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Mozilla Software The Internet

Firefox Hits 400 Million Downloads 175

Posted by Zonk from the grats-little-browser dept.
Owen Dansley writes "Firefox hit another milestone this past Friday, when it passed the 400 million download mark. From its launch in 2004 it took one year to reach 100 million downloads, hitting 200 million downloads just one year later. According to figures released by US consultancy firm Janco and the IT Productivity Center, Firefox currently has 17.4 percent of the browser market — up 5.6 percentage points in the last year. Also within the last year, Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser dropped 9.6 percentage points to a market share of 63.9 percent."
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Firefox Hits 400 Million Downloads More

Firefox Hits 400 Million Downloads

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  • Interesting (Score:5, Interesting)

    by somersault ( 912633 ) on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @08:03AM (#20551927) Homepage Journal
    How many of those downloads were downloaded using Firefox? :p

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by IronWilliamCash ( 1078065 )
      As per the article probably around 17.4%

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by HateBreeder ( 656491 )
        That's obviously assuming that all Firefox downloads distribute normally amongst internet users.

        I suspect it to be quite different (think, "auto-updates").

        • auto-update doesn't count (Score:5, Informative)

          by cyfer2000 ( 548592 ) on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @08:45AM (#20552497) Journal
          auto-update is not count as download. The 400 million number doesn't include auto-update.
          • well, as a linux user who does not run as root, auto-update no workee, so I do have to download it again each time there is a new version. Well, I guess I don't *have* to, I could run it as root when I know there is a new version out, but it's easier for me to just download and install.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Lars T. ( 470328 )
            "auto-update" doesn't work with some firewalls - e.g. the one at my workplace. The 400 million number does include some of my non-auto-updates.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      And how many were downloaded from unofficial mirrors and computer magazine disks? :)

      • Re:Interesting (Score:5, Insightful)

        by morgan_greywolf ( 835522 ) on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @08:25AM (#20552215) Homepage Journal
        Or were installed as part of a Linux distro? Or were downloaded from PortableApps.com? Or were downloaded as part of some 'open source CD for Windows'? Or were just copied from a friend? How many are installed as part of a standard corporate desktop image?

        How many were updates? How many were downloaded to replace another copy after say, a wipe-and-reinstall? How many were downloaded, but never installed?

        Anyway you look at it, counting downloads doesn't reveal much about the number of Firefox users?
    • Probably more than you think. I use Firefox to download updates to Firefox. If I am on a machine with a version older than two, you have to go to Mozilla.com and download the entire package. I also use Firefox to download the installer so that I can slap it on a thumbdrive and install whenever I go to someone's machine.

      My question is, how many of these are repeat customers. I am running three Windows OSes on one computer, Linux and OSX on another, not only did I download Firefox on each machine, but I will
      • Though there's also the fact that you can download it onto your work network then install it onto users machines from there. I set it to default for all new machines we send out with our offshore workers

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kelson ( 129150 ) *

        If I am on a machine with a version older than two, you have to go to Mozilla.com and download the entire package.

        IIRC 1.5 will now auto-update to 2.0, though it'll probably be a 2-stage process -- update to the latest 1.5, then update to the latest 2.0.

        I will redownload when alphas, betas, release candidates and final releases come out.

        They're only counting final releases.

        So, yeah, 400 million downloads, with maybe 50 million people actually using it.

        According to this comment [spreadfirefox.com], Mozilla estimates ab

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fymidos ( 512362 )
        400 million is the number of downloads. You can easily find the number of firefox users, if you multiply the firefox market share with the number of internet users. Say you have a billion users, and firefox accounts for 15% of them, so there you go, ~150 million users.

        > My question is, how many of these are repeat customers

        it goes both ways. Our university computer labs were set up with a single redhat cd 4 years ago, 50+ computers, thousands of users, and they all use firefox, with a single download and
        • You can easily find the number of firefox users, if you multiply the firefox market share with the number of internet users. Say you have a billion users, and firefox accounts for 15% of them, so there you go, ~150 million users.
          The problem is you can't reliablly find the firefox market share. Every site you get data from tells a different story ranging from a few percent to more than 50% and of course you don't know if they are telling the truth.

