Mozilla Usage Doubles in 9 Months

TheBadger writes "Thanks to the success of Firefox, Mozilla now appears to have 14.9% of the browser share, double that of 9 months ago. Let this be a lesson in complacency."

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

[by Anonymous Coward]

This is a completely non-story. W3Schools is a (good) site aimed at web developers, ones that actually understand and use HTML/CSS/etc rather than whatever Frontpage makes. Yes, it's good that more developers are using Firefox/Mozilla, but it is not indicative of average users. Google's Zeitgeist was a good measure of the average user, but they've dropped the browser stats. My non-techy websites get about 7% Firefox, and about another 3% of Mozilla/Netscape 6/7 users. Is Firefox/Mozilla usage increasing? Yes, but it is not at 15%.

Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

[JoshMooney (668142)]

Unfortunatly, your non-techy websites don't represnet the entire web. Perhaps if you gave us a link, we could judge better. From my point of view, many "average" users are switching to Firefox. My mother and father (no, I don't live with them) have recently switched to Firefox on my suggestion and have thanked me for that suggestion. So, from my usage viewpoint, Forefox usage increased 100%. Its all relative.

Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

[by Anonymous Coward]

You missed the point completely. I can give you the stats for my site, w3schools can give you the stats for their site, but none of them really mean anything. Only a major site like Google that attracts users of all types can really tell us anything.

Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

[Stephen Samuel (106962)]

Google isn't major? What site is major then?

er, um, Windowsupdate.microsoft.com????

I mean everybody goes there... Even linux geeks have to go there to get updates for their friends who are stuck on Windows and too virus-infected to get updates from via own computers.

Given that I've just proved that everybody goes there, I think that we could use that as a really good measure of what percentages of Web users use Mozilla vs IE.

No???

(( Asbestos suit, Asbestos suit .... where did I put my asbestos suit????? ))

Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

[jericho4.0 (565125)]

You don't need to sample _everyone_ to get valid data. That's the point of statistics.

I would guess that google is a little skewed, though. People not useing google are probably useing the default search in their browser, ie; IE. People visiting w3 are probably more net savvy than others, which would also skew the numbers.

I'd say a general interest site like ebay would give a close to accurate picture.

Where the firefox people came from

[cgenman (325138)]

If you look closely, you'll see that internet explorer 6 usage has been pretty level, but internet explorer 5 usage plumetted in almost exactly the same proportion that firefox / moz increased.

It appears, then, that these are people with old machines who won't put up with an increasingly exploited browser but who can't run I.E. 6... either from a power standpoint or an access standpoint. Windows 98 usage only dropped 3% in that time, so nearly all of the converts must be running the older platform.

I'd be interested to see statistics correlating the two, and whether or not the people visiting w3 skew towards having older computers than the average surfers.

Either way the conclusion is clear: Microsoft is losing people at the tail end of their product line, because they refuse to offer a low-power, efficient alternative for older platforms.

Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

[pingveno (708857)]

The point is that the default search engine for IE is MSN, whereas Firefox has a default search engine of Google. Google would, therefore, naturally have a greater percentage of Mozilla users than the web as a whole. Ebay, on the other hand, is visited by a wide range of browsers and would be more representative of the true statistics.

Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

[Curtman (556920)]

Some workplaces (like mine) have instituted a no Exploder policy. If you're caught using it here, you get a reprimand, second offense is a day off with no pay, third you lose network privilages. Our admin seems to be a much happier guy lately.

Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

[JamesTRexx (675890)]

*sighs at the dream of having that policy at his work, being able to be just as happy*

Re:Did you believe the parent?

[Curtman (556920)]

I think he's just appealing to the groupthink mods.

I think you're in denial.

Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

[bsharitt (580506)]

I keep fixing people's computers because they have become so infested with spyware that they are unusable. In all those cases I install firefox and tell them to use that, and about 4 out of 5 keep firefox, so from my perspective usage has increased too.

Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

[utlemming (654269)]

I think that this is a tech trend that Microsoft is not paying attention to. With all the spyware/viruses that are out in the wild, I have installed, recommneded and even forced (if you don't use Firefox, I will not fix your computer again) people to switch to Firefox. In my college apartment, all of us are now using Firefox. And the funny thing is that they are all non-Geeks (music majors mostly) and they are recommending it to their friends too. Microsoft seems to have forgotten the economics of the browser wars. Just because they won over Netscape by using the operating system as a way to distribute, doesn't mean that they will nessasarily maintain. And the thing that is going to be difficult for them is to convince everyone that is using Mozilla to switch back. The lesson that MS needs to learn if they want to maintain the dominance is to produce a secure product that gives people what they want. Heck, when some of MS's own execs use Firefox then you know that something is up.

Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

[bsharitt (580506)]

Although I am just a lowly nurse, I provide ad hoc tech support to our little off site research facility. When I repair some infected machine, I just delete the "E" icon, put on Mozilla and tell them thats what they have to click now to get on the internet. The only comment I've ever heard was "Why don't I get all those popups blocking my screen anymore" Most people never notice the differance.

I don't remove IE, I just tell them the "e" is what messed up their computer and that the firefox icon is the new link to the internet.

Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

[rseuhs (322520)]

On a completely non-technical site I manage (f1-facts.com), Gecko has increased from 3.482% in February to 9.274% last month (August), that's pretty impressing.

Actually 9.274 or 10% (like in your case) isn't very far off from 15%.

Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

[Tim C (15259)]

Actually 9.274 or 10% (like in your case) isn't very far off from 15%.

Not far off? It's 50% off...

(ie to go from a market share of 10% to 15%, you have to increase your install base by 50% - that's a pretty big leap)

No surprise

[violet16 (700870)]

I run two web sites, one of which gets 3 million hits per day, neither of which are tech-oriented, and have seen very similar results to W3schools. In January, 7% Firefox/Mozilla and 85% IE. In August, 15% Firefox/Mozilla and 74% IE.

NationStates.net

[violet16 (700870)]

Heh, no, not "adult".

www.nationstates.net

Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

[zapadoo (807744)]

Here's the stats for a financial services website, which while doesn't attract traffic such as the likes of Schwab, is visited enough to be a good sampling:

.........JAN 04 AUG 04
MS IE.....91.5 % 66.4 %
Netscape...5.6 % 12.3 %
Unknown....1.4 % 3.2 %
Opera......1.2 % 0.5 %
FireFox....0.0 % 12.8 %
Mozilla......... 2.4 %

Anomolies are present due to better browser detection implemented mid 2004. This particular site put out a couple of articles (out of many hundreds of other articles on its core topic, financial services) which suggested a browser switch to clients.

Apparently several paragraphs of advocacy make a difference.

Re:Read the page

[elleomea (749084)]

"but we are also monitoring other sources around the Internet to assure the quality of these figures)"

is the rest of the parent's quote.

Is This True?

[The Lost Supertone (754279)]

Seriously? Hmm... they don't seem to have any category for Konquer/Safari users... or am I missing something? Either way nice to see Moz gaining ground... but... is this really true?

Re:Is This True?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Given that Konq's default browser id is:

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/3.3; Linux) (KHTML, like Gecko)

it's probably just being included in the Mozilla stats.

I wish the browser id tag had never been put in. Devs would have no choice but to write to the standard.

Biased source sorry

[BigAl_nz (39616)]

Just one thing, w3schools.com is a site for people who write websites, so they'd naturally have a much higher percentage of non-IE browsers than the more general browsing population.

Personally, I keep an eye on thecounter.com [thecounter.com] to see how Mozilla's market share is doing. It's certainly more realistic than the linked article statistics page. Pity Google removed browser stats from the zeitgeist [google.com] page.

The interesting thing is....

[UncleBiggims (526644)]

The interesting this is that the browser with the biggest drop in usage from January to August is IE5. I wonder if this means that users of IE5 decided to switch rather than upgrade this year.

Read your own chart, duh.

[xigxag (167441)]

Um, your own chart shows that IE6 usage has barely budged in the past year and holds firm around 70%, near its high. Yes, Mozilla's increased, but at the expense of old IE5 installations only.

