Firefox 3 Already Rules the Roost

Barence writes in with a data point on Firefox 3 adoption: it's been available for 10 days, and already one site is seeing 55% of its Firefox-using visitors on version 3. "Microsoft still has three out of ten people running an old version of its browser more than 18 months after Internet Explorer 7 launched, while Firefox has converted more than half of its users to the latest version in just over a week. That should set a few alarm bells ringing in Redmond."

And the one site is

[fyrie (604735)]

mozilla.org

Why alarm bells?

[by Anonymous Coward]

IE survives on inertia, not quality. If anything, this is exactly what you should expect to see. The people willing to change browsers are the same people who want the latest upgrade with the best support for the latest standards.

Re:Why alarm bells?

[smitty_one_each (243267)]

Now IE has tabs, and the playing field is level again.

Note the implicit constraint on operating system.

Re:Why alarm bells?

[bennettj1087 (1315501)]

The upgrade from IE6 to IE7 is huge. The interface is completely redesigned and there's a host of new features (if you can call them features). People who've been using IE6 forever are very resistant to switching to IE7 because of the learning curve associated with it (note that I'm referring to the less tech-savvy). The upgrade from Firefox 2 to Firefox 3 comes with almost no visual differences aside from the looks of the buttons. Of course people are going to upgrade quickly, they don't have to relearn everything. Also, if you work for a large corporation you'll know that it's still the case in many places that IE7 is not approved for corporate use (you can use it if you want but most of the intranet sites won't work properly). Since I know there's a large number of people out there reading this from work, that will definitely factor into the percentages mentioned above.

Re:Why alarm bells?

[TobyRush (957946)]

This doesn't really seem like it should be a mystery.

Tom is a computer guy. Some of his top visited sites are sourceforge, slashdot and his own LEGO Mindstorms blog. His home machine runs the latest nightly build of Linux and he can speak fluent hexadecimal. He uses Firefox because he detests the business practices of Microsoft, he appreciates the interface design and standards-compliance of FF, and understands the importance of supporting open source programming.

Harry is a guy who uses a computer. Some of his top visited sites are the Microsoft Start Page and Yahoo! Games. His home machine is a color television. He uses IE because, to him, the little "e" icon is what his trainer told him to click on to get on the internet.

Which if these folks, do you think, is going to have upgraded to the latest version of his web browser?

Re:Why alarm bells?

[IntlHarvester (11985)]

Yeah, but I'm talking more about Dick who surfs during his lunch break and uses whatever browser his IT manager tells him to use.

Harry has already gotten his IE7 through Windows Update. The IE6 holdouts are mostly corporate and maybe people with poorly pirated versions of XP.

Re:Why alarm bells?

[sam_paris (919837)]

You clearly never used tamperdata, firebug, adblock, flashblock etc..

Re:Why alarm bells?

[seether166 (966881)]

So you like ads? Honestly, vanilla feature sets aside, yeah, FF and IE are similar. I think IE took one more major release to get tabbed browsing though. That's a big one. But AdBlock is the real reason I use FF. AdBlock is like the DVR of the Internet for me in that it saves me from commercials and makes its respective medium bearable. But then, I abhor ads too.

Re:Why alarm bells?

[bryce4president (1247134)]

Dwight Shrute? Is that you?

Re:Why alarm bells?

[Foofoobar (318279)]

Yeah you think you trained your mind but advertisers already thought of that and subliminally affect you whether you know it or not. Who do you think is more likely to eat at McDonalds: the person who views the comercial but 'think's they are ignoring the commercials or the person who nerver ever sees a commercial for McDonalds? Your logic just doesn't work.

Re:Why alarm bells?

[orasio (188021)]

The whole "subliminal" thing strikes me as a giant load of hogwash.

Just think about it.

Coca Cola and Pepsi use lots of money in advertising. The fact that they are leaders in the world, even the fact that people actually buy sugared tap water must mean something.

Nike sells sports clothes at designer prices, and people actually buy them and wear them. To think that advertising has nothing to with it is nonsense.

People respond to advertising, to think you are so special that you don't is both arrogant and naive.

Aside from that, I don't care either about ads, I have learned to live with them, but I don't think they do not affect me.

