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Firefox Growth Slowing? 433

Posted by CowboyNeal from the reaching-equilibrium dept.
ninja_assault_kitten writes "Silicon.com has an interesting article on the apparently slowing growth of Firefox. To quote the article, 'The slackening of Firefox's growth could mean that the browser has converted a substantial proportion of its natural constituency, thought to be early adopters and the technically savvy. It could also show that the browser's widely publicised security flaws have begun to undermine the foundation's argument that people should switch from IE to be safer.' One thing's for sure, with the release of 1.0.3 and now 1.0.4 we can probably expect to breach the 80 million download mark shortly."
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Firefox Growth Slowing? More

Firefox Growth Slowing?

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  • How many unique downloads? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xquark ( 649804 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @12:21AM (#12516466) Homepage
    80 million I'm assuming a composite...

    Arash Partow
    • lies, damn lies, statistics..
      I've downloaded different versions and same version several times for my own use after several reinstalls.
      I'm pretty sure all those downloads(+20 of them) count in on that 80 million.

      • Re:How many unique downloads? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by switcha ( 551514 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @12:42AM (#12516605)
        lies, damn lies, statistics..

        and disingenuous posters

        I'm pretty sure all those downloads(+20 of them) count in on that 80 million.

        And so what? A download total number (used for marketing) is essentially used as a "vote of confidence". If you liked the browser enough to not only install each version as it came out, but install each of those on multiple machines, then Hell Yes it's a "vote of confidence" and should count towards the Total Number.

        I use Safari, and could really give shit about how many downloads Firefox, Mozilla or frickin' IE get. What I do know is that you're trying to somehow dilute the legitimacy of the number of downloads when your very multi-downloads were an endorsement of the quality of this product.

        • When people advertise that their application has had so many downloads, many people assume that that number equals the number of users. Never have I ever heard of that number being directly correlated to "user confidence" (if at all, only indirectly but the number of users). In the case of Firefox, the number has the potential of being a multiple of the actual number of users. Not only do people download it multiple times for different computers, each computer downloads it multiple times for every patch. It
          • OK, that's how you see it, and that's fair. But you just said "has had so many downloads." Downloads. Pulling the file off a remote server. Doesn't that strike you as perfectly legitimate to use the number of people who have pulled a version of the software off your servers as your count? If not, then you have what I would consider an odd definition of "downloads", but until you can admit "users" does not equal "downloads", then I guess we're at opposing sides, here.

            It is easy to see how people could misin

          • Re:How many unique downloads? (Score:4, Insightful)

            by Adrilla ( 830520 ) * on Friday May 13, 2005 @04:02AM (#12517385) Homepage

            When people advertise that their application has had so many downloads, many people assume that that number equals the number of users

            If people assume, that is their own fault. The number that Firefox gives is number of downloads, nothing more, nothing less. Downloads is the only number they should give to the public. They don't know how many unique users are downloading the program. They don't take personal information (and if they did, people would question why they need that info for a free, open source browser. Especially us tin foilers here at slashdot), therefore, they can't give out exact user numbers, they best they could do is estimate. Downloads is the perfect statistic for them; It's honest, a great representation of how well their program has caught on, it's an impressive number, and it does show a good deal of "user confidence". Even if every person downloaded 10 copies of it, that's still 8 million people who trust it, enjoy it, use it frequently enough that they stay updated with every upgrade, put it on every computer they use regularly, and probably tell their friends/family/colleagues about, which is a grand vote of confidence in my book. Misinterpretation of the number is the fault of the (potential) user, all Mozilla/Firefox is doing is giving out the facts.

          • many people assume that that number equals the number of users.

            Then they are fools. They clearly state it is the number of downloads and not the number of users.

            Anyway, the number of users my be higher. I have personally installed firefox 30 or so times for at least 10 different people from a single install cd I bought from mozilla store. That counts as zero downloads.
        • A download total number (used for marketing) is essentially used as a "vote of confidence".

          Damn straight! I have so much confidence in it I downloaded it 79 million times just to let them know how much I appreciate it.

