Firefox Momentum Slows 558
linumax wrote to mention an Information Week story about an apparent slowing of Firefox's usage growth. From the article: "San Diego-based WebSideStory released market share numbers for Firefox, IE, and other browsers that noted Firefox has crept up from April's 6.75 percent to September's 7.86 percent, a single percentage point gain in five months. During the first few months after its November, 2004, release, Firefox was adding another point each month. 'It looks like Firefox has hit the push-back point,' said Geoff Johnston, an analyst with WebSideStory. 'We always knew there was a finite number of early adopters out there and a finite number of Microsoft haters who would switch to something new, but we didn't know what that number was. It looks like we're approaching it.'"
slows? (Score:2, Insightful)
Finite this, finite that (Score:4, Insightful)
Right but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Bound to happen (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft haters? (Score:2, Insightful)
Most people I know who use firefox still use and prefer MS Windows to the alternatives.
Software compatibility is important and being able to go into a shop and buy any software for Windows means Windows will remain for a while.
When the tiny Apple or Linux section in computer shops grows and software is generically released for more platforms things will change.
My local PC world (in England) is already being taken over by Apple Macs so its only a matter of time now
not surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
does not go out and download / install firefox. does not surprise me.
on the otherhand, 7% + market share in such a short time is pretty good. and has firefox improves, (use less memmory) you will see improvments in the marget share. firefox has to be much better then "IE"
for a normal user to switch to it, so the rapid marget will slow down and will creep up slowly...
-Nex6
-nex6.blogspot.com
MS haters vs enlightened users? (Score:4, Insightful)
So you have to be a "MS hater" to see the disadvantages with IE now?
Anyway, yes, it is expected something like this will happen, but I think not for that reason, but rather because there's a finite number of people willing to change browsers when there's already one part of the OS. Firefox being more secure? Sorry, they don't even read computer news sites.
Re:Nothing new. (Score:5, Insightful)
If MSIE had approximately 97% usage at it's peak, and FireFox is now close to 8%, how could most of FireFox's market share come from Mozilla browsers and Opera? 97% + 8% != 100%
Stupid conclusions (Score:5, Insightful)
No, even if you accept the numbers, it means the pool of IE users willing to change to Firefox has dried up. It's pretty damn arrogant to assume that if Firefox isn't acceptable to somebody, nothing is. I use Firefox myself for the time being (roll on Konqueror 3.5 with Adblocking built in), but I'm not going to claim that it's perfect.
One thing I can never find with these stories is how they come up with the figures. Examining httpd logs and using Javascript tricks is about as accurate as guessing. Do they conduct proper surveys or are they just another snake oil vendor? The fact that their website is broken in Firefox isn't exactly a ringing endorsement.
Version 1.5 (Score:4, Insightful)
Recently the released improvements to the Mozilla suite in the release products have slowed. I strongly suspect that version 1.5 will bring yet more people on-board. I'm using the Thunderbird 1.5 beta for my email right now and it is a fantastic improvement over the current release version.
[Minor whinge] I wish I could print an email without all the irrelevant headers... preview what will be printed and (optionally) change the format.
Web Developers (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but for many web developers IE is broken. It's annoying having to write one set of code to run in the non-standard IE environment and then another set of code to work in the standards-based browsers. Take for example Alpha Transparency for PNG images. You can get it to work in IE by using Microsoft's method but you can't just slap a PNG in with alpha transparency and expect it to work in IE.
Plataeu is not a bad thing (Score:5, Insightful)
the number of web users is still growing rather rapidly. Even if their marketshare stays steady for many months, especially this time of year (I'll get to that in a sec), it still means that their userbase is growing.
This time of year, school is starting. people are getting new computers or their first computers for themselves (finally, a computer that's not shared by the family!). There's a distinct spike in computer purchases around now. Firefox's 1% gain this month is a very good thing. it means that even though their marketshare growth is remaining constant, they're making up for it in volume.
also, does their marketshare count only for windows installations? or does it count for all platforms? I mean, I know a bunch of mac users who , for some reason (usually because they're coming from windows), prefer firefox over safari.
personally, I use firefox for testing on the mac. but that's about it. I still think safari is leaps and bounds ahead in terms of just the usability factor. firefox just feels like a windows app. Camino's ok, but feels a bit strange sometimes.
Counting vulnerabilities is stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
Finding 1,000 different "vulnerabilities" that cause the app to crash does not equal 1 vulnerability that gives remote admin access to the machine.
