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Not just companies, countries too. Like Israel and South Korea. These stats are from September last year, but "The Facts"(pun?) haven't changed much since. Far too many websites are coded for IE, not standards.

Seriously. It drives me nuts when people spell something willy-nilly when they clearly don't know how it's actually spelled.

See Firefox vs FireFox - Logo vs LoGo.

On the first day of availability of Firefox 3, Mozilla tracked the locations of all the downloads they could, and logged the results on this map. As measures of Internet penetration in a country go, this isn't too bad. A country with a large number of Firefox users has a large number of Internet users - and further, those users are more than usually sophisticated about how they interact with the network, insofar as they have gone to the trouble to download a web browser rather than sticking with whatever they originally had.

Notice anything surprising between Iraq and Afghanistan? Maybe a country you thought was a backward totalitarian theocracy, but which has a number of downloads comparable with advanced, heavily wired European democracies? A country experiencing a massive post-war baby boom consisting largely of twentysomethings with little time for the bearded old men in power, and keenly interested in the new media which they understand and the Islamist censors do not?

No, of course not. It's just a desert out there full of fundamentalist camel-jockeys who hate our freedom.

Not a bad idea - it worked well for Firefox. I assume you are referring to www.spreadfirefox.com

"How am I supposed to download Firefox then?!!? FTP? c'mon!"

Ok, ha ha. But there are a variety of easy ways you could get Firefox.

* First, OEMs would pre-install their choice of web browser(s) for you.
* Get a CD-ROM with the software from your vendor (Firefox and IE are available on CD)
* Windows could get with this century and add a friendly non-browser based package manager.
* A simple auto-downloader (double-click an icon and it grabs the file).
* Other, optional, file sharing applications - could be P2P or even just a friendly GUI FTP program.
* Start with IE installed, download another browser, then uninstall IE (if IE were truly optional you could do this).
* Or my favorite: FLOPPY DISKS!

"How is the average computer illiterate going to download a browser if Microsoft is not allowed to bundle one? Buy a disc?"

Sure! Do you want 3.5", 5.25" or 8"? :)

I'm glad that the argument that "they do it for the glory" worked for your dad. But I think in general it is a weak argument that doesn't really explain much and may be mostly fictitious. For instance, the Spread Firefox contingent make a seriously important contribution to the larger Firefox community, but none of them are in it for the glory, or are using programmer's skills for that matter.

[I know I'm preaching to the choir here. Please think about how you might be able to use the following in your efforts to convince those around you that FOSS is an important phenomenon that is significantly reshaping our world. Consider this a part of my contribution back to the open source communities that are giving me so much: Ubuntu, OpenOffice, Blender, Apache, GnuCash, and the list goes on and on...]

Here's a core truth about successful FOSS projects: it really is all about the community.

These projects come together like an Amish community that decides it needs a new meeting house, or an Inuit community that decides it needs a new whaling canoe.

Community members gather to mutually develop a plan, then each contributes a bit of their labor in their free time for the common good. In the Amish community, those with carpentry skills measure the boards and do the hammering; those with lesser skills work the saws and fetch and carry the boards. Others with different skills prepare the meals. Everyone contributes to the building and in a Saturday's time, hundreds of man hours, including that of skilled craftsmen, cause a new meeting house to be raised.

Everyone involved benefits: any member of the community can use the building. No one person owns the result, but everyone involved is wealthier for having access to the new asset. And it all comes together with incredible speed, and (by capitalistic standards) an impossibly low cost of production.

This is a very ancient way of getting big projects done. The internet makes it easy to go back to these ancient ways for software production. The internet makes it possible for worldwide communities to form around different ideas that would benefit everybody (an office suite with fully shareable data files-- OpenOffice.org; a superior 3D modeling and animation package-- Blender; an accounting package that even a mon'n'pop grocery store could afford to use-- GnuCash). Given sufficient interest, a production team of thousands can self-assemble and create in a very short time a piece of complex software that matches or exceeds the quality that any closed shop could afford to produce.