    • It's kinda sad how much my post was modded up. I just wanted first post and it was the only mildy relevant thing I could think of to say XD

      But it is interesting to wonder nevertheless, these surveys can be interpreted in so many different ways if you put different arguments forward about how the amount of downloads actually represents the amount of people using it..

  • Safari (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nano2nd ( 205661 ) on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @08:07AM (#20551987) Homepage
    It is interesting to note that the release of Safari for Windows has had zero (or negative) impact on its market share. At the time there were a number of naysayers suggesting that Safari would steal market share not from IE but from Firefox.

    I'm guessing the quality issues surrounding the Safari for Windows beta have put pay to this concern.

    Also, outside of Windows, I thought I'd switch from Firefox on my Mac to Safari following the introduction of tabbed browsing in version 3 but, several months later I'm still Firefox.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 )
      The initial quality was bad for Safari, but it improved considerably after the first update.

      I don't really think quality is the problem. I have reliability problems with Firefox, but I'm still primarily a Firefox user. I think it's a matter of what you're used to and what it takes to switch to something else. I want to block flash on a site-specific basis and there's not a good way to do that.

      Also, outside of Windows, I thought I'd switch from Firefox on my Mac to Safari following the introduction of tab

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 )
        I want to block flash on a site-specific basis and there's not a good way to do that.

        I want to clarify this to say that there's not a good way to do this in Safari. There are some ways, but they aren't very good, definitely not as good as FlashBlock.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'm still under the impression that Safari for Windows was released for iPhone and now iPod touch web development. I have yet to see any campaigns from Apple to switch to Safari. The package download of Safari with iTunes has boosted it's prevalence but apart from downloading it, for the music player, there is no need/want/force to start using it.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by matazar ( 1104563 )
        I have Safari install, but I can't stand it.

        To be fair though, I don't use Firefox either, though it is also installed. Opera is still the best browser out there.
        • I found Opera unable to render Slashdot as cleanly as Firefox and also had problems with displaying other sites I use (although a refresh fixed the formatting problems, no I can't provide a link as its an ISP website) that Firefox also has no problem with. The other site is most likely built for IE, although I do find it interesting Opera's problem dissapears after a manual refresh with Firefox having no problem at all.
      • Jobs never said such a thing. The Apple site calls Safari the best web browser on any platform. It doesn't call it the best web browser for mobile development, nor does it try to label it as such. The "Safari is an SDK" argument is little more than cognitive backpedaling by people who can't fathom that, yes, even Apple can release things with quality issues.
        • The problem isn't the low quality of Safari, but the fact they've done very little since its release to encourage Windows users to switch to it. I can't imagine any other reason for it to exist other then for SDK purposes given Apple has done very little to catch the Windows browser marketshare.

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If you ran a survey to measure how many even know what the computer software Safari is, 80% would have no idea and 19.5% would take the guess it's an expansion pack for Zoo Tycoon 2. I belang to the latter group myself before reading this.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
      I found the market share numbers in the summary quite interesting. If IE has 63.9% and Firefox has 17.4%, then this leave 18.7% for other browsers. I wonder what percentage of the remainder is Safari / Opera on the desktop, and what is mobile browsers.

      I thought I'd switch from Firefox on my Mac to Safari following the introduction of tabbed browsing in version 3 but, several months later I'm still Firefox.

      Safari has always had tabbed browsing. Version 3 added the ability to re-order tabs, and detach them (but sadly not the ability to move tabs between windows). It also added the ability to re-open accidentally closed windows (but not tabs) and all of the w

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Intron ( 870560 )
        Looking over my website hits, it looks like 70% IE, 27% Mozilla, 0.3% Opera, a few Nokia or Blackberry and the rest is spiders. What does Safari identify as? I'm not seeing it at all in 30,000 hits.

        • Looking over my website hits, it looks like 70% IE, 27% Mozilla, 0.3% Opera, a few Nokia or Blackberry and the rest is spiders. What does Safari identify as? I'm not seeing it at all in 30,000 hits.

          In AWstats Safari identity is seen easily. What's your website? Content may or may not affect your usage. 30K is a rather small sample size in my opinion.