Re:Why alarm bells?

[ShieldW0lf (601553)]

Uh, yeah, I refuse to believe that "subliminally affecting you" stuff. I see ads ALL THE DAMN TIME, when I'm driving, or watching TV, or listening to the radio, and let me tell you, I am no more likely to buy their product than before. In fact, plenty of ads are annoying enough that I'm less likely to buy their product. The whole "subliminal" thing strikes me as a giant load of hogwash.

When faced with 10 different choices, and having no data by which to differentiate them, humans choose the familiar. If you've never had a Coke in your life, but you've seen the logo everywhere you go for a decade, when faced with 10 unknown colas and no opportunity to do research, you're most likely to pick the Coke because it feels like a known element even though it isn't.

No one is immune to that. Including you.

Re:Why alarm bells?

[devjj (956776)]

All you've really said is FF offers nothing for you. You are clearly an exception to the rule. The only people I know who still run IE do so out of ignorance of the option. Most people still just use "the browser" that came with the OS. You would be surprised how many people don't even realize they have an option. To that point, everyone I've introduced to FF still runs it.

Re:Why alarm bells?

[Anpheus (908711)]

Maybe I like the taste of that sugared tap water, you insensitive clod.

Re:Why alarm bells?

[dotancohen (1015143)]

Not to mention that every study of "subliminal" advertising has debunked it as BS. I'll take my psuedo-science on astrology.com; I'd rather not have to deal with it on /.

*I* spotted the breasts in your post, sneaky.

Re:Why alarm bells?

[OnlineAlias (828288)]

There are ads on the internet?

Re:Why alarm bells?

[CowboyNealOption (1262194)]

Personally I enjoy the extra ten seconds per add-ridden page I add to my life where I am not waiting for all the useless ad content to load. But hey whatever floats your boat.

Re:Why alarm bells?

[budgenator (254554)]

how about the flash ads trying to be load from a server that has been turned into a smokeing ruin and locks up the whole page while the browser vaining waits for it to download?

Re:Why alarm bells?

[Jason Earl (1894)]

This is like trying to convince someone to use a pen instead of opening a vein with a razor so that they can write with their own blood. Clearly this guy enjoys the pain of using Internet Explorer.

Seriously, Firefox is faster, uses less memory, has tons of cool add-ons, and it is less likely to attract mal-ware. Heck, it even has a cooler name and logo. Even over a modem Firefox is worth the download.

So far bigstrats arguments for IE have been things like "I filter out ads in my head," and "I don't mind wasting time waiting for Internet Explorer." Wow, that sounds like a nifty deal. I think I'll switch to IE too.

Re:Why alarm bells?

[drinkypoo (153816)]

I just ignore ads, and do so with ease. I never understood the need for an addon to do it, but maybe I'm just really good at ignoring ads or something.

Are you so good at ignoring ads that they no longer are transferred over the wire? AdBlock is. I'm on a modem on some antique, crap copper, and without AdBlock Plus my ~26.4kbps modem connection would be unusable for general web surfing.

I used to also use imagelikeopera, but it doesn't work on FF3 yet (or does it? someone please tell me if it does.) And of course I use noscript, which is pretty much 100% protection from automatic attacks from malicious javascript on first visit (although you can of course accidentally permit something which will hose you, or be hosed by a site owned after you first used it and decided to allow it permanently.)

But hey, I am impressed that your psychic powers permit you to prevent all that data from being transferred over your link... or jealous that you have so much bandwidth that you don't care. Of course, you're wasting bandwidth for no good reason, which makes you kind of a dick, but I guess 2girls1cup has done more senseless damage to internet throughput than you, so carry on.

Re:Why alarm bells?

[Tumbleweed (3706)]

IE7 and Firefox are basically equal in terms of features, unless you care about add-ons (and personally, I have yet to see one FF addon that excites me). Firefox used to be better than IE, mostly because it had tabs. Now IE has tabs, and the playing field is level again.

WOW. Clearly, you're a Slider. What colour is the Golden Gate Bridge in your reality? Did Bush get reelected there? And are they still coming out with new Firefly episodes there?

Re:Why alarm bells?