And that story only shows FireFox's adoption rate to be slowing. You can interpret that any way you want to. But if your interpretation is correct, then why is Microsoft introducing FireFox-like features in the next release of IE?
Why I switched to opera (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Web Developers (Score:3, Insightful)
End users don't care what makes a developer's life easier. Businesses who have to pay for the extra time you waste futzing around with all that stuff might possibly be convinced to care, but end users for whom everthing is free anyway have no reason to care and they never will. Until the entire open source world realizes this, Microsoft doesn't really have anything to worry about.
Re:Fixed (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Counting vulnerabilities is stupid. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nothing new. (Score:3, Insightful)
16%, not 1.1% (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nothing new. (Score:3, Insightful)
And of course they're going to say they're not worried. PR guys would only say they're worried if it's raining frogs and the sky is falling. Maybe not even then.
Re:It's having an effect, I think (Score:1, Insightful)
Was that sarcasm again? This is getting confusing.
Of the many reasons I love Firefox, and the many reasons I use it, "small footprint" is not one of them. It's a memory hog, and nobody can deny it. I use it because it's fast, powerful, and as feature-filled as I want it, not because it's slim...
Re:slows? (Score:3, Insightful)
In the United States, punctuation marks are always put inside of the quotation marks. It's different in some other countries, like Britain, but for American English the GP had it right.
Re:Nothing new. (Score:2, Insightful)
because management tends to make decesions they should leave to people who know what they are doing, and management likes numbers.
"Don't bother with the facts! Just give me details!"
corporate and university adoption (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree with the articles premise that most of the early adopters have been converted. The rest will be slow going but I believe Firefox can still achieve at least 25% of the browser market.
At UNT College of Business, my school job, the lab group is just now rolling out firefox to all the lab computers. This represents a sizeable exposure for Firefox in a demographic that may soon make personal or corporate decisions about open source and browsers. I think it could be a good idea if the Mozilla foundation worked to get Universities offering Firefox as an alternative on every lab or kiosk machine on campus.
I would also venture to believe lots of large corporate IT departments are just as slow to adopt new software, even when it works. I have also wondered how thorough the enterprise deployment software is for Firefox. Does firefox have adequate support for corporate or large scale installations?
FF Dominance myth (Score:5, Insightful)
While I'm a happy Firefox user, I tend to think it was a naive presumption that Firefox would ever directly battle IE for market-share dominance. People who thought it was a serious contender in this regard fail to understand the nature of the average internet user.
I believe firmly in the technical superiority of Firefox. The developers have shown they take security seriously and the open-source model is continually proving itself with this application, not to mention the lack of integration into the OS which solves a number of IE woes. The extensibility of Firefox is another strength, allowing an element of customization to the non-technical user.
Where I disagree with many, is claiming that Firefox will become dominant. Gone are the days when the internet was primarily composed of scientific/technical people. We're now a continually shrinking percentage of the population, which, as much as I decry certain aspects of the 'dumbing down', is as it should be. Mass adoption has brought down connection prices, broadened the services offered to us and released a flood of new information and technology.
Firefox will continue to go from strength to strength, however the majority of new users and non-technical existing users will follow the Microsoft bandwagon. While the choice of a competing and IMHO superior browser is important to many of us, to the vast majority it's completely irrelevant. They have web access implemented in their operating system hence they see no need to even research browser alternatives.
The real benefit of Firefox for the masses, is the adoption of it's strengths (tabbed browsing, etc.) into IE. For the rest of us, we can sit comfortably and support our own preferred browser.
Reason #10: Firefox updates are a pain in the @ss (Score:2, Insightful)
Firefox devs... any comments?
Re:Why change? trust the mechanic! (Score:1, Insightful)
You're kidding right?
FF has had more security holes in the last 6 months than IE. You sure as hell had BETTER be patching your father's machine and far more often than you'd need to for IE! Not to mention that you STILL have to "patch" windows regularly and that IE patches are rolled into the "Windows" patch releases so you normally wouldn't even know the difference. Patching FF requires a TON more work than patching IE does.
Nothing bugs me more than people that don't know how to do the simple config steps that keeps IE safe from all spyware problems and instead do a cut and run install of FF on other people's machines believing that it'll prevent all computer problems forever and instead merely leave them open to an entirely new attack front
Microsoft haters? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is this surprising... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:slows? (Score:5, Insightful)
That, and there's an apparent fetish for Growth-Growth-Growth! It's sad that when the stock market doesn't see 15% returns annually in a company, it's automatically assumed that they aren't successful.