          Using apx 3.3M hits (650K uniques), I get FF 56.3%, IE 28.5%, Moz 3.1%, Opera 2.3%, Safari 0.5%, Konqueror 1% and others (inc bots) 8%. With 56% using Windows

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by xtracto ( 837672 )
        ng. If IE has 63.9% and Firefox has 17.4%, then this leave 18.7% for other browsers. I

        But is that 63.9% of IE7 or counting all previous versions?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AccUser ( 191555 )
      Safari for Windows is aimed at those developing iPhone applications. If anyone expected Safari to take marketshare from either IE or Firefox, then they were Mac Fanboys who shouldn't have even been listening.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Lars T. ( 470328 )

        Safari for Windows is aimed at those developing iPhone applications. If anyone expected Safari to take marketshare from either IE or Firefox, then they were Mac Fanboys who shouldn't have even been listening.
        Gee, I knew Mozilla COO John Lilly was a Mac Fanboy.
        • I remember that Mozilla got rather steamed about Apple's release of Safari when the latter's Windows version was released. There was also the expected kneejerk reaction from both the anti-Maz nazis here and the "Everything must be Open source" nazis here as well.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Idaho ( 12907 )

      It is interesting to note that the release of Safari for Windows has had zero (or negative) impact on its market share

      There has not been a release of Safari for Windows yet. Probably you meant the public beta.

      Even so, I doubt that it will gain a lot of users on Windows anytime soon (even after it is released).

      I think the cause is that the beta of Safari for Windows doesn't feel like a native Windows app at all. Neither does Firefox feel native while running on a Mac. This would explain why on my Mac Mini, I

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by notthe9 ( 800486 )

        Neither does Firefox feel native while running on a Mac. This would explain why on my Mac Mini, I use Safari exclusively, but on Windows and Linux, I use only Firefox.

        I think that Firefox for Mac isn't really supposed to feel like a native app—it's supposed to feel like firefox. Mozilla puts out another browserm Camino, that uses Cocoa, native OSX widgers, various other OSX system resources, etc. I don't know if it's as native-feeling as Safari, but I think it's really what's intended to be the Mozil

    • I would probably be a regular Windows Safari user, but I didn't like the "always crash on startup" feature. I know I'm a little particular about what I want in a browser, but that was kind of a deal-breaker for me.

      (Oddly enough, that's also why I don't use Ubuntu...)
    • Why I use Safari on Windows at work:
      - Web pages are very pretty compared to Firefox. Much prettier
      - Killer bookmark management that no one's ripped off yet
      - The mo'awesome find feature ever in 3.0. Love it.
      - best browser based RSS feed implementation (I live Mozilla live bookmarks....except there's NO INDICATION that any article are new. I have to keep clicking.)

      Still, I don't expect it to have an impact on market share for quite some time, if at all. Perhaps in that great unforseeable future where Mac OS X

  • Thats not really so impressive...... (Score:4, Funny)

    by budword ( 680846 ) on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @08:14AM (#20552059)
    Unfortunately I'm responsible for at least half of those....once for each time I've had to re-install.....

    • Re:Thats not really so impressive...... (Score:4, Funny)

      by SolitaryMan ( 538416 ) on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @08:44AM (#20552467) Homepage Journal

      Unfortunately I'm responsible for at least half of those....once for each time I've had to re-install.....

      And I'm responsible for none of those despite the fact that I did Linux install 200 million times for the last three years, so we kinda cancel each other out.

      • (3 years) * (365 days) * (24 hours) * (60 minutes) * (60 seconds) / (200 million installs) = 0.47 seconds per install

        Wow! What distro are you using?

        </smartass>

    • That would be funny if I hadn't really had to reinstall Firefox after some auto-update for an add-on apparently reset every preference I had ever set, including some for other add-ons, a few days ago.

      (In case anyone's wondering: I had an update of HTML Validator, which seemed to go fine, and Firefox started up as normal after the update. The time after that when I started Firefox, my home page had been reset and several tabs opened up, one of which was all about the Download Statusbar add-on I also use; t

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Danga ( 307709 )
        Stories like this make me happy I am an Opera user. It has nearly everything the average user needs built in already although if you do want add-on's it still has that ability with widgets. It is faster, more memory efficient, more secure, and more standards compliant than any other browser available as well. I don't have to fiddle with tons of settings and add-on's, I just download the latest update and it all works.