Since there is no cost involved in sharing the results of these community efforts even with people who are outside of the community, it makes sense to just make them completely open for anyone to use. For one thing, it is easier to do that than to come up with any kind of exclusionary scheme. Any more, these products are generally copyrighted by some representative of the community, but the licensing is used to protect the community's long term interests in its jointly owned property, and not as means to play zero sum profit games. The wealth that the community builders wanted is there, and is undiminished by sharing it with everyone. To not so share it would actually be harder to do and would add an impossible cost.

A Christian might see this as a loaves and fishes thing. What would have happened at that assembly if some guy in the middle of the crowd decided that he was not going to hand the basket on unless the fellow next to him paid him a coin or two. Well, the other baskets being passed about would route around him, wouldn't they? And that is what the FOSS concept is turning the world of software into: a gigantic loaves and fishes meeting where nobody is going to go hungry.

[Thank you for reading this rant.]

Nope - Firefox had roughly 8 million downloads in a single day, versus the 3 million OO.o 3.0 downloads in the first week.

Here is a list of downloads per capita that were counted in the record. I was also looking for this just to check the number for Lithuania. That just looks incredible. Anyway, congrats! :)

The SpearFirefox FAQ clearly states that the download count does not include duplicate downloads, incomplete downloads or downloads done through Firefox updates.

Yes, you are right. Also, talking about per capita, is there somewhere a list of downloads per capita en each country? That would be nice to know, as total downloads mean very little (yeah, of course here in luxembourg we had very few downloads, the country is tiny!)

Some random (a bit biased) selection of countries with downloads per capita (x1000). Data comes from the Spread Firefox webpage and population from wikipedia

Canada 23.74
US 25.40
Germany 30.00
UK 19.79
France 15.19
Spain 17.90
Luxembourg 36.72

Now, this tells me more than just downloads per country. Now Luxembourg looks better :).

What I found funny was that I got an e-mail in my inbox thanking me for my participation in the download day but the name was already filled out for me.

Personally, when I see a very fast migration I tend to think the last version must really have sucked.

Or there was a huge effin' push to set a world download record.

I'm not a rabid bandwagoneer, and am usually pretty cautious about being a first adopter. I figured it'd be fun to be part of the world record and downloaded FF3 at work and at home. I haven't really tested it for fancy new features, and some new bits are more annoying than useful. If it weren't for the huge "let's set a record!" push, I would have gotten FF3 eventually.

Fun side-note: my CAPTCHA word was "zealous" =)

Comparing pledges against raw population I think is misleading. 1) Pledges don't reflect the actual download numbers, and 2) In many countries, the internet-using % of the population is actually quite low due to poverty.

A better gauge of Firefox's penetration would be to look at actual downloads against number of internet users in a given country.

If you wish to try something that hasn't been done before or have already attempted a potential record then we'll need to pass your suggestion on to our research department first. They'll decide if it's something that we're interested in establishing as a new record category. If we are, they'll draw up the necessary guidelines and send them to you. If not, we can always suggest other records that you may wish to attempt.

- http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/member/faqs.aspx

Mozilla hasn't published the exact guidelines they were given, but there are some hints in their FAQ

What does Mozilla have to provide Guinness to validate the record?
We will provide the following:
Signed statements of authentication from our judges showing that we've followed the rules and confirming our numbers.

And to address other posters who were mentioning the whole HTTP thing, it's in the rules, too:

What is Mozilla doing to make sure the record attempt is valid? Mozilla will only count downloads that are fully and completely transmitted, not partial or complete updates. We will also discard duplicate downloads with the help of a cookie system. We will be logging our downloads using Apache and these logs will be made available for audit to Guinness World Records(TM), as well as two judges - Corey Shields and Paul Vixie.

They're shooting for at least 5 million downloads, not 10 million. It's the ninth question down in the FAQ.

