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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."
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The anti-trust suits against Microsoft would have resulted in at least one of two things. The first would be removing IE so the person has to manually install it from the CD or download it after install. Second, force all of Microsoft's web development tools to be 100% standards compliant. Instead, the Bush administration gives them a get out of jail free pass and California accepts coupons for MS products which is the anti-solution for software monoculture in schools.
How much longer will people vote for politicians who let corporations shit all over consumers in the name of profit?
It looks like the percentage of users using IE6 went down while the percetnage for IE5 went up. I can't quite figure out what to make of this.
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.
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.
Any website gathering data is OK as long as the result shows Mozilla or Linux gaining share.
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.
Google still isn't major. I know people who are using yahoo or alltheweb or whatever for their searches. Truth is, no one can really tell us what the exact percentage that Firefox or Internet Explorer market share has gone up. Companies can bombard us with statistics, but no one knows what everyone is using. Theres simply too many sites.
I understand your point, but I'm trying to make one of my own as well: Each site can only tell us about THEIR visitors. To say "Oh everyone on the internet searches for britney spears using a command line based webbrowser" is impossible to say.
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.
http://saveie6.com/
How long did it take them to get that? Microsoft has been complacent for several years, doing nothing to advance their browser. Mozilla starts to gain ground and then they do something. I'd say complacency fits perfect with what they were doing with IE until just a few months ago.
Google isn't major? What site is major then?
Could be a lot of IE5/Mac users switching to something decent like Camino or Safari.
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.
Are these statistics showing the percentage using Mozilla, or the percentage reporting themselves as being Mozilla to webpages?
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?).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
thecounter.com is going to be based on people who look at crappy homepages etc. though, which I would think is not representative either.
...
Perhaps so. I only stated that it's more realistic than w3schools's stats, if you're looking for the "general" market share. Any increase is a good increase, but as one of the first posters to this story said, it's not at 15% yet.
Hopefully 1.0PR (preview release) is only days away
--- There isn't any problem that can't be solved by a small, low yield nuclear device, is there??
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.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
meh.. firefox is free without any catches. Plus, it has a very nice adblocking extension 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.
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
Google may not be the best site from which to gather browser usage statistics, but I think it's probably _one_ of the best ones these days.
Depending if you are counting unique users or hits. I might hit Google 10-20 a day -- while the average person maybe only runs 1-2 searches a week. So Google would be highly biased towards people doing research, or trying to find answers to technical questions.
I think you'd probably get the best stats from a general interest news site or perhaps mail.yahoo.com.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
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)
It's official. Most of you are morons.
No one will really notice until Mozilla browsers have 20%+ of the market. Then MS will announce that the next version of IE will:
* do all the stuff mozilla does
* works with dot net better
* never gets dull, and can slice a tomato perfectly after trimming 4" off your car's muffler
* is a free download
* but wait... there's more (tm) ms will throw in MR. Paperclip browsing buddie at no cost to you.
-- $G
The most interesting thing is that slashdot is one of the sites it has the most trouble with. Take a look at the screenshot on this page! Most of the time it will render /. like that until I hit reload and that will fix it.
I've seen this behavior on Mac, Windows, and Linux. And there's a bug posted on it in the Firefox bug database. What perplexes me is why the /. folks with the necessary skills haven't fixed this problem yet!
Best Buy can have you arrested
some sites(like my bank) used to force me to do this, but reacently they've been getting better about it, and haven't had to do it in a while.
Ironically, I've just been told my happy little Firefox/Thunderbird combo is under threat at work. I'll probably have to give up Thunderbird for Outlook so I can use Exchange Server, and Firefox "may not be compatible with the corporate intranet". That's what happens when you get a small company full of smart people bought out by an American megacorp. :-(
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
i'm sorry? how is the fact that users would rather changeover to Mozilla than upgrade IE not something for MS to worry about? Shows that people changing see more to benefit going to Mozilla than going to the next version of IE... what happens when everyone gets told to upgrade to IE7?
Strange, the statistics for kernel.org showed that IE had a market share of only 2%.
