Firefox Fading? Not at PCWorld.com

Here's a story (which we borrowed from our compatriots over at Computerworld) reporting on stats from Web metrics company Net Applications that show usage of Firefox on the Internet at large down a bit in January--from 14 percent to 13.7 percent Net Applications' numbers also show usage of Apple's Safari up to 4.7 percent, from 4.2 percent the month before.

The article quotes a Net Applications representative as saying that the downturn for Firefox--which is by far the most popular alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer--is minor but statistically real. Which prompted me to check stats for users of PCWorld.com to see where the browser wars stand, particularly in the wake of the release of IE 7 back in October. The short story: On our site, Firefox is continuing its slow, occasionally bumpy, but unmistakable growth in popularity.

Here's how browser usage at PCWorld.com looked back in September of 2006--the last full month before IE 7's final version appeared:

IE 6: 59.7 percent of all visits
IE 7: 4.71
Firefox: 25.06
Opera: 2.83
Safari: 2.6

And here's the story for February (so far):

IE 6: 33.96 percent of all visits
IE 7: 29.91
Firefox: 27.06
Safari: 2.56
Opera: 1.95

You've gotta be careful about reading too much into minor blips--the fact that Safari usage was 2.6 percent in September and 2.56 percent in February means it's essentially flat, not that it's falling. But Firefox's growth by a couple of percentage points is real. (If it ends up February with at least 27 percent share among our users, it'll be the first month it's ever his that mark.) And its growth rate is pretty much in line with what we saw in the months preceding IE 7's release.

Also worthy of note: IE 7 usage is growing rapidly enough that it seems likely that it'll soon surpass IE 6 to be the single most-used browser version out there.

Oh, and Safari usage on PCWorld.com? Over time, it's been creeping up, too. Back in January of 2006, only .45 percent of our visitors used that browser. So the 2.56 percent usage for February represents almost a sixfold increase.

Overall, by the way, only about 4 percent of our visitors use Macs. As far as operating system usage goes, we seem to map to the real world, which means that Windows users still account for more than 90 percent of our traffic. (Although some folks--like me--visit the site via multiple browsers on varying operating systems on different days.)

Here's a little graph showing Firefox's percentage of PCWorld.com visits over the browser's entire history. As you can see, it's dipped a bit some months (and did so right after IE 7 shipped--it makes sense that even some Firefox partisans were curious enough to give the new IE a try). But overall, there's no evidence that Firefox has plateaued, let alone begun a decline.