[edmicman (830206)]

Ugh, I've used IE7 since it was out in beta, but Firefox is my primary browser. IE7 is sooooooooo much slower to respond than Firefox, even back on v2. V3 is not even worth competition. I can start Firefox, ctrl-T to open a new tab, ctrl-L to go to a location, and have that location loaded before IE7 has barely rendered the default start page. I don't know why it is, but opening new tabs in IE7 is painfully slow, as is switching back and forth between them. Firefox is soooo much easier to use.

Re:Why alarm bells?

[Xtifr (1323)]

IE7 is sooooooooo much slower to respond than Firefox

Hmm, it responds instantly for me:

~ $ ie
bash: ie: command not found
~ $ ie7
bash: ie7: command not found
~ $ iexplore
bash: iexplore: command not found

But I have to say that it seems to be missing a feature or two compared to firefox. Like the ability to browse the web, just fer starters. :)

Re:Why alarm bells?

[gfody (514448)]

IE7 and Firefox are basically equal in terms of features, unless you care about add-ons (and personally, I have yet to see one FF addon.......

There is no way this is not a troll. If not, I am thoroughly dumbfounded how anyone can fail to find value in the pure nuggets of gold that are ff extensions.

Re:Why alarm bells?

[GeckoX (259575)]

I have an opinion right now. Considering the number of posts you've made in this thread, and the lack of anything substantial being said other than to counter what others have said...IMHO you are indeed trolling.

Opinions are indeed wonderful aren't they?

Re:Why alarm bells?

[darkpixel2k (623900)]

IE7 and Firefox are basically equal in terms of features, unless you care about add-ons

...or that when IE7 crashes I lose all my tabs.
...or I close a tab accidentally in IE7 and want it back...no undo.
...or how IE7 uses totally intuitive shortcuts like when I right-click on a link and expect to his 't' for opening a new tab, but IE7 uses the totally intuitive 'w' for new tab which should actually be for new window.
...or how I can't change those keys in IE7 to suit my preference.

Do I need to continue?

Re:And the one site is

[Tubal-Cain (1289912)]

Actually, it's www.pcpro.co.uk (TFA's site)

File under "So what?"

[bigstrat2003 (1058574)]

Microsoft still has three out of ten people running an old version of its browser more than 18 months after Internet Explorer 7 launched, while Firefox has converted more than half of its users to the latest version in just over a week. That should set a few alarm bells ringing in Redmond.

Huh? This means absolutely nothing. If you want to give us data that's meaningful, tell us how many converts to IE7 there were in the first week, or wait 1.5 years and see how many people are using FF3 versus old versions. Then we'd have some comparable data. A rapid expansion right off the bat, for example, does not necessarily indicate that the final tally will be in FF's favor.

Furthermore, a decent chunk of IE users are the "computer = magic black box" type, who use IE because it's what came on the computer. If those people aren't doing Windows Updates (likely enough, imo), they won't get IE7. By contrast, the vast majority of Firefox users use it by choice, not because it was there. Those people are far more likely to manually upgrade.

This whole "data point" is utterly worthless for determining what's actually going on.

IE - It's not for savvy users anymore

[Illbay (700081)]

"Microsoft still has three out of ten people running an old version of its browser more than 18 months after Internet Explorer 7 launched..."

Look, my father-in-law knows NOTHING about computing, but a LOT about using the Internet. We bought him a computer several years ago. His browser?

IE5, of course. Why? Because that's what was installed on the machine when we bought it.

The majority of people who THINK about what browser they use, use something other than IE. Firefox 3 is obviously a great leap forward for the Mozilla brand, and...well, there you go.

Re:IE - It's not for savvy users anymore

[mattkime (8466)]

>>IE5, of course. Why? Because that's what was installed on the machine when we bought it.

Please have a talk with your father-in-law.

Its for the good of the internet.

Lame story.

[phasm42 (588479)]

Watch out Microsoft. The Fox is gaining fast.

Booga-booga!

Which one works?

[by Anonymous Coward]

In our business environment, we will not upgrade to IE7 because it breaks business applications. No such limitations on FF3 (of course the apps don't work in FF2/3).

Maybe if MS didn't break the non-standardized technologies that they release and companies build apps on, the community might upgrade faster.

Re:Which one works?