        For what it is worth I used to be a Netscape then Moz user until I discovered tabbed bro

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Kelson ( 129150 ) *

          Stories like this make me happy I am an Opera user. It has nearly everything the average user needs built in already although if you do want add-on's it still has that ability with widgets

          I'm still hoping to see more developer tools by the time 9.5 final rolls around. There's only so much you can do with custom buttons and bookmarklets. Something comparable to Firebug, or even just the ability to do validation in the background on certain sites (rather than having to submit the page to the online W3C va

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Danga ( 307709 )
            For situations such as yours I completely understand why you use FireFox since it does have some extensions that Opera has nothing to compare to. I was mainly saying that for the average user I think Opera is the best choice since it has so many things already built in that you need extensions for with FireFox.

            Both browsers are great choices and personally I prefer Opera both because it performs better and I have just gotten used to it since I have used it since about 2001. That is cool that you at least

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Kelson ( 129150 ) *

              That is cool that you at least have given Opera a shot instead of just striking it down like many FireFox users on Slashdot love to do.

              Actually, Opera and I go way back. A friend introduced me to it when we were both working at a computer lab in college, around 1998 or 1999. I used it as my primary browser around 2000-2001, until Mozilla got to the point where it was stable enough to use on a daily basis, and Opera just didn't have the site compatibility I wanted at the time. Plus I was switching to Li

        • FWIW, I'm seriously considering giving Opera a try. I just decided that mentioning that before was a bit trollish.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Danga ( 307709 )
            I hope you do give it a try. If you don't like it then that is alright but at least you gave it a shot. From what I have heard web developers say is Opera has decent developer tools but they just aren't yet quite as good as Firebug so it probably is lacking in that respect. As just a normal browser I think you will be pleased though.
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Which means? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AmIAnAi ( 975049 ) * on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @08:14AM (#20552061)
    Numbers like these are essentialy meaningless. They don't readily translate to installed copies or active users. I've dowloaded Firefox and Thunderbird at least 10 times in the process of setting up new OS installs for family PCs. But that only equates to three users. And of those, I am the only one who actively uses Firefox.

    • Re:Which means? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BlueParrot ( 965239 ) on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @08:40AM (#20552425)
      Sure, the numbers are not precise. 400 million could translate to only 100 million users, or even less, but there is still some level of information in there. That is, we know that the ballpark figure of a program which had 400 million downloads is likely to be higher than a program which only had 10.000 downloads. It is called uncertainty. Some numbers ( such as important physical constants ) are known to a very high precision, other numbers may be more difficult to measure, and are accurate within maybe a factor of 10 or so. As a friend of mine put it. "To a mathematician pi can be expressed as a converging series of fractions, to a physicist it is close to 3.14, to us engineers it is roughly 3, everything is linear, and 3inches of steel ought to be enough, so make it 10 just to be sure..." He was joking of course, but even if only 1% of downloads translate to actual use, 400 million is still a large number, and different uncertainties cancel ( i.e, many users get their copy of a mirror or dedicated repository. Companies download it once and push it to 300 computers etc ... ). 400 million is a "rough" number, but it isn't completely meaningless.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Jeff DeMaagd ( 2015 )
        It probably pays to check their methodology. I think every x.x.x.1 update download might count as a download. For me, that would count for more than 10 downloads for three different computers, one user.
    • In roughly 3 years since the release of Firefox 1.0, the same (large) number of people downloaded it in year 1 and year 2. That means interest didn't drop off after the first year. Moreover, twice as many people -- 200 million -- downloaded it in year 3 as in either of the previous two years. That means interest in Firefox has actually increased over the past year.

      Sure, some of those were early adopters of Firefox 2, before the auto-update kicked in. But a surprising number of people stayed on 1.5 until
  • Wow, what a big number. But even with all of those downloads the logs from our server shows that only 17% of visitors are actually using it. Over 80% are IE variants.

    Congratulations Firefox, you've managed to get a boat load of people to download your browser, but somehow most people reject it after trying it.

    • most people reject it after trying it

      How do you figure? 17% is probably more than last year...the numbers are still going up. Where is it exactly that you get "most " from?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Eivind ( 15695 )
      17% sounds about right. That doesn't sound like rejection to me though, it's not long ago that only typical nerd-sites could even top 10%.

    • Wow, what a big number. But even with all of those downloads the logs from our server shows that only 17% of visitors are actually using it. Over 80% are IE variants.