          KFG

      • Re:How many unique downloads? (Score:5, Informative)

        by VortexMK ( 766680 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @01:16AM (#12516779)
        Some companies downloads just one copy of Firefox and then everyone in the company installs that one copy... at least my company (30+ people) does it to save bandwidth. I bet that that many other companies use the same practice.

      • Re:How many unique downloads? (Score:4, Insightful)

        by jschottm ( 317343 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @02:32AM (#12517050)
        Guess what. There's no real way to tell, because your multiple downloads show up but my running around installing it off a USB drive or a local mirror (that doesn't report stats back to Moz.org) doesn't. I happen to use the products based on their merits and don't worry about how many other people are using it. It's vaguely interesting to see how many people might be doing so and so people try to make a guess based on what information they have, which in the case of open source software doesn't necessarily reflect the numbers accurately.
        • I happen to use the products based on their merits and don't worry about how many other people are using it.

          I don't use Firefox. I have no real intention of switching to Firefox unless it develops some killer features that I find I am missing. And yet, I still care that it is popular. Why? Because I am using another W3C-standards compliant browser, and the more people not using IE, the more potential market share people lose just by designing an IE-only site. If designing an IE only site means that a

    • Re:How many unique downloads? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bad_fx ( 493443 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @12:37AM (#12516576) Journal
      meh, this comes up in every firefox discussion. Yes, no doubt many people download firefox more than once. But there are also those of use who carry it on a usb key\cd\share\whatever and install it multiple times from a single download (I do so myself.) So what's your point? The fact is number of downloads, while no doubt not accurate, are still a good indication of the popularity of it.

      Also, for anyone who thinks updates of firefox count as another download (as someone always seems to bring up in these discussions as well), they don't. [slashdot.org]
      • But there are also those of use who carry it on a usb key\cd\share\whatever and install it multiple times from a single download...

        I can vouch for this. I download a single copy of the latest version from time to time for both Linux and Windows and burn it to CD. I then install in on my machines, for my family, friends, so forth. This will show up as one download (per OS), even though we're talking a dozen or more installs.
      • Downloads are a good indication of popularity by what metric? Oh, I forgot, popularity is by definition the metric of last resort. In Soviet Russia, Natalie Portman's grits are popular.

        What you meant, if you had turned on your brain, is that total downloads are the best available proxy on Firefox's broad-based mindshare. The other proxy available, user agent strings reported to web servers, is a better proxy on page views. But even this proxy is weak, since it fails to account for a wide range of cachi
      • Use of the word 'meh' instantly identifies you as annoying, and to be ignored.

        It is on the level of "talk to the hand" or "what-ev-er."

        Please, in the interest of not annoying me, stop.

  • Translation to layman's term- (Score:5, Funny)

    by guardiangod ( 880192 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @12:22AM (#12516478)
    All the geeks on planet earth are now using Firefox.

  • Nah (Score:3, Funny)

    by suso ( 153703 ) * on Friday May 13, 2005 @12:23AM (#12516486) Journal
    That was just warmer days coming and more people going outside.

    • Re:Nah (Score:5, Funny)

      by dtfinch ( 661405 ) * on Friday May 13, 2005 @12:44AM (#12516623) Journal
      Outside? What's that? Oh, yes, the unhappy place where I can't program. Why would anyone want to go there?

  • And shortly after the 80 million mark... (Score:3, Funny)

    by grommit ( 97148 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @12:24AM (#12516498)
    ...Firefox will reach the 80.592 million mark. Then we have a long wait until the 94.68715 million mark.

    What's with the arbitrary "marks"? 80 million? What about 75 million? That's 3/4 of 100 million which is much nicer than saying 4/5 of 100 million. Better yet, what about 100 million being the next "mark"? That's 7/7 of 100 million.

  • Widely Publicized? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by X-rated Ouroboros ( 526150 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @12:24AM (#12516500) Homepage

    It seemed like the publication of those security flaws came from Mozilla itself... and a fix was out in about a week.

    Who tells us about IE flaws and how long does it take for them to get fixed?

