year-now), in Opera. Of course I do miss some of the Firefox plug-ins, which is why I jump over to it on occasion.

    Am I alone in feeling this way? I suspect that the freeing of Opera has had more of an impact on Firefox than anything Microsoft is doing.

    • Re:Free As In Beer - Opera (Score:5, Interesting)

      by real_smiff (611054) on Wednesday October 19 2005, @01:13PM (#13828739)
      yup, Opera is now my main browser. i jumped to it because i got fed up with Fx's memory leaks. funnily enough, i find similar problems with Opera, but its not *as* slow. i can't figure out whats causing memory use to keep climbing in both browsers yet. also like you i miss some plugins, but most of the vital stuff like mouse gestures and tab controls is in there, and its not so bad (lack of adblock or other content control) if you run everything through a proxy (proxomitron) anyway. i should add i do a ridiculous amount of web browsing and have both browsers open most of the time. i can't really decide which i like more, they're both great. i'm sure Opera is more normal-person (i was going to say newbie, but thats unfair) friendly though, so most people i set up get Opera now. and firefox is more flexible with its extension setup so probably better for geeks and people with "special needs".
  • .... If a certian chair throwing CEO is taking note.

  • Ratio of downloads to users (Score:4, Insightful)

    by radicalskeptic (644346) <thinkofoneNO@SPAMmac.com> on Wednesday October 19 2005, @01:01PM (#13828604)
    I have downloaded Firefox at least 5 times or so just for myself (upgrades, reinstalls, different computers, etc). I wonder what the statistics are on average number of downloads per person.

    Well even if they're ridiculously high, 100 million is a freaking huge number. Even if the average person has downloaded it 10 times, that still means over 10 million people are using it worldwide.

  • Roadmap? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by temojen (678985) on Wednesday October 19 2005, @01:02PM (#13828611) Journal
    So we see what version numbers they plan to use. How about some indication of planned features (svg? css3? smil? Qt? client cert creation? ...)

  • Firefox 2/3 (Score:5, Funny)

    by tehshen (794722) <tehshen@gmail.com> on Wednesday October 19 2005, @01:03PM (#13828624)
    Firefox two thirds? Since when did it slip down five sixths of a version?

  • promising? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by feNIX77 (512228)
    "Additionally the Firefox 2/3 roadmap also looks promising."

    can you explain what looks promising in that link concerning 2/3? "The Ocho"? I guess thats promising...
  • It's my birthday today!
  • In case anyone was wondering where they got the name "The Ocho" for the name of FireFox 2.0, I believe it was from the movie, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story [imdb.com], where the station that was covering the dodgeball tournament was "ESPN 8" aka "the ocho".
  • For 2.0 it's gonna be The Next Big Thing. And for 3.0 The Next Next Big Thing.

    What a promise!
  • I'm just glad that with more people using Firefox it means more websites can't ignore gecko browsers, especially since I use the Mozilla Suite. It has has the effect of discontinuing the suite, but at least I can use Seamonkey [mozilla.org] and get an updated suite, and maybe i'll switch over when they finish the whole XUL Runner [mozilla.org], so running multiple applications (Mail, Browser, Chat, etc), wont each create their own XUL baggage.

  • The number for 1.5 will have more weight (Score:3, Insightful)

    by denis-The-menace (471988) on Wednesday October 19 2005, @01:21PM (#13828816)
    I hope they have a separate counter for the release version of FF 1.5 because that will be truer account of FF's popularity.

    It's one thing to have FF 1.0x but given the auto-update feature in FF 1.5, you'd have to be a fool not to upgrade.

    I just hope you don't need to run FF 1.5 as Admin for the Auto-update feature to work.

  • The Next Next Big Thing?! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nickdot (916387) on Wednesday October 19 2005, @01:23PM (#13828837)
    I don't care so much about statistics, but got interested by this quote:

    Additionally the Firefox 2/3 roadmap also looks promising.

    Let's look the roadmap...
    2.0, "The Ocho", 2006, The Next Big Thing
    3.0, ???, Bugs, The Next Next Big Thing
    Nice, but what would be the goals for The Next Big Thing? To quote again:

    Goals
    We are still working on goals for 2.0/3.0 and are drafting a PRD for its development. Some likely goals include:
    * Improvements to Bookmarks/History
    * Per-Site Options
    * Enhancements to the Extensions system, Find Toolbar, Software Update, Search and other areas.
    * Accessibility compliance
    * More ... ?
    That doesn't look very promising to me. It would be revolutionary if web browsers in general could break the monopoly of JavaScript and introduce other script languages (python, ruby,...) on the client side. This would boost the web applications much further as they are now. That's just a wish, but probably a security nightmare.

    Still my question remains: what's the next big thing for web browsers?

  • Firefox on 4 month decline at w3schools.com (Score:5, Interesting)

    by I'm Don Giovanni (598558) on Wednesday October 19 2005, @01:24PM (#13828842)
    Firefox has been on a precipitous decline at w3schools.com. For each of the last 4 months Firefox has lost user share, while IE has risen. In fact, IE is the only browser with a rising share over the last 4 months.
    http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.a sp [w3schools.com]

    May 2005 ===> Sept 2005
    IE 5 and 6: 71.6% ===> 75.5%
    Firefox: 21.0% ===> 18.0%
    Mozilla: 3.1% ===> 2.5%
    Netscape 0.7% ===> 0.4%
    Opera 7 and 8: 1.3% ===> 1.2%

  • Hard to deploy in a network (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rduke15 (721841) <rduke15@NospaM.gmail.com> on Wednesday October 19 2005, @01:35PM (#13828956)
    Firefox is certainly a great home browser. It's the one I use, and I recommend it to everyone else.