      Congratulations Firefox, you've managed to get a boat load of people to download your browser, but somehow most people reject it after trying it.

      Well, actually ...

      According to http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm [internetworldstats.com] there are currently about 1,173 million people using the internet. (God knows whether this is an accurate number or not, but they seem to think they know what they're doing, and for the purposes of this unscientific /. discussion I'll assume it's roughly correct.)

      Therefore, 400 million downloads, assuming one download per person, would give a usage base of about 34%.

      If Firefox usage is actually 17%, that suggests that about one in

    • No, it means that almost 1 in every 5 visitors of your website is using FF, you better not be neglecting them because that would be very bad for business (17% of your business to be exact, if you had shareholders they would lynch you if you said you don't care about them).

  • It's the porn (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Everyone knows that Firefox is the browser of choice when surfing for porn, the extensions and plug-ins (no giggling at the back) make it much better than IE.

    Down Them All is the dedicated Hand-Shandyist's best friend.
  • ....if this number is just for the stable release or does it include the nightly builds? How about other browsers build on Firefox like Seamonkey?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kelson ( 129150 ) *
      Just stable builds of Firefox downloaded from the official mirrors.

      Updates downloaded through the auto-update system aren't counted. Neither are copies downloaded from third-party mirrors, or installed via a Linux distro CD, or downloaded once, put on a USB keychain or LAN share, and installed on multiple machines.

      Mozilla's Asa Dotzler remarked on another site last week that they have an estimated 120 million users right now, and I seem to recall the retention rate being something like 25%.

      Still, it's impr
  • Since when was Google Desktop a browser? And why would Firefox need to be "looking over it's shoulder" because of it?

  • Despite Firefox gaining some popularity (and Safari showing up in random places, like your Grandmother's house) IE still has a sweaty, firm grip on the market.

    Mozilla Firefox has a journey ahead of them before the numbers start to show in their favor.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by grcumb ( 781340 )

      Despite Firefox gaining some popularity (and Safari showing up in random places, like your Grandmother's house) IE still has a sweaty, firm grip on the market.

      Mozilla Firefox has a journey ahead of them before the numbers start to show in their favor.

      It's not about being in the majority. It's about being a presence.

      For as long as other browsers constituted a tiny minority, small-minded web developers could design for IE and IE alone. The rationale for that was: 'We don't have time or money to bother with standards - everyone uses IE, so we make our site work in IE.'

      The argument for standards-based approaches is already valid. We can argue that this approach will work reliably on all platforms. Code for the subset of existing standards that are rel

    • I'm just going to go ahead and predict the future and say that as Dell and others continue to offer Ubuntu, and start offering them for CHEAPER, since you save money on the OS (market economics dictate that this WILL happen, eventually), and as Ubuntu continues to improve and outshine Windows across the board (compiz>aero, firefox>IE, Pidgin>MSN, Thunderbird>Outlook, Gimp>Paint, Open Office (free)> MS Office (paid)), more people will BY DEFAULT be running Firefox, and then the market share
  • 10% still using Netscape? Who'da thought it?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Chapter80 ( 926879 )
      My thought exactly! Who are these 10% using Netscape? They must be AOL users with the built-in browser.

  • Ahem... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Mystery00 ( 1100379 )
    Somebody explain what "market" Firefox is occupying, and why it matters.

    http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp [w3schools.com]

    If you look at those usage statistics, Firefox is only a fragment below IE6, and quite a bit above IE7. Of course, I have no way of knowing how accurate these are, but I tend to trust W3 content.

    So, when they say that IE "still" has over 60% of the "market share", why does that matter? Usage statistics are the only ones any web developer should care about, I have IE installed,

    • Re:Ahem... (Score:4, Informative)

      by quantum bit ( 225091 ) on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @08:26AM (#20552235) Journal

      If you look at those usage statistics, Firefox is only a fragment below IE6, and quite a bit above IE7. Of course, I have no way of knowing how accurate these are, but I tend to trust W3 content.
      1. w3schools.com is not operated by the W3C.
      2. The page you linked mentions that the usage stats for a site geared toward web developers will be skewed toward alternative browsers

      • 2. The page you linked mentions that the usage stats for a site geared toward web developers will be skewed toward alternative browsers.
        Actually this is a good point. Any and every web site which is created will be targeted at some sub sector of the population. So looking at the stats of any other site, or even the population stats as a whole is useless.
         