    • While that concerns me and you, mom and dad don't care how long it takes. Why? Mainly because they usually don't know. All they care about is the little update center in the corner of their screen saying "Microsoft has releases updates...""
    • Sorry - that's FUD. Mozilla knew the vulnerability long back but made the Bugzilla page secret. They released a fix a week after widespread hue and cry. This is not too dissimilair from Microsoft breaking its "patch Tuesday" policy for a critical fix.

    • Re:Widely Publicized? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Swamii ( 594522 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @12:44AM (#12516625) Homepage
      If you look at last week's security advisory, it was published by Secunia, the same company that's published various IE security holes in the past.

      • Re:Widely Publicized? (Score:5, Informative)

        by GarfBond ( 565331 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @01:36AM (#12516848)
        It was actually originally reported to the Mozilla Foundation as a critical security bug (bug 292691, still closed access since May 2), and was actively being worked on with the original bug reporter under wraps before someone managed to leak it without anyone's permission, at which point FrSirt (or whatever their name is) and Secunia repackaged it as their own security advisory.

        True credit belongs to Paul from Greyhats Security Group and Michael Krax (and in the spirit of this post, I'm going to give credit to mozillazine for originally posting the summary I'm writing this off of).

        I am still trying to gather all the details as to how my research was leaked, but recent conversations are leading me to believe that it was a misplacement of trust, not a server compromise. However, I do not want to jump to conclusions too quickly, as this will only lead to more problems. That's all I will say about that subject, as I don't want to offend anybody.

  • Corporate Adoption (Score:5, Interesting)

    by chill ( 34294 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @12:24AM (#12516504) Journal
    And IBM is encouraging [com.com] in-house employees to use Firefox.

    There are still several "business" websites such as financial services, B2B and corporate intranets that rely on ActiveX and IE.

    While Firefox's growth may be slowing, it is still growing -- just not as fast. When the IE-only sites start to get more complaints about usability from their customers, then you will start to see a steady stream of corporate support for Firefox.

    -Charles
    • I haven't received the memo on that yet. I hope it is true. The only reason I ever use ie is to use the travel tool.

    • Well, maybe (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 )
      I pushed out Firefox at work (university). It on all the machines. I didn't make it manditory, though it did cross my mind.

      Well lately, I am reconsidering. At this point I've deicded Firefox stays on all images, and I'll recommend people use it, but I'm not going to push it any harder.

      Why?

      Well the honeymoon is now over in regards to security. I know as well as anyone that OSS doesn't magically mean secure. Many programmers have an arrogance about them that they think all security bugs are perfectly obvio

      • Re:Well, maybe (Score:5, Insightful)

        by zerocool^ ( 112121 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @07:50AM (#12518219) Homepage Journal
        Hold on, let me go ahead and show you why firefox is better.

        Step 1.) Open firefox.
        Step 2.) Press Control-T.

        Here's another test
        Step 3.) Go to www.cnn.com
        Step 4.) Open internet explorer.
        Step 5.) Go to www.cnn.com
        Step 6.) Count the popup windows.

        Seriously, man. Have convictions. I do desktop support and network administration for a living, and I can tell you, with almost absolute certainty, users that use Internet Explorer will get spyware. Users that use Internet Explorer will get popups.

        Firefox has a vulnerability. So what? The honeymoon is over, as you say. Now it's time to play the lesser of two evils. Now it's time for clothespin voting. Pick which one you think is best for you and your end users. If neither are perfect, pick the one that stinks less. And Lord Knows what's in opera. If you're concerned that firefox's holes weren't showing up before because few people used it, MAN, opera is not for you. I'd take the monster I know (open source) over the monster I didn't (opera).

        Be pragmatic. Firefox doesn't have Active-X install popups constantly bugging users to install MyWebSearchToolbarAndAgreeToOurTermsAndConditions. Firefox instead has a way to only accept cookies for the origionating website. Internet explorer still has 80 holes for 6.x according to Secuna, 19 of which are unpatched, while firefox just released a patch in a couple of days.

        Don't jump overboard just because no browser is perfect. Some are closer than others.