According to the Mozilla Download Day FAQ [spreadfirefox.com] the record has never been attempted before, but they are trying to get enough downloads to be officially given the record title.

According to Mozilla's own FAQ, There's currently no official record (for the Guinness Book of World Records), so whatever number they end up at is going to be the record.

However, as many people have pointed out several times already, there's probably a lot of things that get more downloads.

It's worth noting though that one of the requirements for the record is that all the downloads should be human initiated (so turn off your download bots).

As of now, 6.5 million downloads - http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/

Oh, and by the way: Parent was posted using Firefox 3.

Get it NOW and join the attempt to set a new official world record in software downloads :-D

  http://www.spreadfirefox.com/

And before you go marking this post as "offtopic", perhaps we could suggest that "number of downloads" could be added to the answer? A high number of downloads could very well (but not always) be a sign of good software quality - at the very least from an end-user perspective. :-)

- Jesper

I tried to access the site http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/ in order to contribute to the "World Record" and I got a Network Timed Out error.
It just occurred to me this is a like a open invite to a albeit "Unintentional" Denial Of Service Attack.
Asking people to access a site within a given time frame. This is how the DOS attack used to be carried out in the good old days, when bots were not a craze.
For now I am just waiting for my chance to download FF3 and contribute to the "record".

GO OPEN SOURCE!!

But now http://www.spreadfirefox.com/worldrecord is "Slashdotted" and http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/ is still showing Firefox 2.

Excellent news for those of us (like me) who would like to run Windows apps without having to run an entire machine in VMware, Qemu, Parallels, or a similar program. Of course, nobody is paying attention right now because they're all busy downloading Firefox 3 to create a new Guinness world record for most software downloads in one day. (This story is being posted almost at the instant that Firefox 3 is being made available; not-so-great timing on /.'s part!) Nonetheless, I'm going to download Wine 1.0 right now.

Yes it does!
http://www.spreadfirefox.com/node/2438

Check your Official Firefox Release local time here:
http://tinyurl.com/4e7fv5

Everyone has been waiting for the 17th. Only, when the day came, we were told we had to wait until late evening, or in the far east's case, the next day.

They should have been a lot more specific and people are miffed: http://www.spreadfirefox.com/node/2438

Does this count towards the World Record Attempt?

For those who still don't know, Mozilla is trying to enter GUINNESS
for most software downloads in a 24-hour period. Check it here:

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/worldrecord/

Everybody is asked to participate by downloading one single copy of
Firefox 3.0 today, June 17th!

ONLY FULL DOWNLOADS ARE CONSIDERED!
So, go to the Firefox site and get one FULL COPY!

http://www.getfirefox.com/

There are some nice graphics for the launch. Where can I get SVG versions for making my own fliers and posters? No. JPEG does not count.

Or else, where are some official A6, A4 or A3 sized posters?

According to the Download Day FAQ, they will discard duplicate downloads.

Gives some fascinating insights on which countries care about Firefox the most... and which countries are playing catch-up with the tubes (well done South America, gogogo Africa!)

Also interesting is the difference between Korea (4000+ pledges) and Japan (43000+) which are both IMHO, two Internet savvy countries. Even without accounting for the difference in size, from my experience, Korea just doesn't seem to care about Firefox (Korean sites are pretty much IE only).

However, the one I don't understand is Poland. Of all the countries in eastern Europe, how come so many pledges come from there? Say even compared to France or the UK?

So, any IT work to be found in Poland? Fast tubes? Yummy zubrovka and women? Can't go wrong with that, really...

It looks like Mozilla agrees with you. The name for the island on the current version of the site at http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/ is indeed given as Taiwan.

Yup. They say they're going for 5M downloads. Firefox 2 got 1.6M on its first day. Says so here

The argument that there is no free thought is a specious one, unless Cuba has developed mind-control technology. I call shenanigans.

Your comment is extremely Limbaughian. You also cannot spell ideology. Are you aware that the fine firefox web browser has a real-time spell check feature that will underline misspelled words? I heartily recommend it, it has helped me not look like a total dumbfuck more than once.