It's not just about growth--it's also about quality of product and longevity. If Firefox maintains a steady percentage of the market, growth is implicit, as more people begin to use the Internet. I'd say the numbers they have now could be construed as adequate success, especially considering that Mozilla doesn't have the marketing buxxx that Micro$oft does.
The numbers (and growth in adoption of Linux in government and the enterprise) tell me that Firefox is here to stay.
Re:Nothing new. (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, and 3 out of 24 unpatched holes is way less than 20 out of 86, especially when some of the holes are rated "Less Critical" as opposed "Highly Critical." I think I'll stick with Firefox, thanks.
Re:FYI: Different situation in Europe (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it is not that Americans do not like to tinker, it is that they do not like tinkering in the computers. A lot of this comes with where the people grew up, and what do they know. People like tinkering in what they can modify and show off. Because the computer here is not synonymous with communication or bragging rights, very few try to know and learn about them. (Notice how those that do, i.e. the gamer community, modify the crap out of theirs, and a lot of these stories seem to come out of US).
I bet you will be interested to find that there is a huge car modding and tweaking community (people who replace and tweak engines, not tailpipes), which thinks that Europeans are completely ignorant about cars. I would guess that more Americans would now the difference between a carburator and fuel injection than Europeans. (I myself am not of that community, and have only a slight knowledge of carburator/fuel injection systems, I just heard of them)
Different cultures, different interests, different results.
Re:not surprising (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it's safe to say that Firefox has saturated its core market of tech savvy, security-conscious users. At this point, they need to reevaluate who their target market is and adjust their marketing strategy accordingly. After all, they were never going to get 95% marketshare simply by virtue of *not* being Internet Explorer. At this point, they need to get their foot in the door with one of the major PC vendors (Dell, HP, Gateway, et al) and get Firefox preinstalled on all new machines, and set up as the preferred browser. That's a tall order, considering the amount of influence MS has over these companies.
Re:Nothing new. (Score:2, Insightful)
Microsoft want to force people onto XP and Vista.
It's a bit of a mistake if you think about it, all those companies and people who'll soon start needing a new browser as more fancy html, css demands it and they're on Windows 2000. They can either worry about installing a new operating system and paying n amount of cash for it or they can simply download Firefox or Opera for free.
Which would you do?
To the managers out there, 10% is acceptable. (Score:3, Insightful)
The fact that they are 'artsy' types (OS X users) or 'propeller heads' (Linux users) just makes the decision that much easier if you'd selling socks or food or something.
Never underestimate the power of 'saving a buck by screwing somebody' (somebody using the other browsers) when it doesn't really cost them anything.
The sales figures are going up anyway. Or the site is just advertising and that's an expense regardless, and nobody ever got fired for saving a buck.
I've got FireFox installed on all my boxes (1 AMD64 running Linux, 2 Macs running OS X and 1 old Win2k box crawling along,) but that's because I am paranoid and I really don't like IEs pop-ups.
But that's just me.
Re:So just to review (Score:3, Insightful)
Hey, man—there is nothing irrational about my hatred of Microsoft!
Re:Right but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Start catering to the scenarios that are important then... provide deployment tools and reference guides for unattended installation. Last time I was tasked with a (Windows) Firefox deployment, I found out that settings are stored in a random directory per-user. All pre-installation configuration had to be done by manually changing default values in the compressed original package. Settings and policies were just not available to be set via the registry (easy to script) or Group Policy (easy to manage).
Despite what you may think about Microsoft's business practices, they have got the scenarios down. Both Windows and Office have OEM Pre-installation Kits, and products are designed with corporate and OEM deployment scenarios in mind, not just as an afterthought. At the very least, they don't *actively resist* large-scale deplyments by so rudely thumbing their noses at admins with settings stored in text files in randomly-named directories. Ugh.
Re:Let's face it: IE and Firefox are very similar (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree with certain of your points, there are obviously a lot of similarities between Firefox and IE. That comparison could be applied to virtually every browser out there, as few large differences exist between any of them. However I think you've missed the single point that differentiates the two browsers the most, extensibility.
For the geek, Mozilla offer documentation on how to develop your own Firefox extensions. The average user then has the option to pick and choose from the cream of other peoples work. UI enhancements, tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking and to a lesser extent, security improvements can, and have, been picked up by IE.
The fact remains that Microsoft have never demonstrated a culture that would be supportive of end-user 'hacks' to the browser, hence I think it would be a long, cold wait before we see true extensibility in IE.