        ~Will

  • Whoo, great news folks! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by coupland ( 160334 ) * <dchase@hotmailCHEETAH.com minus cat> on Friday May 13, 2005 @12:26AM (#12516516) Journal

    According to this [silicon.com] article on silicon.com, Firefox is still growing! As of April 29th, Firefox had captured 6.8 percent of the browser market and IE slipped to 88.9 percent market share. Break out the champagne, folks!

    Uh yeah, nice article. Glass half empty...

  • Firefox is entering an already saturated market (Score:5, Insightful)

    by El Cubano ( 631386 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @12:26AM (#12516517)

    It could also show that the browser's widely publicised security flaws have begun to undermine the foundation's argument that people should switch from IE to be safer.

    Um... I don't think that's it. While the security flaws might be causing some to think twice, the real issue is market saturation. There does not exist a desktop computer sold in the last 10 years that didn't come with a web browser. They are essentially entering a 100% saturated market. Nonetheless, I think their accomplishments are stunning.

    • Re:Firefox is entering an already saturated market (Score:5, Insightful)

      by globalar ( 669767 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @12:42AM (#12516606) Homepage
      Exactly. For a given user at a given instant, the browser market is a zero-sum game. I can only post to /. with one browser a time. Therefore, the question of growth is misleading.

      We need to measure marketshare in relation to the rise and fall of other browsers. Unfortunuately, to do this we need to distinguish individual users in a series of samples for each one. We're gauging this by downloads and server logs from a few sample groups. These numbers could be wildly inaccurate.

      Also, it's been only a week since the "big" Firefox exploit and the patch has already come (well, the new version anyway). It hasn't been long enough to judge whether or not this alleged impact is from security concerns. Further, we can't tell if the numbers we recieve now are from users who know about the security implications or not.

      In fact, we can only guess why users choose one browser over another. We only assume their choice makes any sense. This is all a guessing game with a few numbers.

      • Grows in Spurts (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ebuck ( 585470 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @01:41AM (#12516869)
        Firefox is just coming off of a growth spurt.

        Most things do not grow evenly through their whole life. Firefox grew explosivly in part due to the Wall Street Journal ad and a lot analysts pushing the security benefits. Now that there's been an equal amount of noise about the near-trivial exploit, people are getting cold feet.

        I mean, some of the people who were considering switching are now asking about the exploit. One that did switch is asking how hard it is to switch back.

        I say that it's a theoritical exploit that nobody has actually used to compromise a computer. If they're still listening, I add a joke contrasting IE's real world exploits. The news has hurt adoption rates of Firefox, but that's just because it's bad news, not because it's real.

        People want to hear "Firefox is a pancea for all your ills", not "Every piece of software can have problems". Expect Firefox growth to pick up again after people don't remember this recent bug, and expect a few people to remember this bug years from today.

        ----
        Evil will always win because good is dumb. -- Spaceballs.
    • There does not exist a desktop computer sold in the last 10 years that didn't come with a web browser. - there are plenty of computers sold without an OS and I assume that means without a browser. Your statement is factually incorrect.

  • Growing? Slowing? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by groupthink ( 568205 )
    This is just silly... at the speed with which technology moves, to present data you think shows a trend is a waste of time. We live in a world of rapid inovation and rampant creativity... this time next year we may be buzzing over the new wiz bang browser, regardless of today's Firefox popularity.

    Don't forget about "sensitive dependence upon initial conditions", and inherant unpredictability.

  • I think that's completely made up.
    To see some Alexa graphs for Firefox, Mozilla, Microsoft, etc. see what I posted earlier today:
    http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=149252&cid=12 5 13459 [slashdot.org]

    Over on http://simpy.com/ [simpy.com] I see this:

    Netscape/Mozilla 29971 (36.3%)
    Unknown 24985 (30.3%)
    Explorer 22249 (26.9%)
    Safari 2441 (3.0%)
    Opera 1560 (1.9%)

    Opera CEO's cross-Atlantic swimming trick didn't help the browser's market share. Safari appears stagnant. Mozilla % keeps growing slowly.