    But it is still far too dificult to deploy on a company network. I know, I have done it. I used FFdeploy to make it a bit easier.

    Now that FF is on a solid path to conquer the personal desktops it deserves, I would really like to see some progress towards helping administators manage network installs.

    How do I upgrade 25 client machines running 1.0.4 to 1.0.7 on a Samba network? Ideally, I would just put all files somewhere, and call xcopy from the logon script. Unfortunately, it is almost certain to break stuff (particularly with extensions).

  • Firefox getting worse with every release (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Junky191 (549088) on Wednesday October 19 2005, @01:47PM (#13829083)
    Anyone else noticing Firefox getting more and more bloated and buggy with every release? I remember it being swift and stable about a year ago (0.7 days?), but now it takes years to load, downloads don't always work, and I simply can't use tabs as it leads to a crash within an hour. I thought the idea behind the Firefox fork was a lighter, speedy alternative to Mozilla, but now Firefix seems to have a pretty alarming rate of feature bloat. I find myself wanting to know what the alternatives to the alternative are now.
    • Have you been using the same profile ever since the 0.7 days? If so, try deleting it and creating another one.

      I had a profile that I'd been dragging around since 0.9.something. It had gone mysteriously rotten somewhere along the way, causing instability, problems with form submission, and other assorted hilarity. I moved it out of the way and started afresh, copying my bookmarks across from the old profile, and everything was just fine again.

      This is a bug, of course. Profiles shouldn't spontaneously corr

  • An Informal Survey Of Blog Stats (Score:4, Insightful)

    by WombatControl (74685) on Wednesday October 19 2005, @01:48PM (#13829090)

    I think Firefox usage is quite a bit higher than people think. A lot of blogs contain public Sitemeter information that includes browser share. For sites like Instapundit [instapundit.com], Daily Kos [dailykos.com], or Red State [redsate.org] Firefox usage is anywhere from 25-40% of total browsers. My own site has IE just under 50%, Firefox with 35-40%, and Safari hovering around 10% depending on the time of the survey.

    Granted, blog readers tend to be somewhat more ahead of the curve than Joe or Jane Sixpack, but they're also indicative of where the market will be a few years down the road. The problem IE and Microsoft faces is that while they have a very high marketshare, their mindshare sucks - everyone uses Microsoft products but only those who take return trips to the Kool Aid bowl particularly like doing it. When an alternative like Firefox comes along that doesn't take a CS degree to use, people start switching, and the stats on more technically-oriented sites bear that out.

    • Re:I gave Firefox a chance (Score:5, Funny)

      by Just Some Guy (3352) <kirk+slashdot@strauser.com> on Wednesday October 19 2005, @01:22PM (#13828829) Homepage Journal
      As long as we're dropping anecdotes, I never close Firefox on my P4/2.4 with 1GB of memory and never see any excessive swapping under Linux.

      With a 2.4 GHz Athlon 64, 2 GB of DDR400, and two 7200 RPM 8 MB cache drives in RAID 0

      You were just waiting for a chance to slip that into the conversation, weren't you?

    • I gave Firefox a chance. ...now I refuse to use it. The developers have had ample time to optimize the browser and its memory management, but they haven't. ... I'll have a Firefox window with about 8 tabs open, I'll minimize it, and then go play a game. When I quit the game 1-2 hours later, and try to bring FIrefox back up, the chugging begins. It takes about a minute to bring the Firefox window back up, my hard drive being slammed...

      I told a friend of mine that uses Windows to try Firefox and he later c

    • Re:I gave Firefox a chance (Score:4, Funny)

      by ianmassey (743270) * on Wednesday October 19 2005, @01:51PM (#13829125) Homepage
      if you're so anti-firefox, why does your "CoMmAnD CeNTeR" have a firefox desktop image?

      http://tomchu.com/images/computers/commandcenterde sktop.jpg [tomchu.com]

      poser.
    • I'm not going to argue about the memory leaks.
      However, I find surprising that only Firefox "chugs" when you try to maximise it. It's a very normal process (especially if it takes more than 200 MB of memory) : it indicates the memory used by the program has been swapped to the disk, and used for more useful purposes, like playing a game.
      If other applications maximise quickly, that either mean they don't use much memory (as does Trillian I believe, even though I've never used it), or that for somewhat reaso

      • Re:I gave Firefox a chance (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Khyber (864651) <khyberkitsune@gmail.com> on Wednesday October 19 2005, @02:15PM (#13829362) Journal
        The problem is whether you're running Windows, or Linux. In Windows, FF starts leaking like a sieve after you put a few tabs up. Linux, you notice no memory usage that's not normal (about 20-30 megs of memory, tops) and it remains fast and responsive, even after leaving it running for a long time

        Under Windows, if I leave a FF browser with two or three tabs open running, and come back maybe 1 1/2 hours later, about half of my system memory is beng hogged by FF. (512 megs, FF reports using 210 of that under the Task Manager in Windows XP Professional)

        So, no smearing of names here. It works great for one OS and it just seems to suck under another OS. For all we know it could be something Microsoft is causing. I will admit one thing, FireFox is getting a bit more bloated with each release. Instead of writing patches, why not just re-write the vulnerable code so that it works, and release a new version, not a patch? We may have to wait longer but at least we'll know the code's been "fixed" (and hopefully optimized.)
          • Sometimes flash ads in Opera will eat 100% CPU and drive Opera's memory usage up like crazy. If i close that tab (and it's usually slashdot, grr...) then the usage drops to 0% and memory slowly returns to normal. Macromedia Flash viewer seems to definitely have a problem.
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