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by notthe9 ( 800486 )

          Actually this is a good point.

          It is a very good point. It is, by the way, a point the w3schools site makes

          W3Schools is a website for people with an interest for web technologies. These people are more interested in using alternative browsers than the average user. The average user tends to use Internet Explorer, since it comes preinstalled with Windows. Most do not seek out other browsers.

          Any and every web site which is created will be targeted at some sub sector of the population. So looking at the stats

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dunbal ( 464142 )
      I had a look a another [w3schools.com] page on this website out of curiosity. I was tickled to note that despite the fact that linux usage has remained fairly steady at 3.odd percent, Windows Vista - for all the hype and OEM bundles, has exactly the same usage as linux so long after its release.

      Oh wait, I hear the sound of Microsoft shills and Vista apologists headed this way...

      Vista's retail "great success" is almost, but not quite, the same magnitude as W's "Mission Accompl
      • I would imagine most people browsing w3schools are doing so from work. Corps tend to hold off upgrading for as long as they can get away with. There is no real pressure for workplaces to upgrade to vista. Many of them buy upgrade/downgrade licenses for every machine, OEM copies of vista buisness and ultimate come with downgrade rights to XP pro and many OEMs are still offering XP to buisness customers.

        Home users have it much worse, home basic and home premium OEM do not come with downgrade rights, neither d

    • Usage statistics are the only ones any web developer should care about, I have IE installed, because it came with Windows, so I'm assuming that my IE is part of those market share statistics, but I do all my browsing with Firefox, so as far as I can see, this is useless information. Correct me if I'm wrong.
      You also forget that people must run IE for certain things, such as updating Windows.
  • Really, its just that simple. IE is prone to locking up, and when it does, it brings down your whole Windows desktop because it is "built into" Windows. Firefox doesn't have that problem. First off, it tends to work more often, and on a wide variety of sites.
  • I've been a fan of Firefox for about a year now. In the last few months it has been running really slowly on every machine I use it on. I've spoken to my coworkers and they've noticed the same thing. I tried switching to Opera after reading on slashdot that it runs faster then IE7 and Firefox http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/07/044243/ [slashdot.org] It does seem to run noticeably faster. Has anyone heard if Microsoft did to Firefox what it did to ICQ? (slowed it down by patching Windows to benefit MSN and de

  • We've won! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WhiteWolf666 ( 145211 ) <[sherwin] [at] [amiran.us]> on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @08:34AM (#20552335) Homepage Journal
    Not that we can rest on our laurels, but Firefox has reached the market share level that really matter; "adequate penetration".

    Misquoting the Supreme Court, I can't define exactly what that is, but I know it when I see it.

    Firefox is a real force in the realm of web browsers. Even if it hovered at 17-18% forever, that would be enough to insure that most websites, and most webapps support Firefox. Even Microsoft's latest web offerings work on Firefox (Windows Live, Silverlight, etc. . .). That's a huge deal.

    We don't need to dominate the market (OSS). It's nice when we do, but its not necessary. All that is necessary is for OSS software to have enough of a toehold to remain relevant in the minds of web developers. Few companies are willing to discard 1/5-1/6 of their customers.

    If Linux could ever get to 15-17% desktop marketshare, we would see tons of Linux games. Not 100% of games would be ported, but many, many games would be.

    Gratz Firefox! Gratz Mozilla Foundation! You did it.

  • Since well over a year now, Firefox by default has been automatically checking for updates and downloading the new version when available on nearly every install. On networks this can be compounded because even if you are not an "Administrator" Firefox will still install download the update although the user cannot install the program. These download numbers are still probably counted.

    On the upside, Mozilla does not count the number of installations on GNU/Linux systems (which would probably easily over

  • That's horrible! (Score:5, Funny)

    by jollyreaper ( 513215 ) on Tuesday September 11, 2007 @09:27AM (#20553153)
    400 million downloads. Just think of the revenue they're losing due to that piracy. :(
  • It seems like a better measure of firefox users would be the number of auto-updates that occur after a new version is released. This won't count users that get updated via some package manager (emerge, apt, etc), but it would at least give a lower limit on the number of active firefox installations out there.

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