  • Firefox users blocking WebSideStory? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by A8bbNjwk ( 883576 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @12:33AM (#12516553)
    From TFA, "Website measurement and marketing firm WebSideStory said"

    Could it be that Firefox users are blocking marketing firm WebSideStory's tracking images? These guys are just as evil as DoubleClick in assembling a massive database of information on web users' browsing history. Wouldn't ignorant IE users be more likely to allow WebSideStory to track them?

  • So, the rate of growth of the number of Firefox users is slowing, or for you calculus geeks out there, the second time derivative of the number of Firefox users is presently negative.

    The good news is, the *third* derivative is positive, which means that the change rate of the growth rate is increasing. Soon enough, the growth rate will even out and eventually start increasing again!

    Oh, and don't even get me started about the 5th derivative...

  • Friends & Family (Score:3, Insightful)

    by fgl ( 792403 ) <daniel@notforsale.co.nz> on Friday May 13, 2005 @12:40AM (#12516591) Homepage Journal
    Personally I install it on any friends or familys computers that require my support. Its part of the price for free tech support.
    If I find they have been using IE they get a 1 strike & they're out. If I find they have been using it a second time.
    "Sorry, my time is more important to me & I prefer not to keep fixing the same ol' same ol'"

  • Hey here's a thought (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 13, 2005 @12:42AM (#12516609)
    If you have to look at the second derivative before you start finding bad news, maybe the news isn't really all that bad

  • Exponential Growth... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dolphinling ( 720774 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @12:45AM (#12516629) Homepage Journal

    Or it could mean that firefox's growth just isn't exponential [mozillazine.org], 'cause that would be pretty hard to keep up for very long...

  • This is nonsense... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bergeron76 ( 176351 ) * on Friday May 13, 2005 @12:45AM (#12516632) Homepage
    For once, I'd like to actually see some empirical evidence.

    Every mega-corporation hires it's own sub/pseudo company to do an "audit" of the market saturation/absorbtion rate.

    Much like politics, it's not newsworthy to report that candidate X has lost +/-4 points. Let's see what browser the people choose.

    Unlike the US election, I'm sure that the people will make the right decision (when it affects them directly - [ex. No Popups, No Spyware, No viruses, etc.]).

    People may be stupid and they should be guided, but they should never be abused or manipulated.

  • They'll soon hit 200 million mark. I've downloaded firefox no less than 30 times myself. I have two machines at home, and four at work and on all firefox is the default browser. Plus, I download upgrades to each machine every time they come out.

  • For sure, we hope, maybe. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Shag ( 3737 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @12:55AM (#12516681) Journal
    One thing's for sure, with the release of 1.0.3 and now 1.0.4 we can probably expect...
    I think we have at least two, maybe three different levels of confidence in future events going on here.
  • For some reason, extensions refuse to load on my powerbook, giving me an error about mozilla/chrome permissions or some crap. I've deleted everything in sight, still does it.

    Safari is my browser now, for everything.
    • I dunno if this'll help... but I had a similar problem running as user in Suse 9.3.

      Firefox came pre-installed with the distribution, and I couldn't add new search engines whatsoever. Then, I figured out that it was installed as root, and I had to add them as root for everything to show up in my user profile.

  • Just say no to IE. (Score:5, Funny)

    by ignorant_coward ( 883188 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @01:00AM (#12516698)

    Using IE instead of Firefox over security concerns is like keeping your eyes closed when hooking up with a drugged up bag of herpes prostitute.

    Just stick with Firefox. It's like using a rubber, which at least is 90+% effective at keeping out the herpes.

  • Let's see YOUR top executive swim across the Atlantic! Oh, wait...
  • I was hoping that the growth rate would keep on growing forever...
  • as the link would always dl about 2 megs then drop with teh message it was complete...

    So I tried wget and it ended up dling what seems to be the wondows version, regardless of teh fact I was requesting the linux version...

    Finally gave up and dl'd the english GB version,,

    So yeah, at least 80 million this way...
  • that you need to chill the fuck out.