Or did you think that geeks would be visiting some large entertainment company's website (unless it was pr0n, of course)
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Dont forget that Gmail is still invitation-only, and therefore a very biased sample.
Whenever I hear the word 'Innovation', I reach for my pistol.
I think he's just appealing to the groupthink mods.
I think you're in denial.
No, the Mozilla people who commented on the bug were people who knew what Bugzilla is for, and who understood that you (your wife was no doubt an innocent party in the whole thing) were genuinely trying, and far from helpful.
And for the record, you haven't been able to link to bugzilla bugs from Slashdot for a long time, and with good reason.
If he gave us a link the number of users using Firefox would incease dramatically. Which may not be a bad thing, from my biased viewpoint...
Keeping Windows up to date is the admin's job. Not something the users should ever do, or have access to in the first place.
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.
The ______ Agenda
Google results might be skewed slightly in favor of non MS browsers, I'd think CNN would have a more neutral sampling and would be large enough to be statisticaly significant.
To all the people who are saying that these stats don't count because it is aimed at developers or whatever, you are not completely correct.
The statistics from both before and after are taken from people who are developers. So that means, that at the very least, developers have doubled their usage of mozilla. And if developers are twice as interested in making their websites compatible with mozilla, then web usage of mozilla has likely taken a significant increase of the browser share.
Or do some things work in MSIE but not in other browsers? Or will some things work better if they're told that the visitor is MSIE, even if it's really links or w3m?
Any of this would slant the stats.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
I just read your "Bugzilla Report".
It was emotional.
It was expansive.
It was wishy-washy.
It was "I think".
Did you provide any hard proof of bugs? Nope
Did you provide what part of the GUI was "broken" or "breaking"? Nope
Did you use usability sheets to determine what was "wrong" in the GUI? Nope
It, scientifically, means nothing. It defines no real problems, other than the emotional "my ball-and-chain doesnt like it". As a debugger, I'd have trashed your begging about nothing in particular, but it seems they already did that.
This is an example why free software debuggers are soo short with users.
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.
Sure, people with the most basic web knowledge know to avoid IE. If you filter out people with a clue you are left with 99.999% winblows users. I'm happy the cluefull are migrating in increasing numbers. It shows that whatever real and perceived barriers there are to using non M$ software are going away.
Do you suggest we get all our stats from the clueless and deluded? Perhaps we should just get the facts from Bill Gates.
Oh yeah, this is what they claim about their study:
The statistics above are extracted from W3Schools' log-files, but we are also monitoring other sources around the Internet to assure the quality of these figures.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
yes, but most atheists i know are actually scientific agnostics, but functioning atheists. ie, we can't *truly* know whether there's an "other side", but it's mad to conduct our lives and organize our societies around the contention that there is.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Or less like an easy mark. The problem is that it's easier to change your browser and easier still to change out your whole OS for something that works. Oh dear, that's what these statistics mean isn't it?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Holy shit, are you max barry? I just finished jennifer government. GREAT book. and the only antidote I have to my economics class, which pushes all the maxims John Nike would hold dear as inarguable truth. damn, I just went completely fanboy...how embarrassing.
That's some funny math. The way I see it, IE has gone from close to 90% to close to 75%. That's a big difference, 9/10 to 3/4. You are also ignoring the rate of change, which is accelerating significantly. It's surprising when you consider the AOL (you know, world's biggest ISP) inclusion of IE and other changes which should have favored IE usage.
Predictions of more non M$ use are easier to make. These people are the kinds of "decision makers" that are going to tell people of their positive experiences. Web developers are obviously sick of M$, despite it's "market share" and are learning that other software works better.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
This is just another sensationalist article with little grounding in reality. It's the stats for W3schools. Surprise, Mozilla has gone up a little on a website geared toward technical web designers. As pointed out by the parent, most of it was at the expense of IE5.
Slashdot, of course, reports it like a global stat--"Mozilla Usage Doubles In 9 Months!" The summary doesn't even mention the source at all which is very dishonest. I guarantee there will be people linking to this and using it as evidence for their arguments in future posts. You know that if Microsoft put out a stat like that, everyone would be pointing out the conveniently hidden fact that w3schools is a web designers site and does not represent universal Mozilla usage statistics (Google Zeitgeist was a more accurate reflector, and back when it was still up, there were no changes in Mozilla's usage levels).