So, in this case, complacency is working fine.

I'm sure it varies widely from site to sit, but...

[93 Escort Wagon (326346)]

When I've checked my personal site's stats (small gardening site, roughly 400-500 page views per day) over the past couple months: I've been seeing roughly 70% Internet Explorer, 5% unknown, and the rest are mostly Mozilla/Netscape variants. Safari makes up just a couple percentage points.

About a year ago hits from IE were at about 90%.

Here's stats from another source

[myrdred (597891)]

Here's some statistics from a different source (which actually presents stats from 5 sources), where Gecko (mozilla) ranges from 4% to 27% - it's clear that the stats greatly vary from site to site:

http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat.htm [upsdell.com]

the other 85%

[bcrowell (177657)]

They say 77% are using IE, but I did a poll in the parking lot of my local supermarket, and got the following results:

• 15% firefox
• 2% "Opera, goddammit, you got a problem with that?"
• 20% Internet Explorer
• 37% "I dunno, what's a browser?"
• 15% "I click on the blue thing."
• 6% "I don't use a browser, I use AOL."
• 5% "I like Google."

Re:More cooked numbers

[Bastian (66383)]

If you went with the first answer rather than giving respondents two chances, I'd say you would have had a lot more that answered, "I dunno, what's a browser", and another 30% that answered, "Windows."

Re:the other 85%

[Jon Abbott (723)]

Hey, your poll added up to 100% -- that alone makes it more statistically sound than most Slashdot polls... :^)

Security being mentioned on the news perhaps?

[Billly Gates (198444)]

Firefox is fairly new to most non nerd consumers. I never even tried it until about 5 months ago.

The news over last summer with banking information being stolen convinced my old man to ask my about alternative browsers. I burned him a cd with firefox since the New York times mentioned it.

My gf uses firefox on her old pc because she is worried about security after the scare this summer and due to the fact its an older machine and firefox is snappy on old hardware.

People prefer IE but if something like online trading and banking flaws get involved all of the sudden switching may not be such a bad idea.

Something to note

[iamdrscience (541136)]

In those statistics (and really any browser statistics like them) Opera's numbers are unfairly represented because Opera allows you to change what header it sends out allowing you to spoof other browsers such as IE or netscape. I, like many other Opera users, generally have my user-agent set to IE. This is useful in the case of sites that (stupidly) limit your ability to access a page based on what browser you're using. For example, when I go to staples.com in Opera with my user-agent header set to Opera, it tells me I don't have cookies enabled (yeah, WTF?) but if I change my user-agent to IE, I can browse the whole site perfectly.

I'm more interested in those OS stats.

[khasim (1285)]

Particularly since it shows Linux at 3% and Mac at 2.5%.

And it shows a fairly steady (if slow) increase.

Browser stats for seifried.org

[seifried (12921)]

I'm looking at btowser stats for seifried.org, averaging 70,000 visits a month in the security area and I'm not seeing even a hint of firefox in the top 15 browsers for any month, "MSIE 6.0; Windows X" and googlebot are the clear winners. You think people interested in computer security and UNIX would have a tendancy to use FireFox or Mozilla but IE is still kicking their butts.

slashdot vs. non-slashdot hits on my site

[ortholattice (175065)]

My semi-technical site (sorry, I won't tell you what it is - the is my only semi-anonymous haven) got mention in a slashdot comment on Sep. 2 (no, it wasn't me spamming!), causing many (around 1100 extra) hits. Here are the Sep. results so far, with 72.5% of Sep. hits from coming from slashdot:

36.97%=Mozilla/5.0 ; 33.65%=MSIE 6.0 ; 6.45%=Pompos/1.3 http://dir.com/pompos.html ; 6.40%=msnbot/0.11 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm) ; 2.71%=Opera 7.5 ; 2.46%=Yahoo! Slurp ; 2.41%=Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html) ; 1.93%=psbot/0.1 (+http://www.picsearch.com/bot.html) ; 1.49%=MSIE 5.5 ; 0.87%=Konqueror/3.2 ; 0.80%=Mozilla/3.01 (compatible;) ; 0.56%=Konqueror/3.3 ; 0.50%=MSIE 5.0 ; 0.43%=Konqueror/3.1 ; 0.41%=Opera 7.2