    "oh no, slow growth for 5 days!? firefox is over!"

    that's what it sounds like to me. stop seeing trends in white noise.
  • So Firefox's adaption rate is (supposedly) slowing. BFD. It is still taking marketshare away from IE, after only a few short months. The tech press is so interested (like most of the media) in being hypervigilant about the latest "news" that they miss the big picture.

    The big picture is that people are realizing there are viable alternatives to Microsoft products, and they are using those alternatives. For a long time it was essentially IE reigning supreme, and now there are a variety of alternatives, with Firefox leading the pack and picking up new users by the millions.

  • Who needs Firefox? (Score:2, Informative)

    by liangzai ( 837960 )
    If every person reading Slashdot and having a web site made their respective sites compliant with the standards (and thereby with Gecko/KDE browsers) and completely ignored IE, Firefox growth would really explode. It is a common mistake thinking that the mega portals drive the development in the market; it is actually the many many less important sites combined that make a difference.

    But even Slashdot people (and other tech savvy people) are so conservative as to still respecting the impact of IE, and sinc
    • Many web sites generally don't require Gecko/KDE, not because the authors have IE in mind, but because the authors don't bother with more than simple years-old things that pretty much any browser (IE included) renders just fine.
    • It is that simple. We have these great new cars (the Fox, Safari, Mozilla, etc.), but the roads need to be rebuilt to allow these cars to utilize their full power.

      I think it is a little more like we have a whole bunch of general-purpose roads but a whole bunch of roads that can only be used by the IE-mobile. Just a matter of resurfacing those roads so that everyone can drive on them. ;)

  • It is kind of sad... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by frakir ( 760204 )
    that Firefox, flagship success of OSS community is overhyped. Every other day on slasdot. Common. It is nothing special. Just a browser with tabs. Lots of bugs.

    Yea I'll troll: if MSIE didn't have all those exploits FF would have browser share equal to netscape today.
    Bugs which annoy me (YMMV):
    • After some browsing FF windows may stop redrawing (including browse buttons)- you need to resize/scroll down or restart windoze. All other progs work just fine.
    • Java don't work here on my FF. Works in msie, Oper

  • Phony Accounting? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by payamchee ( 743476 )
    I very much dislike it when a company engages in phony accounting. Can you imagine if Microsoft claimed each patch download as a new sale of Windows? Likewise, I dislike it when people misrepresent facts.

    Hitting 80 million downloads is not as impressive as it sounds when a lot of those downloads are because FF does not have a patch infrastructure in place.

    Please try not to misrepresent. Yes it's true, FF may be downloaded 80 million times, but a certain percentage of those downloads are users upgrading a

    • I had to download Firefox three times today because the first two times the files were 56K and corrupted. After uninstalling the old version (no automatic upgrade will help push up the download count) I dumped the old log and config files and fired up InCtrl5 for the install. I chose just the browser option. I was politely asked if I wanted extra shortcuts - then after I declined they were created anyway. I was given the option of using the Firefox 'start' page as my home page - once again I declined to no

  • That makes very little sense.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Comatose51 ( 687974 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @01:40AM (#12516865) Homepage
    Saying the recent security flaws in Firefox is causing people to stay with IE is like saying people would rather drive a Ford Pinto because they realized that BMWs aren't completely safe. No one with an ounce of intelligence said Firefox is completely safe. The advantage to Firefox and OSS in general is the process. There's a great deal more transparency. If Firefox has a bug, at least I would know about it and can take actions on my own initiative to mitigate it. With non-OSS software, however, I'm at the mercy of the people who wrote the software.

  • Stats from my site (Score:5, Informative)

    by mjtg ( 173905 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @02:04AM (#12516950)
    Here are some stats from a site that I help maintain. It is an Australian state government website that receives about 3 million hits per month. The site is not technology-oriented, and about half of the hits come from overseas, so they're probably a reasonably good sample of browser use.