[Wylfing (144940)]

Maybe if companies didn't build applications on brain-dead, proprietary, single-vendor platforms they wouldn't run into these kinds of problems.

70% 55%

[nuzak (959558)]

So in two more weeks, 165% of firefox users will be at version 3. Let's see the numbers after 18 months.

Anyway, my work machine still has IE6, because they're not bothering to upgrade it on the corporate servers and I use nothing but Firefox on it anyway.

Explanation: IE 7 requires Windows XP SP2

[tepples (727027)]

Microsoft still has three out of ten people running an old version of its browser more than 18 months after Internet Explorer 7 launched

IE 7 was never backported to anything before Windows XP Service Pack 2. How many Windows users are stuck on operating systems prior to Windows XP, such as Windows 2000 or Windows 9x? Like IE 7, Firefox 3 doesn't work on Windows 9x, but unlike IE 7, Firefox works on Windows 2000.

Not too surprising...

[Mongoose Disciple (722373)]

"Microsoft still has three out of ten people running an old version of its browser more than 18 months after Internet Explorer 7 launched, while Firefox has converted more than half of its users to the latest version in just over a week. That should set a few alarm bells ringing in Redmond."

Whatever is the choice of most businesses is always going to lag behind in adoption.

Case in point, my current client is a Fortune 100 company that mandates IE6 as the browser of choice and is planning to move to IE7 sometime next year. There's thousands and thousands of people right there still using IE6 essentially through no choice of their own.

Big, non-software business is always about the last to adopt any technology.

That's one clever fox!

[tcgroat (666085)]

I just ran the Firefox 3 installer, then loaded the Slashdot front page for its test-drive. This article was in the #1 slot. How did mozilla.org arrange for that to happen?

Not apples to apples comparison

[clodney (778910)]

While I am a happy FF3 user myself, comparing the adoption rates of Firefox and IE is misleading. IE is installed when the computer arrives, and the people still using it either:
1. Don't care what they use
2. Have no choice since it is locked down by work
3. Prefer it over the alternatives.

People in buckets 1 and 2 (which I would argue is the vast majority of IE users) are unlikely to upgrade IE beyond whatever version is on their machine now. People in group 3 are the only voluntary upgraders to IE7.

In contrast, Firefox has the same three buckets, but since it is not preinstalled very few are going to fall into buckets 1 and 2. Almost everyone using it is using it because they want it, and that means that they are far more likely to upgrade to the latest and greatest.

My own site stats

[BigBadBus (653823)]

My own website, admittedly very modest, shows that Firefox 3 has only a 3% share, but it has grown more rapidly than any other browser I have seen since I started collating statistics (February 2007): the numbers are here: http://www.paullee.com/computers/index.html [paullee.com] and were only updated 2 days ago. Funnily enough, my logs show that there are people still using MSIE 4, MSIE 5 ... as well as Windows 95, and Win3.1 ! Upgrade, guys, upgrade!

PS Sorry for the small sizes of the graphs. Gnumeric was having a bad day :(

Another stat

[Stalus (646102)]

Just another statistic: if I have my dates right, it took IE7 2.5 months to reach 100 million users [msdn.com]. Firefox is currently at 23 million [mozilla.com] and given the current rate (1080/min), FF3 on pace to beat that - even without being distributed as part of an OS (granted, IE7 was only part of volume licensing at that date, and not retail sales).

stats from a site for a non-technical audience

[hal9000(jr) (316943)]

I manage a blog where most of the users are authors and they are not technical folks that might visit a site like pcpro on a regular basis. You might say they are average folk.

In the last few months, I have been seeing an increase in firefox from maybe 10% in January to close to 45% today. Of that 45% of FF users, 23% are already using FF3. I think that is pretty impressive. By comparison, 52% use IE and the majority of them, 67% use IE7.

Spin and counterspin

[Kjella (173770)]

"Microsoft still has three out of ten people running an old version of its browser more than 18 months after Internet Explorer 7 launched, while Firefox has converted more than half of its users to the latest version in just over a week. That should set a few alarm bells ringing in Redmond."