Here are the more normal Aug. results with about 0% hits coming from slashdot:

46.89%=MSIE 6.0 ; 16.82%=Mozilla/5.0 ; 7.92%=msnbot/0.11 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm) ; 6.50%=Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html) ; 3.55%=Ask Jeeves/Teoma)" ; 3.14%=MSIE 5.0 ; 2.67%=Pompos/1.3 http://dir.com/pompos.html ; 1.86%=MSIE 5.5 ; 1.82%=psbot/0.1 (+http://www.picsearch.com/bot.html) ; 1.27%=HTTrack 3.0 ; 1.05%=Yahoo! Slurp ; 0.93%=Mozilla/3.01 (compatible;) ; 0.88%=Opera 7.5

Unfair!

[DCMonkey (615)]

Unfair! Many IE users are forced to spoof their user-agent strings to represent themselves as Mozilla/FireFox users to make themselves looks hip and socially conscious.

Or not.

Don't go by W3Schools Stats

[Dracos (107777)]

Most people who visit w3schools.com are not the average user, they are developers: early adopters. It would take at least another 9 months for global Mozilla usage to reach half these levels.

I prefer to go by the stats published by OneStat.com [onestat.com] in their Pressbox [onestat.com].

However, I do think the rest of the year will bring a significant change in browser usage [fylo.net].

Schools and companies

[sometwo (53041)]

Schools and companies are the places where there are a huge number of computers. Those are the places where Mozilla can make inroads for quick jumps in market share. My school finally dropped Netscape 4 and is offering a custom Mozilla browser with its logo to every student. How long before others follow?

On that note...

[Cylix (55374)]

Not to Firefox troll, but I think everyone should make an effort to switch at least one person over to firefox. Then, see if they can switch at least one person.

I was happy using Mozilla, but since I switched to Firefox... I've been thrilled.

It flies, it has some nice plugins (I recommend FTPsync and Browser Agent switching for those annoying sites) and my experience has been nothing but great.

Just because I occassionally switch my user agent string doesn't mean I don't complain. I recently submitted a complaint to yahooligans (A yahoo kids oreiented site).

The stats linked to are useless

[Guspaz (556486)]

As has been said in many previous posts, those stats JUST represent ONE site, and a tech-oriented one at that, making the results hugely biased.

For a comparison as to how useless those statistics are, I checked out the stats for the most popular site tracked by NedStatBasic. It's startpagina.nl with about 2.8 million pageviews per day.

Here are the browser stats:

IE 5/6: 96.7%
Mozilla: 2.7%
Other: 0.6%

You can see the stats here:

http://www.nedstatbasic.net/s?tab=1&link=5&id=71 03 09

Our own stats.

[adelayde (185757)]

Although I think this is great, the statistics from some servers that I manage and run show different and it depends greatly on the type of site. For example this link to a stats report for a site that was Slashdotted [psand.net] shows Firefox users as 26.8% of visitors and Mozilla 16.7%, a grand total of 43.5% against IE, which got 40.7%. All I can say here is well done Slashdotters for using a decent, and probably the best browser - it's excellent.

Looking at another site, not slashdotted, of general interest for all sorts of users, the stats reveal 9.1% Firefox and 5.4% Mozilla, which comes to 14.5% - a figure very close to that posted in the article. Good.

However, it's very different when moving to a commercial site selling a commerical product. For example, on site reveals just 1.6% Mozilla & Firefox users against 96.6% IE users and another, selling Jazz and Latino records, has 4% Mozilla against 87.9% IE.
I reckon that it depends greatly upon who your audience is as to what statistics you extrapolate.

Re:Note

[by Anonymous Coward]

Complacency != Apathy

Whatever. Close enough.

Re:I for one welcome...