    Here are some running percentages for IE and Firefox over the past year:

    2004-05: IE 94.1%, Firefox 0.6%
    2004-06: IE 94.0%, Firefox 0.9%
    2004-07: IE 93.1%, Firefox 1.3%
    2004-08: IE 93.1%, Firefox 1.8%
    2004-09: IE 92.6%, Firefox 2.0%
    2004-10: IE 92.5%, Firefox 2.5%
    2004-11: IE 91.9%, Firefox 3.1%
    2004-12: IE 89.3%, Firefox 4.5%
    2005-01: IE 88.0%, Firefox 5.6%
    2005-02: IE 87.9%, Firefox 5.7%
    2005-03: IE 88.0%, Firefox 5.9%
    2005-04: IE 87.3%, Firefox 6.2%
    2005-05 (first 12 days): IE 88.8%, Firefox 5.9%

    The big jump towards Firefox occured late last year with the Mozilla Foundation's marketing blitz. Since then, there does indeed appear to be a slowing up in migration towards Firefox. This month's stats so far actually show a reversal.

  • Interesting spin .. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cheros ( 223479 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @02:45AM (#12517090)
    They could have said "reaches saturation point", but that doesn't make a sellable/clickable headline.

    Let's not forget that is

    a) 80 million, only assisted with a single ad and word of mouth
    b) 80 million, DESPITE a pre-installed, um, "alternative"
    c) 80 million that saw those features first that may or may not make it into IE7. Note that IE had been going stale for lack of competition - natural consequence of the MS approach to, um, "innovation".
    d) 80 million that are not exposed to the bad and insecure excuse for a coding platform that is ActiveX.
    e) 80 million that don't care on which platform they browse, which together with OpenOffice represents a good 90% of the end user community.

    Now, the last one is where the threat to MS resides. Usability is very rapidly dissappearing as a distinguishing factor.

  • Silver bullet? (Score:3, Informative)

    by DarkMorph ( 874731 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @02:45AM (#12517091)
    Okay when I saw the /. entry, I knew I had to say what I got here. The announcement of a security flaw in Firefox is the cause of the decelerating growth? This is insane; immediately I think that everyone assumed that Firefox is totally safe. Gah! It's not a silver bullet! It's good but it can't be perfect. Nothing is! Oh, so Firefox has one problem which will be fixed pretty quickly like most of the OSS world, but people will go and hide behind IE again since they think that the reports are false.

    Ugh, how long does it take for IE patches to come out, if ever??? Only if there's a widely-spreading virus or trojan exploiting it, then you get a patch miraculously within a day or two. Otherwise they just wipe your complaining away like a speck of dust. On top of that I bet IE has a lot more problems to worry about than Firefox could ever have. I know it's possible for IE to wipe out files on the hard disk; I doubt Firefox could do it unless there is some sort of ported ActiveX support forcefully ported to Firefox.

    Since I mentioned MS wiping you off like dust, I say that because way back when I submitted a report about the Up button not working when IE was in FTP mode. The Up button was calling the same routine that Back did. I tested it by going down a few directories and dumping the entire history cache. Up did not work as Back did not. I knew that was proof that Up didn't work right because you don't need a history to `cd ..'!! Every e-mail I got back from their "support" was garbage; all about searching their "Knowledge Base" (which lacked any knowledge about this by the way) and some FAQ URLs. Screw 'em. Let IE burn, it's garbage ever since it's been forced down Windows's throat.

    By the way, I remember the IE4 alpha PNG on the feature list. I was shocked to see it again for IE7. Took long enough! but wait we don't know if they'll actually do it this time.

  • Emmmm, maybe better check your facts... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Pecisk ( 688001 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @03:23AM (#12517237)
    When assume that download counter at spreadfirefox.com counts updates. Well, it doesn't.

  • or it could mean that they need to advertise more (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Drunken_Jackass ( 325938 ) on Friday May 13, 2005 @07:44AM (#12518185) Homepage
    You know about Firefox. I know about firefox. But Joe User might not know about it/remember it. And we can't tell everyone about it now, can we?

    AFAIK, its growth was pretty much tied to the full-page ad in the NYT. If growth is slowing, they need to pump out some TV commercials, start advertising on google, and keep up the print campaign.

    Non-technical people tend to have a very short attention span on things like this. They just need to be reminded that it's out there.

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