If this was an honest tech news site, the headline and article summary would have pointed out the truth. I think even CmdrTaco would have written trailing text explaining that the stats are coming from W3Schools, a technical web designer site, had he been the one posting this article. For the record, I am not surprised Michael is at the helm on this one.
No, you really are an asshole.
To paraphrase: "Do not deign to pick the straw from your brother's eye until you pluck the rafter from your own."
In other words, your shit stinks too, so look to yourself before you judge others. A broken home is meaningless without knowing the underlying issues. There is no moral highground when it comes to the family unit. The best family unit is the one that works, e.g. the unit which can produce the healthiest, happiest results. Just because it isn't your perfect "nuclear family" doesn't make it wrong.
You are a very small-minded person. Read some books, expand your horizons.
Or, you're most probably just a troll, as I refuse to believe that anyone technically inclined is so incredibly ignorant as to not logically think about each and every issue.
Either way, you're still an asshole, asshole.
Think massive number of lurkers, and reading it at work.
"Yes, Mozilla's increased, but at the expense of old IE5 installations only."
So you assume the IE6 number didn't change, but people upgrade from IE5 straight to Mozilla?
Sorry, but this poll doesn't include "transition stats". What I imagine is that about the same number of people run Windows Update and have IE6 installed as a result (or get XP instead of 98SE) as those who change from IE6 to Mozilla. That should be the reason why the IE6 stats don't change much - it gains from one side just as much as it loses from the other, but it gains and loses a lot simultaneously.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I feel for you. My company was a Netscape house for a long time, tried going to Mozilla because Netscape 4.X just wasn't cutting it, but around that time there was a sort of meltdown in IT and the new management pushed IE/Outlook on the company.
Now they wonder why the help desk is inundated with spyware calls.
Funny thing is the corporate mailserver is still IMAP. People who know use Firefox/Thunderbird and just keep quiet about it, but who knows how long that will last - more and more parts of the intranet are requiring IE, and I'm sure Exchange isn't that far off...
Just because they won over Netscape by using the operating system as a way to distribute, doesn't mean that they will nessasarily maintain.
I personally believe they beat Netscape by having a better product. When the choice was Netscape 3 or IE 3, I would routinely install Netscape on any new windows install I did, simply because it was so much better. When IE 4 came out, I resisted for a while, but eventually gave up. It was faster starting, more responsive, and not as picky about broken HTML as Netscape 4, all of which were useful features.
And then IE 5 came out, but there was no corresponding upgrade from Netscape. At that point, it was clear that they had lost.
I'll bite--
I think divorce, broken families, and the like are a huge problem, and kids are best of with two parents, one male, one female.
That said, there are always LEGITIMATE reasons for divorce. In my mind, they include, but are not limited to:
adultery
sexual abuse
physical abuse
any other kind of abuse
and probably a lot of other reasons that I can't think of right now.
You don't know why the op was divorced, or had a split family. Neither do I. To resort to such flamage before knowing that, or to even bring it up is a serious case of being a jerk.
That aside, one can have all kinds of social problems, and still be very intelligent regarding software. The two just aren't related.
Now, I hope everyone else can keep this place nicer than you have.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
Most browser dection code follows the following algorithm:
- If the string contains MSIE it's internet explorer, so use the number after MSIE as the version
- Else, if the string contains Opera it's Opera, use the version number immediately after that
- Else, if the string contains Mozilla it's a netscape/mozilla family browser: use the number after Mozilla/ as the version number
- Else class it as unknown
By this rule, Konqueror and Safari are both detected as a mozilla variant.
For what it's worth, my web server is used to show my avatar on the megatokyo forums, and that accounts for ~95% of my site hits. According to those stats Gecko has 50%, IE has 40% and others have 10%. Again, the stats you get really depend where you look for them...
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
They list screen resolution. This is evil. The implicit assumption is that people run their browser full-screen.
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