[sploo22 (748838)]

And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced. But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird. The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire and thunder upon them. For the beast had been reborn with its strength renewed, and the followers of Mammon cowered in horror.

from The Book of Mozilla, 7:15

Re:14% marketshare at w3schools.com

[maxwell demon (590494)]

Increase of Mozilla/Firefox use for web designers is indeed very good news, because it means that more web sites will be browsable with those (a typical web desigher surely wouldn't design a web page he can't access with his standard browser, would he?).

Re:Opera?

[servoled (174239)]

meh.. firefox is free without any catches. Plus, it has a very nice adblocking extension [mozdev.org] that makes browsing much less painful.

Just browsing the features listed on the Opera page I don't see much that firefox doesn't offer natively or by installing an extension, so I see no real reason to switch and a few good resons not to.

Re:IE6 went down and IE5 went up?

[ciroknight (601098)]

Less users using IE 6, more using Moz/Firefox with the extension that allows it to look like IE.

Re:I switched BACK from Firefox to IE

[AvantLegion (595806)]

Hmm, having my personal info transparently swiped, and offer a nice highway for spyware to the world...

.... or ....

... hit Reload every now and then.

Yeah, I see what you mean - clicking Reload is such a hassle!

Re:I switched BACK from Firefox to IE

[The Analog Kid (565327)]

It's been fixed in the trunk builds, so by 1.0 or whatever they are calling it (in the about section it says 0.10), it should be correct.

What that bug is

[0x0d0a (568518)]

It is not a bug in Slashcode. It is a bug in the Gecko (the rendering portion of Mozilla) code related to incremental reflow. It has been fixed in Gecko, but the latest version of Gecko has not been rolled into Firefox.

(Courtesy of another Slashdotter in the know.)

I'm not sure what the schedule is on rolling in the fix.

Re:I switched BACK from Firefox to IE

[Wildfire Darkstar (208356)]

This is hardly an unknown bug. It's been plaguing Firefox releases for various people for as long as I can remember, and it even has an entry on Bugzilla (#217527). It is, however, a little unpredictable. I ran into the problem very rarely until upgrading to 0.9, when it started popping up every time. Other people have said 0.9 has improved things, though.

I eventually had to switch to the trunk build, which has incorporated a fix for it (although is more of a work-in-progress than the branch build, in general). For those who only encounter it rarely, or aren't willing to bother with the trunk builds, the most reliable way I've found of "fixing" the page is to quickly increase or decrease text size (CTRL++/-). Reloading doesn't always work.

Re:U.S Patent Office and IE

[k98sven (324383)]

How did this blatant, loud, nonsense get modded up? Since this is Slashdot, any rant against the USPTO must be true?

But very few are aware that U.S. Patent Office is violating our constitutional right by promulgating and enforcing a Microsoft-IE-only policy.

I certainly am unaware of that. Which constitutional right? Can you point to me where in the US Constitution it says that you have a right to recive patent documents on-line in whatever format you wish?

[bla, bla, indignation..] The United States Patent Office, without much notice, now requires that, in order to download those references, you must register with the Patent Office, then the Patent Office will install a program ON YOUR MACHINE WHICH MUST BE RUNNING MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER UNDER MICROSOFT WINDOWS to allow you to communicate with the Patent Office before you can download those prior art patents that our government must furnish you as a matter of our constitution right and as part of the filing fees paid to the Patent Office.

This is all bullshit. Please point me to where the USPTO requires you to run IE. And even if IE was required telephone, mail or fax [uspto.gov] ordering is clearly available.

Thus, basically it has boiled down to this stupid law: if you want to receive a patent, you are now REQUIRED BY LAW to have a machine with Microsoft Windows running Internet Explorer in your office.

Pure bullshit. What law? Which US Federal Code? The policy of a government office isn't a law. Not that I can find any such policy either.

In other words, in order to exercise your constitutional rights, you must have a machine that runs Microsoft Windows and you must set Microsoft Internet Explorer as your default browser.

Again no hint as to which constitutional rights you are talking about. Or what policy.

The United States Patent and Trademark can implement and insist such a stupid policy because it doesn't have to compete. But what about those 4000+ patent attorneys? How come all of them are so quiet? Are all of them idiots?

Or, just perhaps, this policy doesn't EXIST?