We allegedly have free speech in the USA, but the simple truth is that no one is free while others are oppressed. People can be and are imprisoned for stating their political views in this country; it has happened previously, and it is sure to happen again. We're talking about the administration whose press secretary (or should I say former press secretary) says all Americans need to watch what we say, watch what we do - In response to Bill Maher's statement that suicide bombers are not cowards, and those who sit back and push buttons to launch missiles are.

Now, last I checked that was an opinion, and stating an opinion was an American right. I need to watch what I say? Fuck you, Ari, and fuck your ex-bosses. There's no reason for me to be civil to someone who is part of a systematic effort to dismantle personal freedoms in the US in order to push an agenda of Fascism. Ari's statement was well-supported by the usual cast of characters, it clearly represents Policy with a capital Fuck You.

What the hell does "coming apart at the seams" mean, anyway? This particular attack is logically unsatisfiable because the meaning of "coming apart at the seams" does not have any well defined meaning. Unless you're referring to my nutsack. To which I say: please, refer to my nutsack.

Thank you, and good night.

Quite the opposite.

On the nosey!

In roughly 3 years since the release of Firefox 1.0, the same (large) number of people downloaded it in year 1 and year 2. That means interest didn't drop off after the first year. Moreover, twice as many people -- 200 million -- downloaded it in year 3 as in either of the previous two years. That means interest in Firefox has actually increased over the past year.

Sure, some of those were early adopters of Firefox 2, before the auto-update kicked in. But a surprising number of people stayed on 1.5 until then, going by all the stats I've seen. And then we get into the fuzz factor: some of those downloads are repeats, but there are plenty of installs that won't be counted: downloads from third-party mirrors. Linux distribution CDs. Single downloads that are then copied out to multiple computers via USB thumbdrive or LAN shares.

So while it doesn't tell you how many users they have (and Mozilla didn't claim that it did), it does tell you that people are still looking for Firefox and still trying it out in large numbers.

As for how many people are actively using it, Mozilla currently estimates 120 million.

The download numbers published by Mozilla do not includes product updates. You can see the actual data at: http://www.spreadfirefox.com/forum/89
(Although the numbers there exclude the first year.)

If I am on a machine with a version older than two, you have to go to Mozilla.com and download the entire package.

IIRC 1.5 will now auto-update to 2.0, though it'll probably be a 2-stage process -- update to the latest 1.5, then update to the latest 2.0.

I will redownload when alphas, betas, release candidates and final releases come out.

They're only counting final releases.

So, yeah, 400 million downloads, with maybe 50 million people actually using it.

According to this comment, Mozilla estimates about 120 million Firefox users at present.

Oh, I forgot to quote the site:

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/

Mozilla's official community marketing site

Wow, I guess my stance that common users are employed as legitimate agents of the Open Source community does not hold water. Whew, for a second there I thought the point had been made that Open Source projects should make some kind of effort to stop the flow of misinformation against competing products from the same fanbois that they ask to spread the word. We definitely don't want that kind of accountability hanging over our heads.

Your stance that common users--"fanbois"--are employed as legitimate agents of the Open Source community does not hold water.

A laughable statement.

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/

No, I looked at http://www.spreadfirefox.com/ and searched for "FX". It doesn't even appear on that page. Would you care to back up your claim, because I have only ever seen Firefox abbreviated as FF. I haven't a clue what Final Fantasy is - a game perhaps?

Bloody hell, it's people like you who spread a false information

Well if you go back a bit they reached this number more than twice as quickly as Firefox did with their Fahrenheit 1 million campaign. Presumable they will also see the same high percentage of users download it, have a quick look and then forget about it as Firefox does.

Well, specifically, on Slashdot...

It was with versions prior to 1.0.1, according to this comment on the "bug" - it also provides several useful links.

