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I like to do periodic reports of usage of Firefox on PCWorld.com, and these numbers too show Firefox getting more and more popular. The trend for Firefox usage is still trending upwards over time. In fact, January 2008 was the first month during which a third of site visitors--34.36 percent, to be overly exact--used Firefox. Here's a graph of its growth over the past three years:
Internet Explorer remains the most-used broser at PCWorld.com, but total usage for IE 7, IE 6, and the dregs of previous versions has fallen below sixty percent. (Back in September 2004, when Firefox was still an obscure beta, just one percent of visitors used it--and around 90 percent of visitors used IE.)
PCWorld.com users are a lot more likely than garden-variety Internet types to use Firefox--here's a report that has overall usage at around 17 percent. (Such data tends to vary a lot from source to source, though--here's another site saying that Firefox usage is around 25 percent.)
I hesitate to make any predictions here, but given that Firefox is no longer an unknown newcomer and its share is still creeping upward, and Microsoft seems to have lost the will to radically upgrade IE, here's a scenario that no longer seems wholly implausible: Firefox may eventually hit 51 percent usage, making it the Web's dominant browser by any definition.
If it happens...well, in that case I'll just pretend I predicted it rather than saying it could happen.
Meanwhile, please take my goofy little poll on the subject:
First off... I'm no fan of Microsoft and kills me to make a point against Firefox in favor of Internet Explorer. But I'm afraid Mozilla statistics are misleading. Sure Firefox has been downloaded a half a billion times, but that doesn't mean that many people are using the browser. Microsoft patches its swiss cheese browser all the time. Mozilla doesn't patch.. it makes you download an entire new browser like every two months. I don't mind. But it seems that Microsoft and Mozilla have two different ways of supporting a browser. Again .. Microsoft patches and Mozilla crams another browser download on you. This is a longstanding and well known difference between the two browsers. As much as I love Firefox and don't care for IE.. I think it's kinda cheesy of Firefox to trumpet so loudly its 1/2 billion milestone.
It seems to me that for some time, Firefox has had an automatic update that doesn't require downloading the full boat. I doubt that an update would show as a complete download. I may be wrong but that's the way I see it.
Pooch
Buckwalter,
When you download a new version of Firefox as an upgrade (for security updates, etc.), you don't redownload the entire copy of Firefox if you're upgrading from the previous version. Firefox offers a partial update, usually around a megabyte or so, that upgrades users of the last version to the newly patched version. This saves everyone time and resources.
I could be wrong but I believe that these download numbers are from the main Mozilla website, so these are users who have explicitly clicked on the link to download Firefox, not users who have done an upgrade using the upgrade mechanism in Firefox. So, that makes the issue of updates really outside the scope of things.
Firefox is a well made browser no doubt, and I frankly enjoyed it before I switched to Opera. I can see this 50% market share as a definite possibility, however, one still needs to examine the caveats in place refraining this as an immediate possiblity within the next few years.
Web developers & designers (myself included) definetely need the usage of a standards compliant browser. Most average users will migrate towards it for various reasons; simplicity, ease of use, customizablity, and the sort. However, there's a major market that Firefox may or may not hit, and that's the corporate setting. Most of the online systems I've encountered are still heavily based with IE, and break with other browsers. My college even has a portion of its site where all the features only work with IE. In my opinion, it'll take a lot of nudging before they can be moved, but that's not to say they can't be.
51% of what user base? Individuals, including Win, Mac, Linux? Sure. Why not?
But if you look at a user base that includes corporates, financials, and industrials, this will require a whole new way of thinking at Mozilla. These kinds of organizations want tech support and someone to take responsibility at the vendor level when things go wrong.
We are long since past the days when FF did not work on the sites of these organizational types. I personally use FF at home and at work, where I deal with all three of the above cited kinds of organizations. Never do I need to go to IE7. I use FF, NN9 and SM browsers, in no particular order, except that NN9 in on its way out and FF is my default.
Users of IE7 should bless Mozilla. If not for the impetus provided by the Gecko sector, IE users might still be on IE6. Knowing the corporate world a bit, I must say that a lot of them probably do still use IE6.
Just some facts for those who like to twist words and pull supposed 'facts' out of thin air:
1. Mozilla has simply stated that there have been half a billion downloads of Firefox. Mozilla has NEVER (and I actually do read their press releases) suggested that 500 million PEOPLE have downloaded it. It is YOU (yes, you buckwalter) that is making that assumption about Mozilla. You're putting words into their mouths.
2. There's an auto update feature in Firefox that has been working since version 1.5 that will only install bugfixes, security updates etc. This is NOT "an entire new browser".
3. The primary reason the auto update feature exists in the first place is PRECISELY so that you don't have to download "an entire new browser" every time a bug or security fix is rolled out. This is basic knowledge.
It seems as though the people that make these sorts of claims haven't even used Firefox at all, or else they haven't bothered upgrading since 1.0 , which came out over 3 years ago.