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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."

29 of 773 comments (clear)

  1. Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

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

    1. Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics by JoshMooney · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    3. Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics by rseuhs · · Score: 5, Interesting
      On a completely non-technical site I manage (f1-facts.com), Gecko has increased from 3.482% in February to 9.274% last month (August), that's pretty impressing.

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

    4. Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics by Curtman · · Score: 5, Interesting

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

    5. Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics by jericho4.0 · · Score: 5, Insightful
      You don't need to sample _everyone_ to get valid data. That's the point of statistics.

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

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

      --
      "A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
    6. Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics by JamesTRexx · · Score: 5, Funny

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

      --
      home
    7. Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics by Tim+C · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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)

    8. Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics by bsharitt · · Score: 5, Interesting

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

    9. Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics by Stephen+Samuel · · Score: 5, Funny
      Google isn't major? What site is major then?

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

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

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

      No???

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

      --
      Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
    10. Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics by zapadoo · · Score: 5, Informative

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

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

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

      Apparently several paragraphs of advocacy make a difference.

    11. Re:Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics by pingveno · · Score: 5, Informative

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

      --
      "it's not about aptitude, it's the way you're viewed" - Galinda
  2. Is This True? by The+Lost+Supertone · · Score: 5, Interesting

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

    1. Re:Is This True? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Given that Konq's default browser id is:

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

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

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

  3. Biased source sorry by BigAl_nz · · Score: 5, Informative

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

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

    --
    --- There isn't any problem that can't be solved by a small, low yield nuclear device, is there??
  4. Re:Note by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Complacency != Apathy

    Whatever. Close enough.

  5. I'm sure it varies widely from site to sit, but... by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 5, Interesting

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

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

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  6. Here's stats from another source by myrdred · · Score: 5, Informative

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

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

  7. the other 85% by bcrowell · · Score: 5, Funny
    They say 77% are using IE, but I did a poll in the parking lot of my local supermarket, and got the following results:

    • 15% firefox
    • 2% "Opera, goddammit, you got a problem with that?"
    • 20% Internet Explorer
    • 37% "I dunno, what's a browser?"
    • 15% "I click on the blue thing."
    • 6% "I don't use a browser, I use AOL."
    • 5% "I like Google."
    1. Re:the other 85% by Jon+Abbott · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  8. Security being mentioned on the news perhaps? by Billly+Gates · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  9. Re:Read the page by elleomea · · Score: 5, Informative

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

    is the rest of the parent's quote.

  10. No surprise by violet16 · · Score: 5, Informative

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

  11. Re:More cooked numbers by Bastian · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  12. Re:14% marketshare at w3schools.com by maxwell+demon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  13. slashdot vs. non-slashdot hits on my site by ortholattice · · Score: 5, Interesting
    My semi-technical site (sorry, I won't tell you what it is - the is my only semi-anonymous haven) got mention in a slashdot comment on Sep. 2 (no, it wasn't me spamming!), causing many (around 1100 extra) hits. Here are the Sep. results so far, with 72.5% of Sep. hits from coming from slashdot:

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

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

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

  14. Re:IE6 went down and IE5 went up? by ciroknight · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    --
    "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
  15. Re:I switched BACK from Firefox to IE by AvantLegion · · Score: 5, Funny
    Hmm, having my personal info transparently swiped, and offer a nice highway for spyware to the world...

    .... or ....

    ... hit Reload every now and then.

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

  16. Our own stats. by adelayde · · Score: 5, Informative

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

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

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