"Microsoft still has over seven out of ten people satisfied with running a previous version of its browser more than 18 months after Internet Explorer 7 launched, while users have abandoned Firefox 2 in droves with over half converting to the bleeding edge version in just over a week. That should set a few alarm bells ringing at Mozilla.org."

Personally, when I see a very fast migration I tend to think the last version must really have sucked. If it did what people wanted already, they'd not be in any big hurry to upgrade. Sure, there's been some exceptions where the new version is the best thing since sliced bread, but they're few and far between by comparison.

Re:Great

[by Anonymous Coward]

You're mad at Mozilla because a bunch of third-party extensions don't work correctly? Maybe you should complain to the right people next time.

Re:Great

[punkass (70637)]

So, Mozilla didn't upset their most loyal customer, the add-on developers did...

Re:Great

[nine-times (778537)]

I'm not sure I see the problem. You want something that extremely stable and well-supported, then it's usually not a good idea to jump to the newest version of software directly after its release. That just seems to me to be a standard rule, across the board, no matter which developer you're talking about. When you're using the cutting-edge stuff, it tends to have a couple hiccups and break 3rd-party interactions.

So sure, go back and use FF2 for another 6 months. And then give FF3 another shot, see if it's up to speed for the things you need.

Re:I'm sure I'm not the only one

[MBCook (132727)]

I can't upgrade IE.

Since large bits of my job involve web interfaces to various systems, I have to make sure things still render right on IE 6. Since you can't run 6 and 7 on the same machine, I stay on 6. When I need to check 7 I ask a coworker who has upgraded to check it out.

Of course, I use FF for everything because IE 6 was so far behind. Seven has improvements, but I still find annoyances, and I'm happily used to FF.

Then again, I can't go to FF3 quite yet either. Needs to be a little bigger than 50% (at a tech heavy site). I'd like to see the numbers for Yahoo or Google.

Re:Or, Firefox 2 sucked.

[chriseyre2000 (603088)]

Isn't upgrading your wife a little expensive?

Re:Or, Firefox 2 sucked.

[Hal_Porter (817932)]

Isn't upgrading your wife a little expensive?

You can run Wife 2.0 and Wife 3.0 beta at the same time if you're careful.

Re:Or, Firefox 2 sucked.

[binarybum (468664)]

if you're already on 2.0, chances are you're not the careful type.
    3.0b is also prone to consuming larger and larger amounts of resources and clock cycles.

Re:Who cares?

[jellomizer (103300)]

They won the first browser war. But failed to meet their victory objectives.
What they were hoping if the won the broser war they were able to push their Technologies such as ActiveX, VB Script forcing people to say on windows to browse the web aka MSN v.2.0, having Web Servers use IIS as it would be the only server that will have the IE particular features Slowly replace HTML MS Office formats having all development need to be in done in Front Page for simple stuff or Visual Studios for more complex stuff.

Why did they fail to meet these objectives. A couple of unforeen side effect.
Linux and Apache. While Linux has a small marketshare for the Desktop, for servers it is much larger and far more common. And Apache is still the #1 web server. Being the programmers for these systems tend to have Unix/Linux experience with Apache for the most part for more popular sites they made sure that their code was as much platform independent as possible, by making the justification if we don't pay an extra $5,000 for these features then we won't isolate 10% of the market, an easy sell.

There was DOJ case which put Microsoft in the bad eye of the public. No longer was it considered an exciting company inovating the future. But a big corporation out for itself, squashing others. Making them less likly to use IE only features.

Next was right after the browser wars and Microsoft won, the Bad people who make spyware, malware started targeting IE the victor using easy holes such as ActiveX and the such making many browsers weary of using them, causing the rest of the people who use such features in their site to take them off. As well viruses and hacks against IIS.

Microsoft then needed to shift gears and make thier system reasonably secure now. Causing a huge delay in IE 6 production time until IE 7 leaving both IE 6 and 7 years behind its competitor and causing developers to stick with the tride and true universally compatible methods.

Adobe/Macromedia Flash (Love it or hate it) Killed Java Applets as it was faster and looked better and Active X (for over the internet (Active X survied a lot longer for intranet and extranet apps)) because it was more secure and didn't even think about writting to your disk. Being used by advertisers insured flash was installed widely.

And on and on. IE won it Browser War but it didn't get the riches.