There's also this complaint about the bug which has several responses on whether or not it was really Firefox's fault that users installed to "C:\" or "C:\Program Files".

The current installer behavior was in response to these reports.

While SiteAdvisor seems to be complaining about FreeDownloadHQ misleading people into subscribing to their website under the guise of selling the software, they are not complaining that they are charging for the software itself, which in fact they are not. Your article also links to http://www.spreadfirefox.com/node/19766 where the Firefox community agrees that FreeDownloadHQ is well within their rights to sell a subscription to their software listing service, even if that listing includes free software.

So again, the complaint isn't that free software is being sold, it's that FreeDownloadHQ is misleading consumers about what they are paying for and why.

I've been using it for 18 months and never work with code like that. That's simple template code, more suitable for dabblers and graphic designers. Drupal actually has multiple template rendering engines that allow you to make a page look like whatever you want. Here are a few examples:

http://www.yourmtb.com/
http://www.yourclimbing.com/
http://www.theonion.com/
http://www.spreadfirefox.com/ (yes, really)

The law being vauge just means that the government will be free to go after whoever it wants. Don't like the website of your political rivials? Have it declared a "Socal Networking Website".

That'll be easier if the site in question includes, say, forums or chat rooms for campaign participation. I expect a number of people here are familiar with SpreadFirefox, which draws inspiration from political campaigns including the Howard Dean campaign and Bush in 30 Seconds. When you have a bunch of people on a website discussing how ways to promote your candidate, ways to convince people to donate, etc., you still have a bunch of people getting online to talk with each other.

How well would FF do if *it* forced itself out?

Admittedly, this is a completely unscientific study based on one website, but I did some analysis on my own site's logs. Keep in mind that Firefox 1.5 and 2.0 have auto-update, and so far that auto-update has only been applied within a major revision. So 1.5 users have only been auto-updated to newer 1.5 releases so far.

Of all Firefox hits to my site, the three most popular versions are 2.0.0.1, 1.5.0.9, and 1.0.7. That's the latest in the 2.0 series, the latest in the 1.5 series... and the last in the 1.0 series before 1.5 came out. Virtually everyone on 1.5 or 2.0 has updated to the newest release in that series. Virtually no one updated to 1.0.8.

If this is any indication, when Mozilla puts the 1.5->2.0 update into the automatic channel, the vast majority of Firefox 1.5 users will convert over to 2.0.

First, Firefox's download counter doesn't include upgrades. Second, the fact that IE7's numbers are rising does not mean Firefox's numbers are falling, just that IE6's numbers are falling. Third, it's not like people are eager to get IE7 -- they just get it automatically.

I have a site that gets fairly decent traffic numbers, mainly from a comic book fan site. So it's skewed a little bit towards technical, but it's still running 71% IE and 21% Firefox, with the balance made up of Safari, Opera, and a bunch of smaller browsers.

I ran some stats on Tuesday for most of October, and found a huge disparity between IE7 uptake and Firefox 2 uptake.

During the RC periods, IE7 hovered at around 2% of IE visitors, and Firefox 2 hovered around 3% of Firefox visitors. 12 days after IE7's release, it had climbed to... 4% of IE users. Firefox 2, meanwhile, had jumped to 8% of Firefox users the day of the release, and after 6 days, it accounted for 22% of Firefox users!

Reports I've seen at various news sites suggest that raw numbers of downloads have been comparable, or at least within an order of magnitude. But percentage-wise, I saw nearly a fourth of Firefox users had upgraded within a week.

I attribute this to three things: First, Firefox users tend to be more enthusiastic about their browser than IE users. In my experience, the most enthusiastic IE users get is "It works." (Not counting genuine Microsoft fans.) Second, Firefox users have already downloaded and installed a browser once (or gotten someone else to do it), so they're more comfortable with the idea. Third, because Internet Explorer is so tied to the OS, upgrading it is more likely to break something (like Microsoft Developer Studio). A lot of the more tech-savvy IE users are actually holding off out of caution.